Novels that really lay on the misery

[Dubversion]

Levi's different I think, because of what he's writing about.

For me, and ignoring all those pish childhood memoirs, it's Hardy. Jesus, Jude The Obscure for example is unrelenting. And when the kids get found in the wardrobe..

 

[Louloubelle]

One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich. It's not a comedy.

Oh, also Cancer Ward. Isn't there a bit where people half-hang themselves so they can get through the day knowing they can always kill themselves tomorrow?

I read them both when I was a teenager and found them both quite depressing. The bits that stick in my mind are One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich., the bit where he's pleased to discover fish head bone with eyes attached in his soup as he's so hungry that it's a treat.

In Cancer Ward it was the endless dilemma about whether or not to put a hot water bottle over the tumour. If you did it reduced the agonising pain but it made the tumour grow bigger. Decisions, decisions.

The Bell Jar is very bleak as are all the works of Anna Kavan , but they are powerful and beautiful books all the same.

 

[Louloubelle]

Yes, he had an uncanny habit of retaining his rationality even when, as he put it, he was witnessing 'the shipwreck of reason'. I've read everything he's published and a lot academic work/interviews about him and his work, and his main motivation was to write an account of Auschwitz that was not 'hysterical or grotesquely pornographic'. Something I think you could not say about the Pelzer type of approach.

The only irrational, or perhaps just unfair aspect to his account, IMO, was the bit where a woman prostituted herself to the kapos in order to get extra bread which she shared with Levi and his friend. He was disgusted with her for doing this, which I thought was a bit rich given that he accepted the bread she gave him she had almost certainly saved his life.

 

[Yossarian]

Most of 'The Jungle' by Upton Sinclair. OK, the guy's got a crappy life - I got the idea about a hundred pages ago!

 

[trashpony]

Levi's different I think, because of what he's writing about.

For me, and ignoring all those pish childhood memoirs, it's Hardy. Jesus, Jude The Obscure for example is unrelenting. And when the kids get found in the wardrobe..

Jude The Obscure is by far the most depressing book I've ever read. Just unremitting misery.

 

[Louloubelle]

My Friend Matt and Hena the Whore is an elegant and powerful novel that blends extreme misery and horror with childlike innocence and inspiration. Sounds cheesy but it really is a good read.

Woman at Point Zero is a very powerful yet relentlessly miserable book, based on a true story as told by a prostitute to the author on the night before she is due to be executed for killing a pimp.

Talking of pimps, Pimp- The Story of My Life and just about anything else by Iceberg Slim is horrendously depressing. Even more depressing is that some people seem to regard him as some kind of hero.

But for me, for the ultimate in depressing reading, We Regret to Inform You that Tomorrow We Will be Killed Along With Our Families. A very important book though.

 

[Louloubelle]

I also expect a fair few of the readers are survivors of childhood atrocities themselves and have a need to know it wasn't just themselves that have suffered (remember they've probably spent most their life being told they "deserved it" by their abusers).

I think there's some truth in that. I know that for some people it alleviates a feeling of loneliness to know that someone else suffered too.

I think it's also fair to say that there is a continuum of those kinds of accounts with useful and educational reading at one end and something a bit more salacious at the other. For example, one writer (an English man, can't remember his name atm) went into a lot of detail about the strategies his abusive parents used to make sure that his social worker never got to properly examine his injuries. It was an important book just from that aspect and should have been on the reading lists for all trainee social workers.

 

[Barking_Mad]

The Room by Hubert Selby Jr
Last Exit to Brooklyn by Hubert Selby Jr
Waiting Period by Hubert Selby Jr
Requiem for a Dream by Hubbert Selby Jr

Are you seeing the theme here?

Ive read Last Exit to Brooklyn, not a bad book but a little disjointed. Some powerful and depressing scenes in there though. The old woman at the end who sits on her own and the scene of the woman being raped by god knows how many people is disturbingly written.

The section with the Union rep is also v good.

 

[goldenecitrone]

The titles are awful, stuff like "please, daddy, no..."

"Not the cheese grater, daddy, please, no". Alarming stuff.

 

[poster342002]

For example, one writer (an English man, can't remember his name atm) went into a lot of detail about the strategies his abusive parents used to make sure that his social worker never got to properly examine his injuries. It was an important book just from that aspect and should have been on the reading lists for all trainee social workers.

Agreed.

 

[QueenOfGoths]

Thats a fantastic book, but thats one bleak ending.

Absolutely - it is one of my favouirite books but a very bleak ending. I felt the same with his "Family Matters" - another quite depressing ending.

Thomas Hardy is the worst though - cannot stand his at times unremitting tragedy and coincidences. It annoys me. Intensely!

 

[8den]

Michel Houellebecq's Atomised. I was so depressed for months after reading that book.

 

[Brainaddict]

Michel Houellebecq's Atomised. I was so depressed for months after reading that book.

Really? I didn't find that the case at all.

Glad to see more votes for Thomas Hardy and Jude the Fucking Depressed and Miserable and Obscure

 

[Brainaddict]

Oh, I've just remembered another book I gave up due to its unremitting bleakness (and also its ludicrous size): Infinite Jest by David Wanky Wallace.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Last Exit to Brooklyn by Hubert Selby Jnr.

Funnily enough, I was compelled by the unremmitting bleakness.


Death on the Installment Plan by Celine...

and Journey to the End of the Night...

in fact, anything by the fucker...

 

[littlebabyjesus]

I never felt tearful or overburdened while reading Levi. It just makes me think.

I know exactly what you mean, but The Drowned and the Saved was different for me. His imagined conversation with Jean Amery left me pretty emotional. He had reasoned and utterly reasonable answers to all of Amery's points, and yet we read it now knowing that he too in the end couldn't go on any more, and succumbed just like Amery.

 

[lobster]

Knut hamsuns hunger , anything by Frank Kafka Fyodor Dostoevsky - notes from the underground , crime and punishment , The Gambler , the idiot.
Billy childish - my fault. Kurt Vonnegut - Slaughterhouse-Five. George Orwell - 1984, animal farm. Günter Grass - The Tin Drum.