I have an affinity for this old world author Nevil Shute. A Town Like Alice and On The Beach are his most famous works, and both are terrific. I highly recommend. And On The Beach, given its premise, is emotionally pretty rough at times. But, he has another, lesser known book called The Breaking Wave, that is by far the saddest thing I read all year. It is f***ing *brutal.* If you want your guts ripped out, try this book.
What else you got? We all know A Little Life, Flowers for Algernon, No Longer Human, The Color Purple, Of Mice and Men, and other heavy-hitters of the “sad book” genre. I want some more obscure picks.
by Pugilist12
11 Comments
The Searchers
Siren promised by Jeremy Robert Johnson and Alan m Clarke is devastating.
My Abandonment
The Four Winds by Kristen Hannah. It is BLEAK. I was sad the entire read but it is also beautiful
Clover by Dori Sanders. I got a signed copy from her when I was a little girl in the 90s. It is gutwrenching and evocative. Really fabulous read from a lady famous for owning the best Peach Stand in the Carolinas.
How come the r/books sub has followed the sad and terrible road of the r/movies sub where 75% of the posts are now “Tell me a book that X; I’ll Start.”
If you loved a book so much, why can’t people just post “I read this book that I loved. Let’s discuss it.”
This approach is just a karma farm and ends up in every post being a list of books rather than actual discussion and it is ruining the sub.
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Edit: I feel bad about using the term “karma farm.” I don’t think people doing this are trying to farm karma and it was unfair of me to make it sound like an accusation. I think it’s genuinely fun to get a list of books! But I do strongly believe that is a better post for the r/suggestmeabook sub, which is supposed to be about lists of books!
**Tell Me How to Be** (Patel). The book follows a mother and son as >!their respective pasts intrude on their presents!<.
Nobody Writes to the Colonel by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Maybe not under-read, but The Dog Stars by Peter Heller. Written in 2013, he foresaw a pandemic that makes Covid look benign.
Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler
I’d never heard of this author /book till I saw it recommended in this sub. It’s now my favorite.
Hating Olivia by Mark SaFranko
Maybe it was because I read it right after a breakup of my own, but he captured a collapsing relationship so fucking well in it.
To my knowledge it is not a well known book and I’m unaware of any others he has written.