I want a very depressing book

George Orwell's 1984 is pretty grim, especially as the world seems to be going in that direction albeit rather later than predicted.

Try Dead Souls by Gogol.🙈

Primrose53

Try “The Death and Life of Sylvia Plath”. I’ve just started it.

Eeeeek!
Shall I wait in the wings for you with some kleenex and brandy?

Einna

The Road by Cormac Mc Carthy

Couldn’t stand it.

About post-nuclear war chaos, poverty, desperation, cannibalism…….horrible.

It was horrible but I guess that was the point, a dystopian future where it was every man for himself. The ghastly parts of the book kind of did stay with you tho.😬

MayBee70

I think I must like depressing books because the majority of books mentioned on here are my favourites. I thought A Thousand Splendid Suns was uplifting and, unusual for me, read The Road in one sitting. I loved the film, too, although my daughter castigated me for lending her the dvd which totally depressed her! I guess I am one of life’s Eey Ores (or my other alter ego Marvin the paranoid android).

I must be the same then!

'Then' by Morris Gleitzman, and it is a children's book.

I think I must like depressing books because the majority of books mentioned on here are my favourites. I thought A Thousand Splendid Suns was uplifting and, unusual for me, read The Road in one sitting. I loved the film, too, although my daughter castigated me for lending her the dvd which totally depressed her! I guess I am one of life’s Eey Ores (or my other alter ego Marvin the paranoid android).

Try 'Still Alice' by Lisa Genova. Very depressing.

The Road by Cormac Mc Carthy

Couldn’t stand it.

About post-nuclear war chaos, poverty, desperation, cannibalism…….horrible.

Try “The Death and Life of Sylvia Plath”. I’ve just started it.

By Leo Tolstoy

The most wonderful book ever written in my opinion is Anna Karenina . I like a story about human relationships and this is chock full. My son says it’s like an episode of Eastenders!
Most people think oh that’s too high brow and difficult but it really isn’t. Give it a try and I guarantee you will at times be depressed.

I loved The Shipping News! It isn't unremittingly depressing though. Beautifully written

Cgto2

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

The Four Winds is a very bleak account of the dust bowl farmers, I didn't think it could get any bleaker until I read The Grapes of Wrath, which I imagine inspired Kristin Hannah's version. John Steinbeck lived through those times, so more of a horse's mouth account. Both are very good and very miserable.

Death at Wolf's Nick. The profoundly depressing true story of taxi driver Evelyn Foster who was set on fire and left to die.

The subsequent police investigation was marred by sexism and incompetence.

The Shipping News by Annie Proulx.

Wonderful gloomy descriptions of Newfoundland and the lives of the people there.

I found Jude the Obscure really depressing but finished it just so I could say I had !

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

I forgot Demon Copperhead, unremittingly sad but brilliant. One of the best books I've read in the past couple of years.

Redption Falls is indeed gloomy Graphite I didn't enjoy it as much as Star of the Sea, in fact a bit disappointing. I read it a while ago.

Another vote for A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara. It's a very long book and immensely sad but worth reading.

Ditto, Star of the Sea. I've just started the sequel Redemption Falls which is sounding similarly gloomy but the writing is excellent.

One that others may not be familar with and which I heard discussed on Radio 4's A Good Read is Shyness and Dignity by Dag Solstad.

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

Angel by Elizabeth Taylor. There are no redeeming features at all!

Books by Coim Tobin and Anne Enright I’ve always found gloomy, too.

Yes another who would nominate Tess of the d'Urbervilles, it doesn't get much more depressing than hanging. A public hanging left a deep impression on Thomas Hardy which inspired him to write the book allegedly. I'd also recommend both "His Bloody Project" and "Alias Grace", riveting and depressing in equal measures with brutal murders at the centre of both books. Angela's Ashes a veritable catalogue of misery with flashes of brilliant Irish humour. Joseph O'Connor another excellent Irish author his "Star of the Sea" is one of my best books ever, it takes a good 70 pages or so to get into it, set against the Irish Potato Famine. Or for a more recent Irish flavour of utter misery, Liz Nugent excels with Strange Sally Diamond and my latest one by her Skin Deep. Khalid Hosseni's "A Thousand Splendid Sons" is another unhappy but affecting read. Atonement does pretty well in the miserable stakes and again a great book. My son tells me one of the best miserable books he's read is Alexander Solzhenitsyn's "The Gulag Archipelago".

I believe "A Little Life" out miseries them all, but I haven't read it, although I know fairly happy people who have.

Good miserable reading for 2026.

Hamnet
This is going to hurt by Adam Kay
I found both of these books incredibly bleak.

Oh I loved Shuggie Bain, but I wouldn't have thought of it as depressing. Same with To Kill A Mockingbird.