Hindustan Times
Literary tearjerkers, anyone?
The feelgood element is much overrated in literature. Literature is a different kind of salve, and the thrill, sense of uplift, instruction and delight it provides should in no way be directly proportional to how well things turned out in the end. The ‘happy ending’ (or, in a phrase much used in literary – including, very much, publishing – circles, the ‘redemption and hope’ held out in the final pages) is also much overrated.
I don’t mind deeply depressing, bleak, grim books. I don’t look for my thrill in how happily things turn out; nor, in that other silly thing some people seem to want, likeable characters. Are you like me?
The other day, I come across a list of Top Ten Literary Tear Jerkers compiled by the English writer David Nicholls for The Independent, London.
His has: Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
Franny and Zooey by JD Salinger
One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey
Tess of the D’urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
And When Did You Last See Your Father by Blake Morrison
Tender is the Night by F Scott Fitzgerald
The Road by Cormac McCarthy
The Perfect Stranger by PJ Kavanagh
Charlotte’s Web by EB White
Danny, the Champion of the World by Roald Dahl
That set me thinking. I am hopeless with lists. I can’t ever decide on what to put in (which is another way of saying that I can’t decide what to leave out); and once I have made a list, I keep changing my mind – and changing the list.
Still, I decided to go ahead and make my own very random (I repeat, very random) list of 13 literary tear jerkers. (Well, not tear jerkers. Bleak, grim, dark books. Whatever.) Why 13? Well, why not?
Of course, I would have changed my mind by the time you have read this.
Here is my list for the moment. Let’s have yours.
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford
Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates
The Easter Parade by Richard Yates
The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald
The Woman who Walked into Doors by Roddy Doyle
The Road by Cormac McCarthy
The Master of St Petersburg by JM Coetzee
Boyhood by JM Coetzee
We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
Nothing to be Frightened of by Julian Barnes
(3 votes, average: 4.33 out of 5)
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