Earlier this year AbeBooks asked you to identify your most depressing reads and you came up with some desperately bleak books. There was nuclear fallout, the Holocaust, government oppression, poverty, mental illness and the savage nature of humanity itself, and that was just the tip of the iceberg.
The Road, a heart-breaking novel of unending post-apocalyptic horror including cannibalism and violence, easily topped the list and that was no surprise. Suckers for punishment will be able enjoy (endure) the movie version of McCarthy’s novel in November. “The Road was the most crushingly bleak book I've ever read,” wrote Tom from New York and many readers agreed with him.
Bizarrely, there are three Oprah Book Club picks on the list – The Road, Elie Wiesel’s Holocaust novel, Night, and Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye – a novel of racism, incest and cruelty. Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged has undergone a massive revival over the past 12 months with many critics relating the book’s collapsing society to the world’s current economic woes – it is also one of five books on the list published in the 1950s (along with Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four from 1949). Was the 1950s really such a depressing period for authors?
On the Beach by Nevil Shute is a true product of its time. Published in 1957, this end-of-the-world novel reflected the nuclear arms race of the period. One of the book’s many bleak themes is government-sponsored suicide in the face of radiation.
Sylvia Plath’s own suicide shortly after the publication of her semi-autobiographical novel, The Bell Jar, adds a depressing note of realism to the appearance of this particular book on the list.
1. The Road - Cormac McCarthy
2. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
3. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
4. 1984 - George Orwell
5. Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand
6. The Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
7. Night - Elie Wiesel
8. On the Beach - Nevil Shute
9. The Bluest Eye - Toni Morrison
10. Lord of the Flies - William Golding
Fonte: Abebooks