Books Guaranteed to Make You Think Your Life Isn't So Bad After All

While I was feeling so "woe is me" over here I decided it was time for a pick-me-up. Time to put together a list of things that showed that in fact things are not so bad after all. I like book lists anyway and usually I'm okay with a sad ending but the guys on this list go way beyond mere sadness and slip right on down into to absolute, abject despair with a side of creamed Zoloft.

Forget merely shedding a tear or two at the end, when you read these books you're safe from thinking that someone's grass is a little greener and instead are quite sure that your own little patch of sod with a few wayward dandelions will do quite nicely, thank you very much, because the stuff on the other side is trampled dead and is probably seeping with underground toxic waste.

Cheery, huh?

1. The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck
You may be down on your luck but at least you aren't an impoverish Chinese peasant plagued by malicious family members and starvation, right? It could always be worse. And of course by the end of this book it is worse. You follow the fortunes (or misfortunes) of Wang Lung's family as they face malnutrition, set their children to begging, endure war, pestilence and calamities and still make it through for 300 pages to the gloriously bitter, tragic end.

I bet if you knew nothing about this book but that I told you it won both the Pulitzer and Nobel prizes you'd know for sure that it was a real downer because everyone knows the real glory always goes to books that convince you you're glad you're not the next guy.

2. Escape from Sobibor by Richard Rashke
I must have something about the Holocaust on a list like this but not just any old book or movie would do. If I'm not careful I'd put up something like Schindler's List or The Hiding Place that, while terribly sad and depressing, is able to pull itself from the ashes long enough to give you a taste of true human courage and resilience. That man (and woman) can succeed and be better than their surroundings. But that wouldn't do for a list like this.

No, I needed something that wasn't quite so cheerful and this one will do nicely.

This novel tells the story of the most successful uprising ever at a Nazi extermination camp. Notice I said "most" which should give you an idea of the level of rosiness you can expect from this one. I believe this was made into a fine movie with Alan Arkin (a favorite) but don't expect it to have any song and dance numbers--and bring the Kleenex.

3. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
Can any one of you honestly tell me that there isn't a final scene in all of Western literature as depressing and gut-wrenching as the one at the end of this colossus?

Of Mice and Men is sad. The Pearl is even sadder (and pointless). But this? This closing scene is not only sad but disturbing and despairing in a way that a mere euthanasia or infanticide can't rival. Rose of Sharon nursing a homeless man in the barn as everyone succumbs to poverty and ruin is pretty much the complete antithesis of Cinderella and I still remember the shock of reading that scene for the first time. It's like the exact opposite of Disney and it sticks with you. Ugh.

4. The Little Match Girl by Hans Christian Anderson
It was probably the Cinderella reference that triggered this memory but if you've ever had the mistaken notion that fairy tales are about happiness and fairies you haven't read this one.

In a nutshell the plot is this: A little girl--on New Year's Eve of all times--is out in the cold, frigid night selling matches. No one is buying her matches but she can't go home because she knows her father will beat her for not finishing her work so, freezing and alone, she ends up striking a match to keep warm.

In her hypothermic condition she slips into hallucinations that end with her grandmother, the only person to have ever shown her any kindness in her meager life. Striking match after match to keep the vision alive the girl's grandmother eventually takes her home with her and in the morning the townspeople find the little girl dead in the snow.

Yes, that's a bedtime story for you. "Nighty-night kids. Go to sleep . . . see you in the morning!"

5. "Misery" by Anton Chekhov
Not actually a novel at all but a short story and I'm going to include it anyway. With misery as only the Russians can tell it, it is the story of a cart driver in Petersburg (I think) who, during one particular winter, picks up passengers and takes them to their destinations.

Each person he carries is in a hurry and eager to get where they're going but none understand his pain because yesterday his son died. He tries to tell his grief and misery to someone but no one will listen so he eventually talks to his horse.

It does not get more pathetic than that.

Even Crime and Punishment had its bright spots but this? Nothing but misery--which is probably why it's titled like that.

6. Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt
I can't remember why I even bothered to read this one, it is so not my style, but read it I did and talk about depressing.

Written as a memoir, the McCourt family lives in poverty in Brooklyn but that's not quite enough for them, what they're looking for is real poverty so they return to the homeland--Ireland--to remedy the mistake their parents made by emigrating in the first place. After all, there can't possibly be a good reason for them leaving a country whose population was starving could there?

So back they go and little Frankie records his father's alcoholism, his mother's begging and his siblings dropping like flies from the horror of it all.

But survive he does only to end up on a boat back to America to meet up with prostitutes (apparently the Welcome Committee) in time for the closing pages. Grim doesn't even begin to cover it but oh how those Pulitzer people loved it.

7. Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
Girl is pressured by family to work for rich relatives. Rich relatives--namely dissolute son--think girl is hot and seduce girl, making her with child. Family is not so happy but girl returns home to have baby whereupon baby dies at birth. Girl tries to get life back together and eventually finds True Love. She's worried True Love won't like her sullied past but takes courage after he confesses one of his own sins to her.

Bravely girl tells True Love about her past and the wrongs committed against her but instead of acting like a human being True Love dumps girl with self-righteous horror. Girl goes back to original seducer-guy who never stopped lusting after her. When True Love finally comes to his idiot senses and realizes his mistake and goes to reclaim girl he finds her shacked up with original Bad Guy.

When girl realizes that True Love has come back she takes the only route she sees available and stabs Bad Guy, effectively removing him from the equation and allowing her to pursue life with True Love (even though he's late to the party). Of course the local law enforcement isn't as sympathetic with her plight as we, the readers, are and end up hanging her for that whole pesky domestic stabbing episode. Oh, and True Love ends up marrying her younger and purer sister. It's a story you'd see on Jerry Springer.

It's a toss up as to which is more depressing--Tess or Jude the Obscure which I won't summarize because it would make this entry too long but trust me, it's possibly worse than the fallen woman done wrong story.

8. Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
Written in 1966 this is a science-fiction style story where a lab mouse, Algernon, is treated to increase his mental abilities. Charly, the first human test subject, is a mentally retarded man who at first responds well to the treatment but soon realizes his gains are short-lived as Algernon regresses to his previous state in an ominous foretelling of the future Charly himself can expect to suffer.

Nothing like descending into darkness and knowing just enough to comprehend your prison to brighten the mood. Not a happy story. Not even an inspiring story--just sad and gooey like a melted Rocky Road bar that's been left on your car upholstery in the hot sun. Not a pretty sight.

9. L'Etranger by Albert Camus
I should say anything by Camus is worthy of this list but instead I'll focus on this, my first introduction to this existentialist-who-claims-he-not (which is indeed ironic if you ask me, kind of the complete opposite of the whole philosophy, n'est pas?).

I read L'Etranger (or The Stranger) in my French studies in college alongside other cheeries such as Graham Greene's The Power and the Glory. Boy that's a cure for what ails you. If you're ever feeling like you have too many friends and your life is going just too darn good and what you need is some good ol' fashioned nihilism and abandonment then this is should be the first stop on your road trip to Agony-ville. Population: 1.

Oh, and before I forget, the story is about a man who kills an Algerian man while on vacation (because nothing says relaxation like a bloodthirsty crime) and the accompanying results of his actions. Skip it.

10. The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy
This novella is almost too moral to be included on the list (because after all, if the reader actually learns or gains something rather than feeling as if all is lost then it's not really depressing but instead rather enlightening) but regardless I'll include it just for the sake of the Russians.

I could have padded this whole list with Russians--Crime and Punishment with its axe murdering student, Anna Karenina with its tribute to Amtrak, The Brothers Karamazov with some juicy patricide but really, where is the challenge in that?

Instead I'll just leave you with this story where the titular character, after an accident that leaves him dying a slow death over a period of weeks, realizes that not only was he a jerk and a rotten husband and father but that he lived completely for himself as selfishly as one can. While this causes mental anguish worthy of this list the real cherry on top is that deep down (I think) he still really doesn't care about his actions and that he's just screaming because he's dying--and dying alone. No remorse, just more selfishness.

Yea, that Tolstoy must have been the life of the party.

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