| Great Books about Sorrow and Loss |
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Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys. Sorrow can drive you mad, and this stunning novel offers a heartbreaking explanation to Mr. Rochester's madwoman in the attic. Antoinette, the future Mrs. Rochester, is the Caribbean island-born daughter of English and French plantation owners. Bearing the weight of generations of enslavement of others by her family, she herself can never be free to love whom she wants, live where she wants, and be who she is, half-island, half-French, and never English. This is a deeply moving story of sadness, betrayal, and the abuse of love.
The Laws of Evening by Mary Yukari Waters.The stories of Mary Yukari Waters are simply wonderful, perfect renderings of those crucial but often fleeting moments when both life's beauty and its brevity are recognized. Waters' characters have faced crises but the stories don't deal with the crises: they deal with the aftermath, the survival, the facing of mortality not with fear but instead with gratitude, or regret, or simple acceptance. Waters relates with utter naturalness the difficult condition of adulthood, of living with full knowledge of both the sorrows and the joys that make up life; she writes with great beauty and simplicity about what is held onto (memory) and what is looked forward to (hope) and what remains (the survivors).
In the Woods by Tana French. This novel is a thriller, a story of friendship, and most of all, a story of sorrow and loss that can never be made up, or fixed, or glossed over. One boy survives a summer's expedition into the woods; his two friends do not and are lost forever. But the innocence -- the optimism , the boyhood -- of this boy are lost too, and he will never be whole. His efforts to control his sorrow and manipulate his memory fall short. Even the best of friends cannot sustain him, cannot take away his sorrow, and can never make up for the two friends he lost. This stunning book is a must-read, a sorrowful and moving account of memory, manipulation, friendship, and regret, deep, deep regret.
The Assault by Harry Mulisch. What wreaks sorrow more effectively, more sweepingly, than war? This novel examines one incident in WWII, a war with many horrors, and the sorrows resulting from that one night, a rippling out of despair across class and generations. The despair runs deep: "Never again could things be set right. Life on this planet was a failure, a big flop: better that it should never have begun. Not until it ended, and with it every single memory of all those death throes, would the world return to order." But maybe humans can remember -- look backwards and move forwards -- and stop the reaction of aggression and annihilation. This is a powerful novel, and a quiet but acute condemnation of war.
The Master of Petersburg by J.M. Coetzee. Based on the true story of Dostoyevky's return to Saint Petersburg from exile in Europe after the death of his son. The novel is full of Coetzee's astute observations of sorrow, how we try to console ourselves and also how we torture ourselves. This novel presents the most accurate portrayal of grief that I have yet read, based on my own grim experience of what it is like to lose someone. There are many exquisitely painful and stunningly beautiful passages about what it is we are actually mourning when we grieve, and the physical sensations that we feel.
The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain by Charles Dickens. A man overcome by sorrow makes a deal with a ghost that will take away his sorrow forever. But when the man finds himself losing all compassion, kindness, and warmth -- and worse, spreading the coldness of uncaring and disregard to anyone he touches -- he realizes that his sorrows brought him not only pain but the wisdom of empathy and the richness of caring.
The Body Artist by Don Delillo. Lauren, an artist who works with her body, is left alone in the old, rambling house she shared with her husband. Always too big for the two of them, it is now immense and empty. But is it? When the ghost of Rey appears, Lauren is no longer alone. Will replacing Rey with a double remove her loss, will she be able to obliterate the past, present, and future, and take way her pain? The risk is that she will disappear herself, erasure as an escape from sorrow.
Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto. Two orphans circle around life and each other, as roommates, then friends, then true mates of the soul. Mikage and Yuichi are both mourners but unsure if they prefer to be alone in their sorrows or with each other. Together, apart, together: they each have their moments of relying, in turn, on each other, and this story of their shifting rhythms of seeking solace and providing comfort is very lovely and inspiring.
The House on Eccles Road by Judith Kitchen. Based on Ulysses by James Joyce, but telling the story from Molly's point of view, this carefully wrought and thoughtful novel explores the very different ways a wife and a husband react to the death of their young son.
The Curriculum Vitae of Aurora Ortiz by Almudena Solana. Aurora is an anomaly, a woman with a great capacity for living but who chooses to do it quietly and on her own terms. Aurora is never joyously happy nor tragically sad, although she has reason to be, being the young widow of a man she'd hoped to love for a lifetime. She accepts the fact of her sorrow but refuses to live steeped in it. Her search to create a new life is beautifully portrayed in this short but stirring novel.
By Chance by Martin Corrick. The narrator of this wonderful novel, James Bolsover, is a man enthralled by words and the power of words to create order out of chaos. He believes that words and the names we give to things, the list we put things on and the definitions we give them, help us through the muddle of existing. Bolsover uses words most charmingly when he creates a beautiful, fictional place to allow his wife to bloom, much as she creates a garden to allow her flowers space and light and air to bloom. What happens when words fail, when they cannot save a live or alter the outcome of a mistake? Tragedy, loss, sorrow. But it is only words, words shared with another, that can help Bolsover out again, by creating a shelter of understanding and compassion against the pain.
A Mercy by Toni Morrison. Sorrow and loss are a constant presence in this novel, kept at bay, even hidden, but always there. Told by a series of narrators, each narrator is an orphan of some sort, flung out in the world to make it on their own. Each is also a slave, either in fact or in deed, shackled by their identity, confined inescapably by race or gender or class or religion to be treated a certain way. One woman's wrenching act of mercy is both a catalyst of sorrow and the only possible release from it, the first step towards throwing off dominion brought on by identity, but it is also a misunderstood act that will have repercussions across all the narrators' lives.
Under the Frangipani by Mia Couto. Set in Mozambique and narrated by a man buried outside of his ancestral traditions (and thus un-dead), this novel is both a murder mystery and a portrait of what happens when memory is wiped out, both collective memories of traditions and events, and personal memories of sorrow and loss.
Man in the Dark by Paul Auster. The story of a man, his daughter, and his granddaughter, all facing their own heartbreak, is told through a story within a story where a chance at redemption lies within the lives of those left behind. It is a beautiful and provoking novel, very sad and moving, and also reassuring in its conclusion that "the weird world rolls on."
Mr. Pip by Lloyd Jones. Sorrow and loss are rendered here in vivid detail, and just as vividly, the power of literature is shown in its ability to help with the pain of living. Not only can a great book change a person, as Great Expectations changes our narrator, but it can help her, providing comfort and release. The book -- and the man who brings the book and all its possibilities to her -- acts as the mirror to her own experiences of despair, abandonment, and fear, and thus both the book and the man are her inspiration to live beyond these experiences, to reach, as Pip does, for something more in her life than just the memories of her past.
The Emigrants by WG Sebald. Sebald traces the histories of four emigrants, all very different but all sharing the same alienation and loss of identity either through force or through choice, during World War II. All struggle to forge a new existence and identity in their new land. With its landscapes of abandonment and the personal histories of loss and alienation and dismemberment (torn from their country of identification), this is not a happy book. And yet the book is not miserable or pessimistic. Ultimately, it is a portrayal of what humans do: we survive. Through sorrow and loss, pain and horror, we create a life, and we pass that creation on through art or adventure or simple connection, one person with another.The Price of Silence by Camilla Trinchieri. Using vivid courtroom scenes intersecting with diverse narratives, flashbacks and remembrances, Trincheri builds a story of guilt, sorrow, and penance to almost unbearable heights of experience: we want to jump into the book and shout "stop" before lives are destroyed. We want to beg forgiveness for past acts on the part of the players, we want to warn them against coming tragedy, we want to counsel them that there will be no absolution of guilt for anyone until redemption and forgiveness are finally allowed, and the past is set to rest, for the good of all.
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