I want a very depressing book

I too would nominate Tess of the D'Urbevilles. Also Remains of the Day, though I would probably describe it as sad, rather than depressing.

Sophie’s Choice.

I finally read Anna Karenina a few years ago and found it so good that I went on to read War and Peace (though I did skip some of the descriptions of battles) and then read another Tolstoy I think called Resurrection - really depressing in one way but Tolstoy makes it a really great read.

Cgto2

The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah.
The bleakest book I’ve ever read!

If you really want bleak and it’s bleaker than The Four Winds try The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck.

The Reader - thought provoking but sad

I loved Elinor Oliphant, made me cry (a lot) but I loved the ending.

A little life was also a harrowing read but a really worthwhile story.

I found them both really engaging & well written

I’ve read an awful lot of these and have many of the others on my reading list . They are ok interspersed with other reads but reminding myself of all the ones I’ve read has made me determined to go away and read Georgette Heyer for a week or two. Deeply depressed now.

A little life
Shuggie Bain

Another vote here for Atonement by Ian McEwen.
Don’t forget Nineteen-Eighty-Four.

The Road - and then watch the film!
The First Circle - Alexander Solzhineitsin (sp)
Anna Karenina - Tolstoy
The Kite Runner

Grandma600

Me Before You by Jojo Moyes.
Badly written AND a depressing tale, so win-win!

Try ‘me AFTER you’, then! That should finish you off nicely!

Hard Times by Charles Dickens or, as my study group called it , Hard Going.

So depressing to read that we ended up forcing ourselves to read a chapter a day just to get through it.

It seems ambivalent to say that enjoyed A Little Life as it was bleak, and sad. Just when I thought things were beginning to look up, it plummeted again. Though it’s not a happy story, I couldn’t stop reading it. I do recommend it. I’ve just finished reading The Book Thief, another heart wrenching story that you want to read to the end.

Anne Frank's Diary?

MayBee70

If ‘Never Let Me Go’ is anything like the film it should fit the bill….

Loved this book and the film, but so sad 😢

The Redemption Trilogy by Pat Barker. It’s about the First World War. Found it so profoundly sad and depressing, couldn’t pick up another book for ages. It is brilliant, though, if you face it. 😳

Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn.

I have just read "Crooked Cross" by Sally Carson. She was an English woman who was in the habit of visiting Bavaria and who wrote the novel in I934. It describes the life of an ordinary German family in a small town in Bavaria in the six months between Christmas Eve 1932 and Midsummer Eve 1933 as Hitler came to power and everything changed in Germany.

The book was more or less lost to history but had been reprinted this year by Persephone Press and has sold well.

What is amazing is that this novel was not published after the war and the liberation of the death camps but at the beginning of what was to come but was prescient.

It is painful and shocking to read but it is a most powerful and beautiful novel. The heroine Lexa's brothers, friends, parents all believe in the new creed. But she is engaged to a young man who is a practicing Catholic but whose father is Jewish.

It is a book about moral courage but none of the characters are treated as anything less than human.

I would strongly recommend it.

I saw A little Life on Stage with James Norton playing the lead.
It is utterly depressing and bleak. His performance was a masterpiece as was on stage the whole time, about 2 and a half hours. Due to his diabetes he had to have sugary snacks hidden on stage to keep his levels up. It leaves you numb and wretched.

Not sure if you could call it depressing exactly but “Me Before You “by JoJo Moyes is incredibly sad………

The book is no longer in print. Last I knew it was available used on Amazon. It was about what happened to my loving parents, sister, his wife and kids after my brother shot his 4 neighbors. It took me ten years to write. And even if it was available new I could not mention the name here. It would violate the agreement with Gransnet and it would reveal my name, which is not safe. It destroyed my family.

The lovely bones

Lucky

Elinor oliphant is ok

A kidnapped mind Pamela Richardson

Definitely "Shuggie Bain" by Douglas Stuart. The most depressing book I've ever read, but funnily enough, I enjoyed it.

The Road by Cormac McCarthy...the epitome of bleak...

I think there’s a difference between a book that has bleak subject matter but is worth reading and beautifully written or one that you can’t wait to finish as it is mindnumbingly terrible , either as a story or how it is written . A recent one that for me fills this latter criteria is surprisingly (or not!) on this year’s Booker shortlist !