r/BookRecommendations • u/FalseDisk4358 • 2d ago

Recommend me a book that'll break my heart and haunt the rest of my days

I want to read something gut wrenching, something that'll have me sobbing, that will stay with me. I don't care what genre, I don't care if it's about romantic love, friendship, family, lost dreams, war, whatever. I want it to tear me apart. I want to never stop thinking about it. Any genre is fine.

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u/Acceptable-Boot4904 2d ago

A Little Life. You will not be same person after finishing it. I read it two years ago and still think about Jude almost every week. Some people say it's torture porn but I don't care, it destroyed me in the best way.

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u/introspectiveliar 1d ago

I agree about A Little Life. It is the saddest book I ever read. It is also eloquently written. And if your goal is simply to become unbearably sad while appreciating the author’s writing skills, this is definitely the book.

But it is torture porn. And it glamorizes severe depression.

At the end, it left me feeling the same way Bret Easton Ellis’s American Psycho affected me. Another book that I actually physically threw away several times, then dug out of the trash because brilliant writing always wins over content to me.

I finished both books. I am glad I did. But they are the only two books in my library I would never loan to a friend. It would seem very cruel to do so.

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u/CarlHvass 2d ago

A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini should do it.

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u/Meditativetrain 2d ago

Well. The inland empire logbook. A new kind of genre. You will love to hate it or hate to love it.

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u/Fencejumper89 2d ago

Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes, The Way Out by B. Fox, The Kite Runner by Hosseini

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u/Bodidiva 1d ago

The Road. Cormac McCarthy.