More of the Morose

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Last week, I wrote about some of literature’s comedic or part-comedic novels. This week, I’ll flip that to discuss some of the saddest novels. Given that I covered this topic in a post eight years ago, I’ll focus on novels I’ve read since then — whether those books were published before or after 2018.

Of course, sad novels are not always 100% bleak; they perhaps contain some happier moments and/or semi-optimistic endings. But they’re downbeat overall.

Kristin Hannah’s excellent fiction can certainly leave a reader shaken. For instance, her 1970s-set novel The Great Alone (2018) is a depressing look at a Vietnam War veteran living in the Alaskan wilderness and how his post-traumatic stress wreaks havoc on himself, his wife, and their teen daughter.

Elin Hilderbrand’s also-excellent fiction is considered somewhat “lighter” than Hannah’s, but she does often wrestle with major personal and societal issues. One of Hilderbrand’s more melancholy novels is 28 Summers (2020), about a cancer-stricken woman who had a longtime one-weekend-a-year affair with her soulmate while she and him lived separate family lives the rest of the time. A superb book amid the sorrow.

In-between the two above novels arrived Colson Whitehead’s partly 1960s-set The Nickel Boys (2019), a heartbreaking look at abuse in a Florida reform school and at racism in general. Whitehead’s earlier The Underground Railroad (2016) — which unfolds in 19th-century slavery times — is another very good novel that will leave readers morose. Both Whitehead books won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction.

Barbara Kingsolver’s later Pulitzer winner Demon Copperhead isn’t all dispiriting, but the scourge of opioid addiction and the poverty depicted in the 2022 novel leave readers dejected even as they’re impressed with the author’s modern reimagining of Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield.

Moving to some older novels I’ve read since 2018, we have Michael Crichton’s 1990 sci-fi thriller Jurassic Park in which the hubris of using DNA to recreate living dinosaurs in the 20th century results in lots of destruction by those out-of-their-element dinos.

Twenty-five years earlier, there was John Edward Williams’ 1965 Stoner novel about a farm-raised boy who becomes an English professor but lives a personal life marked by an unhappy marriage and other disappointments. Again, a really good novel amid the sorrow.

Another 1965 release was James Leo Herlihy’s Midnight Cowboy (better known for the 1969 movie adaptation) about a naive Texan’s odyssey in New York City and the discouraging experiences of he and his down-and-out, ill-fated friend.

In 1957 came Nevil Shute’s On the Beach, about Australians waiting to die from a deadly wave of nuclear war-caused radiation heading their way. Almost any apocalyptic/dystopian novel would be eligible for this post.

Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice (1912) is exquisitely written and set in one of the most beautiful cities on the planet, but the plot is full of unrequited obsession — and then comes the cholera outbreak.

In 1833, Alexander Pushkin’s novel-in-verse Eugene Onegin was published after appearing in serial form between 1825 and 1832. A depressingly brilliant work filled with boredom, arrogance, selfishness, an ill-fated duel, a missed romantic opportunity, and more.

Among the sad novels I mentioned in my 2018 post were Andre Dubus III’s House of Sand and Fog (1999), Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things (1997), Toni Morrison’s Beloved (1987), Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa’s The Leopard (1958), Erich Maria Remarque’s Spark of Life (1952), George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth (1905), Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure (1895), Emile Zola’s Germinal (1885), George Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss (1860), Mary Shelley’s The Last Man (1826), and Sir Walter Scott’s The Bride of Lammermoor (1819).

Your thoughts on this post, and examples of sad novels you’ve read?

Misty the cat says: “I was gonna give Dave this tree for his birthday but it’s stuck in the ground.”

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…and a 2012 memoir that focuses on cartooning and more, including many encounters with celebrities.

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75 thoughts on “More of the Morose”

  1. Hi Dave,

    I don’t know about sad yet, but I’m early into Harriet Beacher Stowe’s “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” and words like property and belongings and chattel has got me a bit angry. But I know it’s a very popular book so I imagine it will eventually go a bit Hollywood and be about romance and car chases and the good guys get a happy ending. Right?

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    • PS Have you ever written a blog about birthdays? I can’t think of any novels that are JUST about birthdays, but could probably do one or two where a birthday is quite significant.

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  2. I just finished Stoner a couple weeks ago – what a great novel, despite its sadness. It’s so funny how much I’ve seen people mention that book lately! I would say a recent read of mine that fits this category well is the River is Waiting by Wally Lamb. SO sad… but SUCH good writing and a really good book!

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    • Thank you, M.B.! Glad you read “Stoner, ” and you’re certainly right about it being a superb as well as sad novel. It does seems to have an enduring fandom even though a number of other 1960s novels are much more famous (“To Kill a Mockingbird,” “Catch-22,” “Slaughterhouse-Five,” “Midnight Cowboy,” “One Hundred Years of Solitude,” etc.).

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  3. Oh! The tingles over here! Twice in the past week two friends have encouraged me to read “The Great Alone”, in part because of my interest in Hannah’s work and novels about the Vietnam War…and because they both know I have family in Alaska. Family that moved to Alaska in the late 60’s. And then…your inclusion of Sir Walter’s Scott’s “The Bride of Lammermoor! I’ve never read it but a writer acquaintance who knows my upcoming work has ties to Scotland urged me to read it and sent me the Project Gutenberg ebook to goose me along. Uncanny, Dave! Thank you for another oh-so fabulous post. I need to go offline from my life for a week…or two…or more…to dive into all that you’ve offered here. Many thanks! 😊💝😊

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  7. Dave, your post set me thinking in a slightly different direction. I find that sadness is rarely confined to certain books alone. It seems to live, in some measure, within almost every story because it is part of life itself. Even the most hopeful narratives carry a thread of loss, change, or longing. Without it, the emotional landscape would feel incomplete.

    I often feel this when reading writers like Pearl S. Buck. There is a realism in her work that can be difficult to move through, not because it is bleak, but because it feels so true to the rhythms and hardships of lived experience. And even a work like Animal Farm, which is often discussed in political terms, has always struck me as deeply sad. Not only for what happens within the story, but for what it reveals about how humanity struggles, repeats, and wrestles with itself.

    I always find myself moved at the end of The Lord of the Rings, when Bilbo and Frodo go off to the Havens. I still cry at that quiet farewell. There is something so gentle and final in it, as though the story itself is taking a last breath. Perhaps that is why we continue to read. Not to seek out sadness, but to recognize it, to understand it, and, in some quiet way, to share it. And of course, I must leave a quote that sums it all up.

    “How do you pick up the threads of an old life? How do you go on, when in your heart, you begin to understand…there is no going back? There are some things that time cannot mend. Some hurts that go too deep, that have taken hold.” Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien

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    • Thank you, Rebecca, for your eloquence and insights.

      I agree that virtually every novel has some sadness; totally unavoidable if the book is going to feel realistic. Even when things are going 100% happily in a novel or in life, one knows that that can’t be sustained.

      I appreciate the Pearl S. Buck, J.R.R. Tolkien, and George Orwell references! Coincidentally, I recently took out the “Sons” sequel to Buck’s “The Good Earth,” which I had reread back in January. Looking forward to getting to “Sons” soon. “The Good Earth” is a very sad novel, but riveting and, as you say, “true to the rhythms and hardships of lived experience.” And the concluding, post-adventure part of “The Lord of the Rings” is indeed incredibly moving.

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  8. Denis Johnson “Fiskadoro”, Cormac McCarthy “The Road”, Celeste Ng “Our Missing Hearts”, Pat Barker’s Regeneration Series.

    “On the Beach” made a big impact on me when I read it in high school. I’ve read a few of the other books on your list, too, and in particular really liked “The Underground Railroad”. I’m sure I could think of more…so many depressing books in the modern pantheon. Which is why I turn these days so often to murder mysteries. (K)

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    • Thank you, Kerfe!

      “…so many depressing books in the modern pantheon” — very, very true.

      I’ve read “The Road” and the first book in that Pat Barker series, and they’re indeed downbeat. But engrossing.

      And, yes, mysteries can be quite escapist even though the subject matter is often tragic. It helps that the case is usually solved, with good usually winning out over bad. Unlike much of the time in real life. 😦

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  10. It says much about my reading preferences that I’ve read most – but not all – of the older, Classic, texts you mention above, Dave, and few if any of the more modern. You’ve got some of my all-time favourites there, ‘The Mill on the Floss’ since it helped me grow up aged 14 and never lets me re-read it without crying my eyes out at the end. ‘The House of Mirth’ makes me sad and angry in equal quantities; a brilliant story. I’ll have to sleep on the idea to expand your list, but I’ll go into the regions of shamelessness over a comment I received from a reader of my debut novel ‘Fairytales Don’t Come True’: “I cried my eyes out, on a plane full of strangers. So embarrassing” she said. Proud doesn’t cover it. Happy Birthday again, Dave, and catch you again soon. 🙂

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  11. When I was 13 or 14, my class was assigned OF MICE AND MEN. I had read books that made me cry because a beloved pet died (think of OLD YELLER), and I had cried through the scene in LITTLE WOMEN where Beth dies, but I was used to mainly happy endings. I could not believe how horribly sad OF MICE AND MEN was–I remember crying until my face was swollen. I still think it is one of the saddest books I have ever read, and I will never forget the shock it produced in me. It wasn’t just reading a sad book; it was realizing at quite a young age how completely unfair and tragic life was for many people.

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    • Thank you for the comment, Kim! Sorry about the very sad memory; John Steinbeck could of course get pretty grim in a lot of his often-masterful work — which is especially hard on school-age readers. A great/sobering point that young readers can become very upset not only at literary content itself, but because that content sadly helps illustrate how difficult things can be for many real-life people.

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    • Yep, me too. I cried and cried to read ‘Of Mice and Men’ in class – I would have been 11 or 12. I still feel sad about that book, and this is why I have never read anything written by John Steinbeck. Rant over.

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      • Sorry that the terrible sadness in “Of Mice and Men” made you a non-Steinbeck reader, Chris. I’ve never regretted reading his “The Grapes of Wrath,” “East of Eden,” “The Winter of Our Discontent,” etc., and his more comedic works such as “Tortilla Flat” and “Cannery Row,” but there are so many other authors to read that not reading more books by one of them can be a sensible personal decision. 🙂

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      • Chris, your comment comforts me. I’m glad I’m not the only one to have such a strong reaction to this book. I remember, beyond all my crying, also managing to understand why George killed Lennie even though he loved him. I think the book stretched my brain! But I personally would never give it to anyone under 16 to read.

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  12. Dave, among the books you’ve mentioned, I’ve read The Great Alone, Demon Copperhead, On the Beach, Beloved, and Nineteen Eighty-Four. I’ve also read My Sister’s Keeper, mentioned by Smitha. All memorable stories, long after closing the pages of the book. I’ve found that sad stories have an uncanny way of grabbing my attention and keeping me hooked to the end. Perhaps, it’s my yearning for a happy ending or redemption in the face of life’s trials.

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    • Thank you, Rosaliene! Great that you’ve read “The Great Alone,” “Demon Copperhead,” “On the Beach,” “Beloved,” “Nineteen Eighty-Four,” and “My Sister’s Keeper.” Sad books can definitely hook readers even as those readers might need to have a box of tissues handy. And, yes, sometimes sad novels offer some hope by the end.

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  16. We just finished watching The Count of Monte Cristo on Masterpiece Theater. I read the book many years ago in high school. It’s sad because Edmond and Mercedes don’t end up together at the end. A lot of people dislike that ending. But at least he finds love with someone else.

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    • Thank you, Marie! “The Count of Monte Cristo” — a fantastic novel — definitely has many sad elements: the thwarted romance you mentioned as well as the frame-up, the very long prison term, etc. Plus some more pleasing elements, including the Edmond Dantes/Abbe Faria prison friendship, the just retributions, etc.

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  17. Thanks for sharing this long list, which also touches on a crucial point: the best sad novels aren’t simple exercises in misery; they use pain to highlight our humanity, and the consequences of our choices.

    Here are two of the tragic Italian novels I’ve read:
    I Malavoglia by Giovanni Verga
    The Garden of the Finzi-Contini by Giorgio Bassani

    🌹🌹🌹I take this opportunity to wish you a Happy Birthday here too.🌹🌹🌹

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  18. In addition to the list you mentioned are ‘Fault in our stars’ by John Greene, My Sister’s Keeper by Jodi Picoult, The Beekeeper of Aleppo, Lane and Able by Jeffrey Archer. These books made me cry… I didn’t realise I had read so many tragic books. I like to keep away from them because there’s enough tragedy around that’s thrown at you whether you like it or not.

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    • Thank you, Smitha! I’ve read “The Fault in Our Stars” and “My Sister’s Keeper,” and I agree that they are both very sad. Severe medical problems in each novel, and one very much wonders about the morality of what the parents did to their younger daughter in Jodi Picoult’s book. Also, I totally understand your reluctance to read too many sad novels when there’s so many sad and infuriating things happening in real life. 😦

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        • So true, Smitha. No ideal choices. The older daughter was very ill and the parents were desperate and the poor younger daughter was sort of the “solution.” And then that added tragedy near the end of the novel. Certainly one of the most depressing 21st-century books out there. 😦

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  19. Hey Dave, great post. I found The Great Alone, Demon Copperhead, and House of Sand and Fog very memorable for this category. Jude the Obscure still awaits on my husband’s bookshelf. I will get to it eventually as I loved Hardy’s other novels.

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  21. Many thanks, Dave, for your great sad books you presented here. As STONER by J. Williams was unputdownable for me and I even wrote a post about it, I went back to reread it and saw that the fact that Stoner didn’t fight for his beloved daughter made me most sad!

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  22. One of the objectives of literary fiction is to show the human condition, so no wonder much of it is depressing.

    Canadian literature (Canlit) is reputed to be especially grim, but I suspect this was common everywhere in the mid- to late 20th century.

    One very well-written recent novel that shows resilience in a grim setting is The Weight of Snow and Regret by Elizabeth Gauffreau

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