The saddest book you've ever read . . .

[expatinscotland]

or didn't finish b/c it was just too depressing?

'White Oleander' by Janet Fitch

Has anybody read 'When the Wind Blows' by Raymond Briggs? He's so good at that sad atmosphere- The Snowman upset me as a child- but this one is just frighteningly sad.

Ditto lots of the other books on here, especially After You'd Gone by Maggie O'Farrell, which is beautifully constructed.

another vote for 'jude the obscure', a numbingly painful book.
agree with caligula - well most of jean rhys's stuff really. good to find someone else reading it!!
anything by george gissing is pretty depressing too.

I cry at pretty much anything (including Mastercard ads - I am that lame) but My Sister's Keeper had me sobbing so hard I couldn't breathe. Cried my way through Birdsong too. When the Wind Blows by Raymond Briggs is another one, we read that in school and most of the class were crying. Just the pictures of the little old couple getting sicker and sicker - horrible.

I picked up Goodbye Mog in Waterstones and had to put it back down quick.

I can't bring myself to read Goodbye Mog!

Brothers by Bernice Reubens, spent a week sobbing on the tube to that!

no one has mentioned the ENglish Patient! Had me going.

I found Charlotte Gray very disturbing at the end and even if it is a cynical plot device, what's worst of all is that it did happen to some poor child.

Couldn't read the lovely bones, not now I have my own kids.

The time travellers wife was quite sad at the end, although not in a tragic way it still had me weeping.

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

Don't know if anyone's mentioned it yet, but I cry even thinking about The Happy Prince. It's a children's short story by Oscar Wilde. Has me blubbing every time.

The Happy Prince

Has anyone heard of a book called Froggy's Little Brother? (I think that's what it's called) I think I was in my teens when I read it - can still remember crying myself to sleep because it was so sad.

PS I Love You made me sob and sob. Bought it when I was pregnant with DS and cried so hard I was higging and snivelling like a fool for hours. DP came in from work, took one look at me and rushed over to find out if I was ok - thought something was wrong with me/baby/both. When he found out I was crying over the book he didn't talk to me for ages til he'd calmed down, said I'd given him an awful scare and from then on he screened any books I read!!

When I was a child I read a series of books about a family of foxes written by Tom McCaughren. Run to Earth, Run with the Wind and Run Swift, Run Free. I sobbed at these too as I was/am a huge animal lover.

How does a relative newbie join the book club?
As a HUGE bookworm if there are no horrible rites of passage, torture sessions, induction to go through I'd love to join......

Pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeease

I finished Small Island by Andrea Levy recently and found it incredibly moving. I had been unable to sleep so got up and read and read and read... My husband thought something dreadful had happened when he discovered me red-eyed and sobbing in the living room. It is an excellent read.

I loved The Time Traveller's Wife, I wept buckets when he met his daughter for the first time.
Lovely Bones was lovely, if harrowing.
Velveteen Rabbit is awesomely moving.
The end of The Horse Whisperer always reduces me to sobs.
The last picture in The Snowman reduces me to a quivering wreck.

YEAH klegie..im with you 'when the wind blows' AND 'after youd gone'

and also that j.picardie one..must dig that out again

the old man and the sea..um...

I'll Love you Forever by Robert Munsch
it's actually a children's book
I can't even read it to dd I choke up everytime I start reading it.....
mom cuddles her baby to sleep and sings him a lullaby
does the same as he gets older...
he moves out and she sneaks across town to cuddle him
she calls him one night and he goes to her place to cuddle his mum and then goes back to his own place and cuddles his newborn baby

bit more to it than that, even though it's sad I think it's a lovely story but v sad

blimey. Charlotte Gray i didn't think was great lit - annoyed by the ending which i understand was changed for the film - but almost unreadably sad. read non-fiction about the Duguay children recently. how can we say anything about this.

A Fine Balance actually i found bleakly uplifting in a way - as well as spectacularly good writing - the main characters just got on with their lives and shared what good came their way.

recently got Children of the Flames out of the library - unable to read more than a chapter or so but i don't think any parent could, or maybe i'm just weak as well as prurient.

sorry

saw 'when the wind blows' in the children's library recently and was quite shocked, think it's teenage at the very least. am v haunted by it.

mouse and his child again don't think i can bear to read again

the 'orange fairy book' has a story in it about a sheep dying to save a princess which i sobbed over for about a day as a child

John Grisham's 'The Chamber'. I finished it on the bus to work and I was actually sobbing when I finished it. I got a few strange looks!

Most Michael Morpurgo books make me blub. My 8yo handles them much better.

I was give a very weird and morbid book by an American missionary when I was about 8. it was about an abandoned child with a disfiguring tumour who was abandoned at the steps of a nunnery and taken in by the nuns.

The tumour gradually killed her but there were plenty of graphic descriptions of her sucking on chips of ice on her death bed and looking forward to joining Jesus.

God it was strange..would love to read it again...

I know it's been naffly franchised but 'Guess how much I love you' (Welsh version) always brings a lump to my throat.
Dd doesn't like it though.

Just finished reading the book by Holly Wells father, was very sad, such a waste of two little lives

SherlockLJG....

Remind Me Who I Am, Again

I picked up this book in a charity shop as it looked interesting and read inside cover. Blubbed on the spot and spent the next couple of minutes furiously wiping tears whilst leafing through the records.

Built up the courage to buy it without blubbing at the counter. Blubbed all the way through it at home.

Yup. That gets my vote!

What is 'Remind me who I am again,' about please?

I am off to the library tomorrow and need a good book to read.

Ah, it was probably a "personal blub" Collision - its about Multiple Infarct Dementia and the book is actually a series written for the Guardian, covering one woman watching her mother slowly deteriorate from MDI.