Recommend some joyful/life-affirming books

[JaneyGee]

I have read a lot of classics this year – more than ever before. I've enjoyed pretty much all of them (I follow Harold Bloom's recommendations), but one thing that struck me is just how dark and depressing a lot of great books really are. This year, I've read:

Thomas Hardy: Return of the Native (enjoyed it a lot, but very bleak)

Joseph Conrad: The Secret Agent (also bleak, and very pessimistic about human nature)

Virginia Woolf: Mrs Dalloway (beautiful – my book of the year. Uplifting in places, but the suicide of the young soldier is incredibly sad)

D. H. Lawrence: Lady Chatterley's Lover (surprisingly downbeat and dreary, considering it's meant to celebrate sexual love – Lawrence was ill when he wrote it, so maybe that explains things)

Truman Capote: In Cold Blood (amazing book, but deeply disturbing)

Aldous Huxley: Eyeless in Gaza (Huxley is my favourite writer, but the suicide of the central character's friend is so flippin upsetting)

Like I said, I enjoyed every one of the books I've listed. Still, it would be nice to read more great books that aren't quite so bleak. Dickens and Jane Austen are good examples of cheerful writers. I also worship at the feet of P. G. Wodehouse, who is the utter master of joy. But can anyone list a few great books – works from the canon, I mean – that cheer them up.

Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townsend Warner is wonderful

The Summer book by Tove Janson

Mrs Harris goes to Paris

Still Life by Sarah Winman. Whimsical and life affirmingly lovely especially if you like Italy!

For a comedy, Cold Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbons.

Trollope is the most comforting Victorian. Barchester/Palliser series a good place to start: linked series of 12 novels. Some standalones are a bit sharper.

Another vote for this.

My recommendation for this kind of request is always Laurie Colwin novels. She's very little known outside the US (she died unexpectedly in her 40s in the early 90s), but she's brilliantly clever and funny. If you can imagine a sort of modern US Jane Austen whose novels are set between the 60s and the 80s among upper-class New Yorkers and New Englanders, and deal with marriages, affairs, friendships, work, children, set amid wonderful apartments, messy publishers' offices and country houses -- they're joyful and light-hearted while also being clever and morally tough. (She was also a brilliant cookery writer.)

If this sounds appealing, start with either Happy All The Time or A Big Storm Knocked It Over.

https://lithub.com/in-celebration-of-laurie-colwins-lost-manhattan/

I loved Project Hail Mary, left me with a feeling of joy and hope.

Most of Anne Tyler's novels.

As ever, the answer is Patrick O'briens master and commander series. Hilarious in parts, sad in parts but never "misery after misery, we are all doomed" - and sublimely written.

I second Patrick O'Brien. The "lesser of the two weevils" joke makes me laugh every time I think of it

I agree that the ones I've read are brilliant (and at times hilariously odd -- like the part of one novel (can't remember which) where Maturin has to lead Aubrey disguised as a bear through Spain!), but, though it's a long time since I've read any of them, I did get tired of continually having to look up sails and types of rigging.

It probably gels better if (1) you know anything about sailing and (2) read them all together.

Two contradictory points:

1. I've never heard of Harold Bloom but a quick google reveals he was an American literary critic, I suspect, like him, most of his recommendations are dead white males and it might be worth looking at a wide source of recommendations.

2. The OP asked about classics, I don't think the likes of Sarah Winham or even Anne Tyler can be considered 'classics' yet.

To avoid the DWMs then The Big Jubilee List is a good place to start, it's a list of books written by commonwealth writers, one for each year of the queen's reign. But again, there's a lot of depressing 'worthy' classics.

To address the 'not depressing' aspect of your request what about Silas Marner by George Elliot? Or The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas? Or Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte? Or even War and Peace by Tolstoy?

Someone has already suggested Mrs Harris goes to Paris (pedantically, the book is Flowers for Mrs Harris). I’d add quite a few other Paul Gallico novellas - The Small Miracle, The Snow Goose, Ludmilla.

And, gIven the time of year, A Christmas Carol.

I can't think of any books from the canon that are both cheerful and life affirming.

The Pickwick Papers or The Way We Live Now (cheerful)? Jane Eyre (life affirming)?

I'd second Trollope's Barsetshire Chronicles. If you like Austen, Trollope is a good bet.

Evelyn Waugh, Scoop. Not canon exactly, but a classic, and very funny.

Johann Peter Hebel - not a novel but (very) short stories, beloved of Goethe, Kafka, etc. Not funny/witty in general tone, but definitely not bleak - rather, insightful and often affirming.

Going further back might give you more scope for less bleak books. Don Quixote? Shakespeare's comedies? Ovid's Metamorphoses and Homer's Odyssey are ancient classics which again aren't full of dry wit but encompass a variety of human experience without being bleak. I'd say the same of War and Peace.