Wednesday Weekly: Those Saddest Books

It’s time for The Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge, hosted by Long and Short Reviews. The topic for June 23 is Saddest Book(s) I’ve Ever Read. So here we are, talking about a few tearjerkers.

Look, don’t judge me. Crying can have an emotionally cathartic effect. I mean, all those tragedies were created for a reason!

1 / Les Misérables by Victor Hugo

Long back in school, we read a story called ‘The Bishop’s Candlesticks’ . I so loved the Bishop’s kindness and reformatory tactics that I bought the translated adaptation of Les Misérables. I thought it would have a happy ending— I lived in the illusion that good people always ended up with happy endings. What a sapskull I was! I cried throughout, and bitterly hated Cozette and her husband. Jean Valjean, of course, is the most complete Noble Idiot ever created (not!), and of course, I love him. Sniff!

2 / The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

When you have a heroine and a hero who are witty teenagers and who have terminal illness and who fall in ‘first love’ with each other — of course, it’s bound to end up in tears. There are people who call such books emotionally manipulative, because diseases and star-crossed love will inevitably tug at the heart-strings. But there are some great ‘aha’ moments, great ‘feel-good’ moments. And then there are the tears, which may alarm your family, but will make you rethink your priorities.

3 / Helen Keller’s Teacher by by Margaret Davidson

Some of you may have seen the movies ‘Johnny Belinda’, ‘Black’ or a ‘Patch of Blue’… about a dually disabled girl and her mentor / teacher. Well, Helen Keller was real, and and had the misfortune of being both deaf and blind. Had it not been for her determined teacher, Anne Sullivan, she would never have gotten a degree from Radcliffe College and managed to survive. The saddest but most beautiful scene is the scene where Helen first learns to say ‘water’.

4 / A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

Every one should cry when reading the ending of this book. Sydney Carter considers his wasted life well-spent when he sacrifices himself to save the husband of the girl he loves. The undeserving (in my biased opinion) husband is Sydney’s look-alike, and this tale of sacrifice unfolds like a ball of knitting yarn (pun intended) during the French Revolution. Argh, Lucy, if only you had chosen differently — and I would really like to bang her head against the wall a few times!

5 / The Time is Noon by Pearl S. Buck

Pearl S. Buck wrote very realistic stories, full of ordinary people who lead desperate and lonely ordinary lives. Her books are unremittingly honest, laying bare the soul of her lead characters — and yours too in the process. Time is Noon speaks of that painful place when one is left without a good choice. Between the devil and the deep blue sea is our heroine when her father dies. Still, she stays optimistic and carries on. There is one place where she asks her friend, “Should the lion suffer because it is strong (and is able to bear it)?” and I wept.

6 / Tess of the d’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy

Hardy, that inordinately pessimistic author, threw his characters continuously in very unfortunate circumstances, with no second chances at lasting happiness. Tess is raped and suffers a miscarriage; she goes into hiding where her protests against marriage are all but ignored by her lover; her husband abandons her on learning her secret; her rapist seduces her into adultery; and then she is stoned to death— right before her husband decides to take her back! UGH%#?!@%??!!#. I wept not only with sadness, but also with anger.

7 / Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky

What is it about repenting for one’s sins and reforming that makes for such a truly moving read? Is it the possibility of seeing one’s innate goodness finally prevail? Raskolnikov is a poor but brilliant student. In a fit of ideological and frenzied desperation, he murders his creditor. What follows is a masterful psychological analysis of the strange workings of human guilt, conscience, confession, remorse — but always with heaps of compassion.

8 / The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank

The last book here is a 1947 book, which is all true and so is possibly the saddest. This remarkable diary was written by teenager Anne when she was in hiding with her family during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. Anne writes about all the things that matter to young girls, but always in the background is the inescapable fact that she lives in hiding. In 2009, UNESCO included the diary in the Memory of the World Register.

Alright, tell me about the saddest books that YOU have read. Don’t worry about the pathos, crying can be good for you. Really.