Some Sad Books To Read?
I love to read some sad stories about a life of an orphan, child abused, family problem, etc. I’ve read A Child Call It, The Diary of Anne Frank, Torey Hayden’s books. Could you recommend me some other books to read? I really need something that can make me cry, some a real tear-jerkers.
Please don’t recommend me any love or detective stories from Dan Brown, Danielle Steel, etc. Thanks …
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I don’t like sad books, they make me cry and I hate crying.
I read “where the red fern grows” and I cried every single time I read it-which was 7 times to be exact, I lovet that book
The Falconer by Elaine Clark McCarthy
“Marley & Me” by jhon grogan (i think thats who its by)
The Client–its kind of sad–but its just really good!!
Oh…
Of Mice and Men
First book to ever make me cry. I BAWLED
That and any book by a holocaust survivor.
Also, there’s one called “Do they hear you while you scream?”
I don’t know who wrote it, but it’s about the women in Africa that undergo horrible mutilations on their genital as punishment.
The Bell Jar
and
She’s Come Undone
“My sweet orange tree” by José Mauro de Vasconcelos is the saddest book I’ve ever read. The main character is a really sweet young boy with a big imagination. I must admit, I cried when I read it.
“A Tree Grows in Brooklyn”- Betty Smith
any of Frank McCourt’s stuff, but especially “Angela’s Ashes”
“Hunger Point” by Jillian Medoff
“Because it is Bitter and Because it Is My Heart”- Joyce Carol Oates
“Tess of the D’Urbervilles” by Thomas Hardy
“Jacob Have I Loved”- Katherine Paterson
and if you don’t mind children’s books, I’ve always loved “The Blue Castle” by L M Montgomery (author of the Anne of Green Gables series). She wrote a lot about various orphans in her short story books, and Anne was an orphan as well (her series has 8 books to it).
I understand what you mean though- my favorite books are about struggles too, be they poverty, orphans, abuse, eating disorders, etc. I’ll have to look for Torey Hayden’s stuff… have never come across that name before. But I like Dave Pelzer’s stuff (A Child Called It) and the Diary of Anne Frank as well.
The Loveley Bones by Alice Sebold was excellent. Very well writen! Read it twice! The saddest book I ever read is an old one… check your library tho. It’s called “The Youngest” by Gillian Tindall. Published in 1968. It’s about a woman who has a deformed child late in life and in a desparate move, suffocates the baby. Everybody outwardly believes the babe died of SIDS. The story is told from the woman’s point of view. I cried thru most of it.
Here you go (synopsis for each):
The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
On her way home from school on a snowy December day in 1973, 14-year-old Susie Salmon (“like the fish”) is lured into a makeshift underground den in a cornfield and brutally raped and murdered, the latest victim of a serial killer–the man she knew as her neighbor, Mr. Harvey.
Beach Music by Pat Conroy
After the suicide of his wife, Jack McCall returns home to South Carolina where he must deal with the friends and family he left behind and his mother’s cancer. You will cry more than once with this book. My favorite book.
The Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy
In order to aid a psychiatrist who is treating his psychotic sister, Tom Wingo arrives in Manhattan and describes figures from his youth, among them an abusive father, a mother obsessed with being accepted by Colleton’s tawdry elite, eccentric grandparents, stolid brother Luke, and sensitive, poet-sister Savannah.
A Boy’s Life
This passes through a stormy season in a 12-year-old’s life and follows a boy and his father as they seek a killer in 1964 Alabama. One of my favorite books of all time. A touching, touching story that always brings tears to my eyes.
Bastard Out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison
Set in the rural South, this tale centers around the Boatwright family, a proud and closeknit clan known for their drinking, fighting, and womanizing. Nicknamed Bone by her Uncle Earle, Ruth Anne is the bastard child of Anney Boatwright, who has fought tirelessly to legitimize her child. When she marries Glen, a man from a good family, it appears that her prayers have been answered. However, Anney suffers a miscarriage and Glen begins drifting. He develops a contentious relationship with Bone and then begins taking sexual liberties with her. Embarrassed and unwilling to report these unwanted advances, Bone bottles them up and acts out her confusion and shame.
And young adult novels:
With You and Without You by Ann M. Martin
Twelve-year-old Liz O’Hara tries to make her dying father’s last few months enjoyable, but when he finally succumbs to his heart disease, she is devasted but courageously tries to cope with life without her father.
A Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Newton Peck
The memoirs of Robert Peck from when he was a farm boy and his complex relationship with his father.
Invincible Summer by Jean Ferris
Seventeen-year-old Robin, in treatment for leukemia, falls in love with a boy who also has the disease, and together they attempt to survive their ordeal.
The Lovely Bones
Resistance
Marley and Me: Life and Love With the World’s Worst Dog
Broken for You
That’s all I can think of right this second.
Go Ask Alice…. old but good!
I don’t remember the author, but look up the book titled Emma and Me! It’s about an abused little girl and it has a lot of twists and unexpected ending!
“The Bridges of Madison County” by Robert James Waller, and “The Notebook” Nicholas Sparks both made me cry. They are both excellent stories!!
The following 3 books are real tear jerkers about unfortunate orphans.
Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens is the story of oliver an unfortunate orphan.The orphanage scenes are real tear jerkers.
Hunger, anger, and hatred are constants for young Vetch, rendered a brutally mistreated and overworked serf by the Tian conquest of his homeland. But everything improves when a Tian jouster requisitions Vetch to become the first serf ever to be a dragon boy. His training is intense, and his duty clear-cut: to tend his jouster, Ari, and his dragon, Kashet. He discovers that, because Ari himself had hatched Kashet, the dragon is different from others that have been captured live in the wild and must be drugged to be made tractable. Vetch finds he really likes and understands dragons, and soon he becomes the best dragon boy of all. He still harbors anger, however, toward the Tian invasion. Could he, perhaps, hatch a dragon, and then escape to help his people?
Mercedes Lackey’s Take a Thief is the tale of Skif, a young orphan reminiscent of Oliver Twist, making his way in the knock-and-tumble neighborhood between two of Haven’s outermost walls. Skif is intelligent, good-hearted and creative enough to forage up three meals a day in a place where food is scarce and kindness almost unheard of. After a chain of events leave him homeless, Skif lands in the lair of Bazie, an Faginish ex-mercenary who trains thieves…until he is “Chosen” by one of Valdemar’s magical horses and becomes a Herald serving the Queen.
Dance with the devil by Sherrilyn Kenyon.This one is a romance.Zarek was mad, bad and more than a little insane, and now everyone wants him dead. But hey, that was nothing new to this loner. Born the bastard son of a Roman nobleman and a Greek slave, Zarek had known a lifetime of abuse, torture and humiliation.
Short story from the book Four million.The Cop and the Anthem by O.henry.Its about a young tramp Soapy who tries desperately to get arrested so that he can spend the winter in jail.He eats in expensive restaurents,steals,insults women,cause general mayham.But to no avail.he just doesn’t get arrested until…
The Gift of the Magi,Last leaf all by the same author are terrific stories.All the o.henry stories have a characteristic twist at the end.
The Lover by Marguerite Duras
Lolita by Valdimir Nabakov
Transparent Things also by Nabakov
Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera
These are all great books, but the saddest is the first one. It’s bit pornographic too, especially for such a short book.
Blackbird by Jennifer Lauck
Motherless Brooklyn. It is sad but also funny.
I read this book when I was in the 7th grade and I read it at least once a year until my house burned down and I cried each time… I’m a sucker for stories about family and love..
Searching for David’s Heart
It’s a quick read.. but it gets to me.. unsure about the author because I completely forgot about it until I saw this question x)
The Lovely Bones:By Alice Sebold
Read “The Old Curiosity Shop” by Charles Dickens. I read it about fifteen years ago. It involves a little girl. I believe her grandfather took care of her. They travel across England after the grandfather lost all his money and his home.
The girl cares very much for her grandfather. At times she takes care of him more than he takes care of her. After a good deal of suffering and determination, I think everything winds up ok.
It made me sniffle a few times when I read it. Ok, I did more than just sniffle – I cried.
She’s come undone….Wally Lamb/Oprah book club