I read *Silence* with my students (juniors and seniors) when I taught World Religions. It is not an easy book to read and brings up some very complex questions re: faith, sacrifice, free will, and martyrdom. I wouldn’t read it unless you are in a really good headspace and can handle a lot of intensity. But in terms of literary value alone, it’s a 10/10 in my book. Actually, I would follow that book with *A Song for Nagasaki*, the biography of Ven. Takashi Nagai, survivor of the atomic bomb and truly incredible man. It’s inspiring, convicting, and encouraging, and a good mental palate cleanser after a tough read like *Silence*.
I loved Silence. It is a hard book but it’s very worth it. I agree about Song for Nagasaki, but I would also pair it with Silence and Beauty by Makoto Fujimura, a Japanese-American artist and Christian convert who was also a 9/11 survivor. His contemplation on trauma and the healing power beauty and the Japanese resonance of the novel is amazing.
Agreed on A Song for Nagasaki. I can only conclude that it must be really really tough to be a scion of the martyrs in Japan. I also am afraid to read SILENCE or watch the movie, despite high recommendations from nearly everyone I know...
Endless Night and Then There Were None are on the darker side of the Christie canon but still pretty tame by modern standards. I think this is because Christie never fondles the crimes that figure in her novels in lingering, graphic detail the way many modern authors (and television shows) love to do; they are part of the story without becoming the weirdly obsessive focus of it, which keeps even her darker books from becoming too heavy. Then There Were None is one of her better mysteries and definitely worth reading--chilling and suspenseful, yes, but not graphic or violent. If you feel like tackling one of the two, I’d start with this one.
I think part of my problem is that I can't do modern standards for violence or darkness, so it has to be pretty far removed from that for me to endure it. I think I am going to go with And Then There Were None first!
I get that. I love Golden Age detective fiction so much because I can't stomach anything gritty or violent either--in print OR on screen. Neither of these Christies were too disturbing for me, but I almost hesitate in recommending them because everyone's sensitivities are different. Personally, I struggled through Wuthering Heights (not that it was violent, but the unrelenting vile behavior depressed me), almost didn't make it far enough into Dracula to see the picture it was painting, and Strangers on a Train (Patricia Highsmith) set my teeth on edge and I was giddy to get to the end of it--and yet I was fine with Flannery's short stories. (Go figure.) I guess reading is always a little bit chancy.
I had to read Dracula twice in college, and I've done it again once since with a book club. I hate it. I get all the heroic/redemptive aspects to it. I still don't want to read about vampires or that weirdo Renfield.
I don't mind Flannery's short stories either. Maybe it's because the Southern weirdness feels very familiar to me. Patricia Highsmith could easily have gone on this list though!
Do try Drive your plow over the bones of the dead. It's a kind of whodunnit, but witty, teasing and profound at the same time, with a narrator who feels passionately about her environment and is quirky.. enough said. Try it.
Jude the Obscure is a book that will never, ever leave me. I was in college and a newlywed when I read it, and I have such a powerful memory of the way I felt when I read one particular scene; I just sat on the bed weeping while my (probably very confused new husband) held me. I’m not sure I ever want to re-visit it. *But* I’m 20 years older now, so maybe it wouldn’t be quite so awful? I’m not sure. On the other hand, I read Far From the Madding Crowd this year and goodness his writing is stunning. So I’m torn! (Not much of a pep talk, ha!)
That's a powerful memory! I do love when a book can hit me emotionally that hard, though not if it makes me hopeless. I still don't know if I'll venture towards Tess or Jude based on all these comments. I'm going to read The Woodlanders some time for sure and that may be the end of my relationship with Hardy. I could read Madding Crowd over and over again though. So beautiful.
The Woodlanders is really really good and I do recommend! That and Madding Crowd are the only two I've gotten through (Tess is on my list but haven't waded in yet!). Woodlanders is excellent.
My husband is a big Hardy fan (he has a high tolerance for tragedy, haha). We started listening to Jude the Obscure together and it was too depressing for me. I don't really know how else to say it--I can handle other books (like Anna K) where main characters make poor choices, but that one was on another level to the point where I had to stop listening. He recommended the Woodlanders to me and I agreed that it was one of Hardy's more hopeful novels.
Anna Karenina had enough hopeful characters striving for good (and who didn't have disastrous conclusions) to balance it out I think. But if it's just a misery for everyone...I don't know. That's a tough one. I am looking forward to The Woodlanders!
I want to know what you loved about it, Grace! I listened to it (primarily because there's an Alan Rickman narration hahaha) and I wasn't swayed too much by it one way or another, though I felt like it deserved a reread with a physical copy. I do remember this line which I found so striking: "Black chaos comes, and the fettered gods of the earth say, Let there be light."
Wow now I feel a little at a loss! I haven’t read it in almost 30 years but I read it 5-6 times as a teenager and just found it so beautiful. I read several of his books at the time but The Return of the Native was my favorite.
I really enjoyed this. Beautiful writing--and such an intriguing thing to write about!
I read *And Then There Were None* at a young age (13 or 14) and remember liking it very much because I'd never encountered a plot quite like it. It also makes you think about how the good relates to the personal, the legal, and the transcendent. It's not a cheerful story, of course, but I don't think it reads as gore (which I tend not to like) or as existential terror.
With Hardy I know I'm diving into someone whose metaphysical outlook is much bleaker than mine, but going into him with this in mind, I've enjoyed reading him. I'd pick *Jude the Obscure* over *Tess*. Despite Hardy's gloom, I can read him because his heart is in the right place. The prose is fairly straightforward for the period, and he's attentive to language without seeming to worry it to death:
"Retracing by the light of dawn the road he had followed a few hours earlier under cover of darkness, with his sweetheart by his side, he reached the bottom of the hill, where he walked slowly, and stood still. He was on the spot where he had given her the first kiss. As the sun had only just risen it was possible that nobody had passed there since. Jude looked on the ground and sighed. He looked closely, and could just discern in the damp dust the imprints of their feet as they had stood locked in each other’s arms. She was not there now, and 'the embroidery of imagination upon the stuff of nature' so depicted her past presence that a void was in his heart which nothing could fill. A pollard willow stood close to the place, and that willow was different from all other willows in the world."
Some people like Henry James a lot, and others think he's an incurable fusspot who spawned a literary tradition overly focused on financially secure neurotics. I think both of these things! Ultimately, though, I'm more for James than against him. I prefer the shorter works to the long novels, and I agree with Melody Grubaugh that "Daisy Miller" is what to read first. My students used to love it, especially after we discussed it. (The story is also funny in places, which isn't a quality James usually gets praised for.) I also taught "The Beast in the Jungle," about which opinions were more divided, but it inspired VERY strong positive reactions. It's the only story I ever taught that made someone audibly weep in class, and this happened twice even though I taught it for only a few years. It's quite dense and slow-going at times, which turns out to be part of the brilliance of the thing, and I highly recommend it. I'd be sure not to read *about it* before reading it fresh. "The Turn of the Screw" is also fun.
The students in my post-apocalyptic lit class were big fans of *The Road* even though it's a walk through quite a lot of borderline despair. And they didn't like everything! We read Beckett's *Endgame* next, and they were ready to mutiny. What makes *The Road* endurable is that it's about parenthood. And love.
I think "The Lottery" is brilliantly conceived and executed even though I also think it's overrated. It makes the same point so much literary short fiction from the last century does, and though there's something to the point that's being made, I think it was made too often. One thing I'll say for Jackson is that I don't think she was anywhere near as smug about the point she was making as some of the story's admirers are.
That's a really beautiful passage from Hardy. I do love his prose, which is the main thing that makes me feel I ought to read more of his novels. I haven't ever read any biographical information about him, but it would be interesting to see what was going on in his life when he wrote his various works. Under the Greenwood Tree is like chick lit compared to Return of the Native.
"an incurable fusspot who spawned a literary tradition overly focused on financially secure neurotics" So funny! The comments on this post have convinced me I need to read Daisy Miller and Portrait of a Lady. I'm intrigued by "The Beast in the Jungle". I've never heard of it.
I feel like it's going to be a while yet before I pick up The Road, though this exercise has made me more amenable to the idea.
And I like what you say about Jackson not being smug. I've only read Life Among the Savages from her which I found hugely enjoyable and she comes across as very down-to-earth.
I read The Portrait of a Lady quite young and really enjoyed it- I think that may be among James' more approachable works. I will say I checked out The Golden Bowl from the library maybe 6 months ago after seeing a Substacker rave about it, and I put it down after a few pages- I had absolutely no idea what was going on and it looked like a long slow trudge that I wasn't interested in. I found The Road to have an austere beauty about it. If you ever listen to the Close Reads podcast, they did a great series on it and I find it helps to have friendly voices accompanying me through an emotionally harder and darker book like that. I have read Tess twice, once in college and once with Close Reads, and have found it to be worthy of time and consideration- but there's no escaping that the story is pretty darn bleak. :)
I'm noting down Portrait of a Lady and Daisy Miller per another commenter's recommendation. Thanks! And that's a really good suggestion to read The Road with Close Reads. I didn't even think about that.
Oh, The Road! If you’re afraid to read any McCarthy it should only be Blood Meridian. I also read All the Pretty Horses as my first McCarthy novel, and The Road is, in some stark ways, even more beautiful. It’s elemental and powerful, like an Emily Dickinson poem or a painting by Hopper. And Henry James! I wish I could read Portrait of a Lady for the first time again. What a treasure. (Fun post by the way!)
I appreciate the warning about Blood Meridian which is sitting on my bookshelf and now may never come off of it ;) But goodness your description of The Road is absolutely enthralling. Another commenter recommended Portrait of a Lady, too. I'm excited!
I did finally read Blood Meridian after it sat on my shelf for fifteen years. It was every bit as brutal as I was let to expect. And then I inflicted it on students in a Cormac McCarthy class I taught. 🤦♀️ To be fair, they WERE warned!
Agatha Christie wrote wonderful books, and she wrote horrible books just to get a paycheck. And Then There Were None is fun. I haven't decided whether Endless Night is worth my reading time :)
The Lottery is part of culture: Mob mentality is fun until it comes after you. It's a fairly accessible way to SEE that reality. It's worth the read.
I avoid books that give me bleak or horror. I love murder mysteries but they MUST resolve in a way that, while sad, moves the universe forward. I no longer read murder where the author sits on the fun that the perpetrator has while torturing the victim.. I do NOT need those pictures in my head.
I was so disappointed by how mentally unhinged Passenger to Frankfurt was that I'm nervous to try any of Christie's later works.
Good to know about The Lottery!
And I like how you phrase that: 'must resolve in a way that, while sad, moves the universe forward.' I think that's it for me too. Also, yes agreed. I do not need disturbing lingering images in my head.
Passenger to Frankfurt is an abomination and should not have been published. Postern of Fate is also terrible.
Endless Night is interesting, and is one of her best late mysteries. And Then There Were None is a top tier Christie, as good as Murder of Roger Ackroyd & Five Little Pigs.
There so many books, both new and centuries old. I just hate the thought that I won’t live long enough to read all the books on my book cases never mind all the others that catch my eye and that I would so much like to read.
Henry James is wonderful—at least his early works. Start with the extremely readable Daisy Miller! I taught this to my undergrads this spring and they loved it. I've also loved The American and The Portrait of a Lady. I haven't ventured into late James yet...my impression is that's the point where he becomes more "inscrutable" (At least in terms of actually figuring out what he's saying—some suggest this is because he switched from writing himself to dictating)
I'd describe The Road as intense and gripping; it was hard to put down. I found beauty in the father's love for his son, the son's trust in his father - and hope in their persevering in survival when all seemed lost. I also recall many repeated references to the father and son being "good guys" who are "carrying the fire", which is something I've been pondering. The father tells his son, "What you put in your head is there forever." I suspect he's trying to protect him from the rather gruesome sights that have become a nearly everyday occurrence as they wander the vast wasteland that was North America after some Apocalyptic event. Yes, it was graphic in many places, but I was inspired by the father's grit and determination to prepare his son to live after he is gone, and to help him find other "good guys" so he won't be alone.
Ah! I've never heard of someone regretting Crime or Punishment! I didn't even realize there was harrowing content.
For some reason the violence in Flannery's work doesn't bother me. I haven't read her novels which might change things, but the short stories are so symbolic and carefully constructed that I think there's a sort of artistic barrier for me where I'm just admiring her craft and the themes she's exploring. Here are some that have violence but not in a graphic way and are among my favorites: "Revelation", "Parker's Back", and "Everything that Rises Must Converge". Her letters collected in The Habit of Being, her essay collection "Mystery and Manners", and her Prayer Journal are all worth reading even if you don't read her fiction. And in fact, I think it's helpful to read them first anyway. You get the woman behind the work and she is wickedly funny and disarmingly wise.
Ulysses is one I just don't have interest in, though maybe I should...
The epic poems are ones I like to read with an aid. I'm really enjoying Eva Brann's Homeric Moments.
Wait…you didn’t find Crime & Punishment harrowing or you haven’t read it? It describes a man planning and then executing a murder and then becoming eaten alive by it. There’s a part before he commits the crime where he has a dream about a horse being beaten that makes me break out in a sweat just to think about it.
It is. The murder scene is so gruesome. And that all happens within the first 8 chapters. After that he just goes insane. The other characters are also really dark too, including an alcoholic civil servant whose daughter is forced into prostitution by her stepmother. It was just really hard to get through and years later I still kind of wish I hadn’t read it. I’m not even THAT sensitive usually!
I think one of the reasons O'Connor is manageable is because it's mostly short stories. I struggle more with her novels, which aren't even that long (and also that one time I was up nursing and read her short stories in the middle of the night, which is very much a mistake). I don't know if I could sustain 500 pages all at once in her head.
I was scrolling through the comments WAITING for someone to say this!!! I agree 100%. (Last summer I was apartment hunting and I still have such a visceral reaction to small cramped houses because of his garret. I read it 18 years ago!!! But I still think about it when I was in an old house with slanted ceiling or too small windows. I don’t even know anymore how he describes Raskilnikov’s room exactly but the image in my mind is strong.) I get that it’s profound. Yeah yeah. Never again.
Great subject for a post and a very familiar feeling. I found Tess unbearable - can take a lot of sadness and dark but there has to be a glimmer of hope or warmth. Didn't find any there. One I enjoyed from your list is Endless Night...it is dark but there is something beautiful in it. A dire warning about where a human being might be led, but told in a way that is somehow, at least for me, not without hope.
Ha I am torn about whether to try Tess based on these comments. Just a glimmer of hope or warmth is all I want too. That's an interesting response to Endless Night. I've only heard it's her most bleak, so that's helpful!
Perhaps what I mean about Endless Night is what another comment here said about Hardy. I think it shines through that Christie's heart is in the right place. We get the bleak story but we also get how the author feels about it.And there is some existential depth to it. Here I also really enjoyed the brief moments where things could have taken a good turn. Maybe because I didn't yet know where the story turns when reading them, but there were other perspectives than the main one. There is deep darkness in a man but not darkness alwaysand everywhere. But actually I don't really want to recommend it too hard...might be the wrong kind of bleak for you. Just trying to figure out why I ended up liking it :)
I like that about the author's heart being in the right place. That's how I feel about a lot of Ishiguro. His characters are so lost and the conclusions are pretty bleak, but there's a sort of sympathy you can sense in his attitude towards the characters and their situations. You've made me much more interested in Christie's novel!
I've only read The Buried Giant by Ishiguro but based on that very much agree. There is something warm, perhaps even gentle about his attitude towards the characters.
And Then There Were None terrified me at 13, but I think only a very sensitive adult would actually be kept up at night (it doesn't feature many dangers likely to befall the average person).
Silence - I cannot recommend it. It raises some interesting questions, but the answers that it gives are bad and wrong. The disturbing content is very disturbing, but secondary to its wrongness.
Picnic at Hanging Rock has creepy vibes but very little solidly disturbing content. I liked it pretty well but dont consider it a must-read.
But Tess!!! So gorgeous. FWIW it made me incandescently angry, rather than sad.
Oh wow you're the first person I've come across to object to Silence. Really devout, well-read Christians have raved about it. I want to know more of your perspective.
Good to know about Picnic at Hanging Rock. I can see myself either loving it or finding it too eerie. And I guess I won't find out until I actually try it haha
Lol I do also have my list of books that make me angry.
It's been a few years! It asks hard questions about our relationship with God that resonate with a lot of people, including me, but ultimately I think it falls short in the answers it offers, in some cases dangerously so. (I'm Anglican, in case that matters)
Quick bullets
- I think the underlying assumptions of the novel are very secular
- I think the action of public apostacy actually means something, and the question of whether you "really meant it in your heart" is kind of silly
- I don't like cultural/ethnic essentialism, and I still think it's bad if you're doing it about your own culture/ethnicity
The Power and the Glory is a better exploration of similar questions/struggles imo.
Have you read the Patricia Snow critique of Silence that she wrote for First Things some years ago when this book was making the rounds? I think she raises some of these objections and quite well. I can't remember when it was... perhaps 2020?
Thank you for the recommendation! I dont think I had - I remember similar articles from when the movie came out but this one is excellent and (I hope) I would have remembered it specifically.
Ah, this is an amazing article! It is helping me rethink my "to be read" one day list, and what emotion keeps me away from them. Fear, that ugly friend, yes, stands likewise as a foe at times. In recent years, I have plowed through books and found that they were timely and not to be put off any longer. For example, The Road, by McCarthy. (Entrance for me was through the Close Reads podcast.) There is some gruesomeness, google it if needed to know the summary, but there is not unreconcilable tragedy. It's actually remarkably hopeful, and comedic in nature, in while it ends solemnly, it also ends hopefully. For me, it was an even dish of melancholy, survival, and hopefulness, and turned out to be a great read. Easy to read, lightly written, and a futuristic odyssey in its own right. Also, the relationship between the father and the son, highly recommendable, and the father's adherence to remaining faithful to truth and goodness, and his teaching these notes to his son on a daily basis - yes, this. While it may not be one of my top books of all time, it is reachable, and left me with more hope, similar to I Cheerfully Refuse, by Leif Enger, than anything else.
I think if I do read The Road, I'm going to have to have to do it alongside Close Reads, but your description of it does cast it in a more desirable and approachable light. Thanks for this thoughtful comment!
I haven’t read most of these, particularly Jude the Obscure for this VERY reason. I read a bit of the summary on Wikipedia and decided my heart and brain do not need that.
Ruth by Elizabeth Gaskell is a great book with a semi-depressing ending. However, I found the whole book so great that it helped my disappointment at the bittersweet ending.
True Grit is wonderful. While violent, it isn’t so bleak or depressing. I found it a very satisfying read and ending.
And Then There Were None is another book, that while violent, isn’t plagued with the emotional violence or violence against children. I really enjoyed it and actually taught it. My students loved it and it actually opened them up to reading a lot of Agatha Christie on their own!
One book I’ve avoided reading is Wuthering Heights. I also read Summer by Edith Wharton and got 3/4th of the way through it, asked my husband if it ended in the most depressing possible scenario, he said it did, and I decided to stop there.
I have Ruth coming in on library holds. I'm not too worried with that one despite knowing how it ends. I've never had a bad experience with a Gaskell novel. She's just a lovely story-teller.
That's so fun that And Then There Were None spurred your students to read more Christie :)
Haha ohh Wuthering Heights. I was a very soppy teenager and LOVED it. Like reread quotes between Cathy and Heathcliff because I thought it was just the heights of romance. Fastforward to rereading it as an adult and I was so irritated by how dysfunctional all those characters were.
Summer is very, very sad. I always appreciate Wharton for really getting into the socio-economic difficulties of women at different strata of society and how their inner moral code shapes them, but yeah I don't think I'll reread Summer.
I read *Silence* with my students (juniors and seniors) when I taught World Religions. It is not an easy book to read and brings up some very complex questions re: faith, sacrifice, free will, and martyrdom. I wouldn’t read it unless you are in a really good headspace and can handle a lot of intensity. But in terms of literary value alone, it’s a 10/10 in my book. Actually, I would follow that book with *A Song for Nagasaki*, the biography of Ven. Takashi Nagai, survivor of the atomic bomb and truly incredible man. It’s inspiring, convicting, and encouraging, and a good mental palate cleanser after a tough read like *Silence*.
From your description, I don't think I'm quite in the headspace yet, but that's a super helpful pairing suggestion! Thanks!
I loved Silence. It is a hard book but it’s very worth it. I agree about Song for Nagasaki, but I would also pair it with Silence and Beauty by Makoto Fujimura, a Japanese-American artist and Christian convert who was also a 9/11 survivor. His contemplation on trauma and the healing power beauty and the Japanese resonance of the novel is amazing.
I'll look out for that one! Thank you, Melanie!
Agreed on A Song for Nagasaki. I can only conclude that it must be really really tough to be a scion of the martyrs in Japan. I also am afraid to read SILENCE or watch the movie, despite high recommendations from nearly everyone I know...
Endless Night and Then There Were None are on the darker side of the Christie canon but still pretty tame by modern standards. I think this is because Christie never fondles the crimes that figure in her novels in lingering, graphic detail the way many modern authors (and television shows) love to do; they are part of the story without becoming the weirdly obsessive focus of it, which keeps even her darker books from becoming too heavy. Then There Were None is one of her better mysteries and definitely worth reading--chilling and suspenseful, yes, but not graphic or violent. If you feel like tackling one of the two, I’d start with this one.
I think part of my problem is that I can't do modern standards for violence or darkness, so it has to be pretty far removed from that for me to endure it. I think I am going to go with And Then There Were None first!
I get that. I love Golden Age detective fiction so much because I can't stomach anything gritty or violent either--in print OR on screen. Neither of these Christies were too disturbing for me, but I almost hesitate in recommending them because everyone's sensitivities are different. Personally, I struggled through Wuthering Heights (not that it was violent, but the unrelenting vile behavior depressed me), almost didn't make it far enough into Dracula to see the picture it was painting, and Strangers on a Train (Patricia Highsmith) set my teeth on edge and I was giddy to get to the end of it--and yet I was fine with Flannery's short stories. (Go figure.) I guess reading is always a little bit chancy.
I had to read Dracula twice in college, and I've done it again once since with a book club. I hate it. I get all the heroic/redemptive aspects to it. I still don't want to read about vampires or that weirdo Renfield.
I don't mind Flannery's short stories either. Maybe it's because the Southern weirdness feels very familiar to me. Patricia Highsmith could easily have gone on this list though!
Chancy is the word for it!
Do try Drive your plow over the bones of the dead. It's a kind of whodunnit, but witty, teasing and profound at the same time, with a narrator who feels passionately about her environment and is quirky.. enough said. Try it.
That's the kind of description I need to hook me: whodunnit, witty, teasing, profound. Sounds marvelous!
Jude the Obscure is a book that will never, ever leave me. I was in college and a newlywed when I read it, and I have such a powerful memory of the way I felt when I read one particular scene; I just sat on the bed weeping while my (probably very confused new husband) held me. I’m not sure I ever want to re-visit it. *But* I’m 20 years older now, so maybe it wouldn’t be quite so awful? I’m not sure. On the other hand, I read Far From the Madding Crowd this year and goodness his writing is stunning. So I’m torn! (Not much of a pep talk, ha!)
That's a powerful memory! I do love when a book can hit me emotionally that hard, though not if it makes me hopeless. I still don't know if I'll venture towards Tess or Jude based on all these comments. I'm going to read The Woodlanders some time for sure and that may be the end of my relationship with Hardy. I could read Madding Crowd over and over again though. So beautiful.
The Woodlanders is really really good and I do recommend! That and Madding Crowd are the only two I've gotten through (Tess is on my list but haven't waded in yet!). Woodlanders is excellent.
My husband is a big Hardy fan (he has a high tolerance for tragedy, haha). We started listening to Jude the Obscure together and it was too depressing for me. I don't really know how else to say it--I can handle other books (like Anna K) where main characters make poor choices, but that one was on another level to the point where I had to stop listening. He recommended the Woodlanders to me and I agreed that it was one of Hardy's more hopeful novels.
Anna Karenina had enough hopeful characters striving for good (and who didn't have disastrous conclusions) to balance it out I think. But if it's just a misery for everyone...I don't know. That's a tough one. I am looking forward to The Woodlanders!
Well if you read Tess, I would love to read it with you! :)
I'll let you know if I do!
Have you read The Return of the Native? It’s my favorite of his.
I want to know what you loved about it, Grace! I listened to it (primarily because there's an Alan Rickman narration hahaha) and I wasn't swayed too much by it one way or another, though I felt like it deserved a reread with a physical copy. I do remember this line which I found so striking: "Black chaos comes, and the fettered gods of the earth say, Let there be light."
Wow now I feel a little at a loss! I haven’t read it in almost 30 years but I read it 5-6 times as a teenager and just found it so beautiful. I read several of his books at the time but The Return of the Native was my favorite.
I haven’t…but I just found it on my shelf! Ha. I will read it!
I really enjoyed this. Beautiful writing--and such an intriguing thing to write about!
I read *And Then There Were None* at a young age (13 or 14) and remember liking it very much because I'd never encountered a plot quite like it. It also makes you think about how the good relates to the personal, the legal, and the transcendent. It's not a cheerful story, of course, but I don't think it reads as gore (which I tend not to like) or as existential terror.
With Hardy I know I'm diving into someone whose metaphysical outlook is much bleaker than mine, but going into him with this in mind, I've enjoyed reading him. I'd pick *Jude the Obscure* over *Tess*. Despite Hardy's gloom, I can read him because his heart is in the right place. The prose is fairly straightforward for the period, and he's attentive to language without seeming to worry it to death:
"Retracing by the light of dawn the road he had followed a few hours earlier under cover of darkness, with his sweetheart by his side, he reached the bottom of the hill, where he walked slowly, and stood still. He was on the spot where he had given her the first kiss. As the sun had only just risen it was possible that nobody had passed there since. Jude looked on the ground and sighed. He looked closely, and could just discern in the damp dust the imprints of their feet as they had stood locked in each other’s arms. She was not there now, and 'the embroidery of imagination upon the stuff of nature' so depicted her past presence that a void was in his heart which nothing could fill. A pollard willow stood close to the place, and that willow was different from all other willows in the world."
Some people like Henry James a lot, and others think he's an incurable fusspot who spawned a literary tradition overly focused on financially secure neurotics. I think both of these things! Ultimately, though, I'm more for James than against him. I prefer the shorter works to the long novels, and I agree with Melody Grubaugh that "Daisy Miller" is what to read first. My students used to love it, especially after we discussed it. (The story is also funny in places, which isn't a quality James usually gets praised for.) I also taught "The Beast in the Jungle," about which opinions were more divided, but it inspired VERY strong positive reactions. It's the only story I ever taught that made someone audibly weep in class, and this happened twice even though I taught it for only a few years. It's quite dense and slow-going at times, which turns out to be part of the brilliance of the thing, and I highly recommend it. I'd be sure not to read *about it* before reading it fresh. "The Turn of the Screw" is also fun.
The students in my post-apocalyptic lit class were big fans of *The Road* even though it's a walk through quite a lot of borderline despair. And they didn't like everything! We read Beckett's *Endgame* next, and they were ready to mutiny. What makes *The Road* endurable is that it's about parenthood. And love.
I think "The Lottery" is brilliantly conceived and executed even though I also think it's overrated. It makes the same point so much literary short fiction from the last century does, and though there's something to the point that's being made, I think it was made too often. One thing I'll say for Jackson is that I don't think she was anywhere near as smug about the point she was making as some of the story's admirers are.
That's a really beautiful passage from Hardy. I do love his prose, which is the main thing that makes me feel I ought to read more of his novels. I haven't ever read any biographical information about him, but it would be interesting to see what was going on in his life when he wrote his various works. Under the Greenwood Tree is like chick lit compared to Return of the Native.
"an incurable fusspot who spawned a literary tradition overly focused on financially secure neurotics" So funny! The comments on this post have convinced me I need to read Daisy Miller and Portrait of a Lady. I'm intrigued by "The Beast in the Jungle". I've never heard of it.
I feel like it's going to be a while yet before I pick up The Road, though this exercise has made me more amenable to the idea.
And I like what you say about Jackson not being smug. I've only read Life Among the Savages from her which I found hugely enjoyable and she comes across as very down-to-earth.
I read The Portrait of a Lady quite young and really enjoyed it- I think that may be among James' more approachable works. I will say I checked out The Golden Bowl from the library maybe 6 months ago after seeing a Substacker rave about it, and I put it down after a few pages- I had absolutely no idea what was going on and it looked like a long slow trudge that I wasn't interested in. I found The Road to have an austere beauty about it. If you ever listen to the Close Reads podcast, they did a great series on it and I find it helps to have friendly voices accompanying me through an emotionally harder and darker book like that. I have read Tess twice, once in college and once with Close Reads, and have found it to be worthy of time and consideration- but there's no escaping that the story is pretty darn bleak. :)
I love Close Reads! They also covered Tess several years ago with Karen Swallow Prior as a guest.
Yes, that was a great series! I've been listening on and off for 5 years now and am a big fan of their work!
Me too! They just started a series on Wuthering Heights which is going to be so fun. 😅😆
My husband who, is very well read, could not do the Golden Bowl either. He didn’t know what was going on. I have never seen him bale on a classic.
That makes me feel a lot better!! ;)
I'm noting down Portrait of a Lady and Daisy Miller per another commenter's recommendation. Thanks! And that's a really good suggestion to read The Road with Close Reads. I didn't even think about that.
Oh, The Road! If you’re afraid to read any McCarthy it should only be Blood Meridian. I also read All the Pretty Horses as my first McCarthy novel, and The Road is, in some stark ways, even more beautiful. It’s elemental and powerful, like an Emily Dickinson poem or a painting by Hopper. And Henry James! I wish I could read Portrait of a Lady for the first time again. What a treasure. (Fun post by the way!)
I appreciate the warning about Blood Meridian which is sitting on my bookshelf and now may never come off of it ;) But goodness your description of The Road is absolutely enthralling. Another commenter recommended Portrait of a Lady, too. I'm excited!
I did finally read Blood Meridian after it sat on my shelf for fifteen years. It was every bit as brutal as I was let to expect. And then I inflicted it on students in a Cormac McCarthy class I taught. 🤦♀️ To be fair, they WERE warned!
Agatha Christie wrote wonderful books, and she wrote horrible books just to get a paycheck. And Then There Were None is fun. I haven't decided whether Endless Night is worth my reading time :)
The Lottery is part of culture: Mob mentality is fun until it comes after you. It's a fairly accessible way to SEE that reality. It's worth the read.
I avoid books that give me bleak or horror. I love murder mysteries but they MUST resolve in a way that, while sad, moves the universe forward. I no longer read murder where the author sits on the fun that the perpetrator has while torturing the victim.. I do NOT need those pictures in my head.
I was so disappointed by how mentally unhinged Passenger to Frankfurt was that I'm nervous to try any of Christie's later works.
Good to know about The Lottery!
And I like how you phrase that: 'must resolve in a way that, while sad, moves the universe forward.' I think that's it for me too. Also, yes agreed. I do not need disturbing lingering images in my head.
Passenger to Frankfurt is an abomination and should not have been published. Postern of Fate is also terrible.
Endless Night is interesting, and is one of her best late mysteries. And Then There Were None is a top tier Christie, as good as Murder of Roger Ackroyd & Five Little Pigs.
There so many books, both new and centuries old. I just hate the thought that I won’t live long enough to read all the books on my book cases never mind all the others that catch my eye and that I would so much like to read.
That is sadly true. There's not enough time to read all the ones that don't even intimidate me.
Henry James is wonderful—at least his early works. Start with the extremely readable Daisy Miller! I taught this to my undergrads this spring and they loved it. I've also loved The American and The Portrait of a Lady. I haven't ventured into late James yet...my impression is that's the point where he becomes more "inscrutable" (At least in terms of actually figuring out what he's saying—some suggest this is because he switched from writing himself to dictating)
Ah the difference between the early andlater works is a helpful distinction I wasn't aware of! Thanks!
I'd describe The Road as intense and gripping; it was hard to put down. I found beauty in the father's love for his son, the son's trust in his father - and hope in their persevering in survival when all seemed lost. I also recall many repeated references to the father and son being "good guys" who are "carrying the fire", which is something I've been pondering. The father tells his son, "What you put in your head is there forever." I suspect he's trying to protect him from the rather gruesome sights that have become a nearly everyday occurrence as they wander the vast wasteland that was North America after some Apocalyptic event. Yes, it was graphic in many places, but I was inspired by the father's grit and determination to prepare his son to live after he is gone, and to help him find other "good guys" so he won't be alone.
That's beautiful!
Ok. I have one I WISH I’d never read and it still gives me nightmares: Crime & Punishment
Others I am afraid to read:
-Anything by Flannery O’Connor
-Silence
-Ulysses by Joyce
-All of the epic poems (Homer, Virgil, etc)
I’m sure there are others.
I’m also afraid of that guy who wrote Fight Club but I also don’t feel like I “ought” to read anything by him. Lol
Ah! I've never heard of someone regretting Crime or Punishment! I didn't even realize there was harrowing content.
For some reason the violence in Flannery's work doesn't bother me. I haven't read her novels which might change things, but the short stories are so symbolic and carefully constructed that I think there's a sort of artistic barrier for me where I'm just admiring her craft and the themes she's exploring. Here are some that have violence but not in a graphic way and are among my favorites: "Revelation", "Parker's Back", and "Everything that Rises Must Converge". Her letters collected in The Habit of Being, her essay collection "Mystery and Manners", and her Prayer Journal are all worth reading even if you don't read her fiction. And in fact, I think it's helpful to read them first anyway. You get the woman behind the work and she is wickedly funny and disarmingly wise.
Ulysses is one I just don't have interest in, though maybe I should...
The epic poems are ones I like to read with an aid. I'm really enjoying Eva Brann's Homeric Moments.
(The reason I’m afraid of Ulysses is because I think it sounds too hard)
Wait…you didn’t find Crime & Punishment harrowing or you haven’t read it? It describes a man planning and then executing a murder and then becoming eaten alive by it. There’s a part before he commits the crime where he has a dream about a horse being beaten that makes me break out in a sweat just to think about it.
I've never read it! And I wasn't familiar with the synopsis. Sounds terrifying!
It is. The murder scene is so gruesome. And that all happens within the first 8 chapters. After that he just goes insane. The other characters are also really dark too, including an alcoholic civil servant whose daughter is forced into prostitution by her stepmother. It was just really hard to get through and years later I still kind of wish I hadn’t read it. I’m not even THAT sensitive usually!
I think one of the reasons O'Connor is manageable is because it's mostly short stories. I struggle more with her novels, which aren't even that long (and also that one time I was up nursing and read her short stories in the middle of the night, which is very much a mistake). I don't know if I could sustain 500 pages all at once in her head.
I was scrolling through the comments WAITING for someone to say this!!! I agree 100%. (Last summer I was apartment hunting and I still have such a visceral reaction to small cramped houses because of his garret. I read it 18 years ago!!! But I still think about it when I was in an old house with slanted ceiling or too small windows. I don’t even know anymore how he describes Raskilnikov’s room exactly but the image in my mind is strong.) I get that it’s profound. Yeah yeah. Never again.
Great subject for a post and a very familiar feeling. I found Tess unbearable - can take a lot of sadness and dark but there has to be a glimmer of hope or warmth. Didn't find any there. One I enjoyed from your list is Endless Night...it is dark but there is something beautiful in it. A dire warning about where a human being might be led, but told in a way that is somehow, at least for me, not without hope.
Ha I am torn about whether to try Tess based on these comments. Just a glimmer of hope or warmth is all I want too. That's an interesting response to Endless Night. I've only heard it's her most bleak, so that's helpful!
Perhaps what I mean about Endless Night is what another comment here said about Hardy. I think it shines through that Christie's heart is in the right place. We get the bleak story but we also get how the author feels about it.And there is some existential depth to it. Here I also really enjoyed the brief moments where things could have taken a good turn. Maybe because I didn't yet know where the story turns when reading them, but there were other perspectives than the main one. There is deep darkness in a man but not darkness alwaysand everywhere. But actually I don't really want to recommend it too hard...might be the wrong kind of bleak for you. Just trying to figure out why I ended up liking it :)
I like that about the author's heart being in the right place. That's how I feel about a lot of Ishiguro. His characters are so lost and the conclusions are pretty bleak, but there's a sort of sympathy you can sense in his attitude towards the characters and their situations. You've made me much more interested in Christie's novel!
I've only read The Buried Giant by Ishiguro but based on that very much agree. There is something warm, perhaps even gentle about his attitude towards the characters.
And Then There Were None terrified me at 13, but I think only a very sensitive adult would actually be kept up at night (it doesn't feature many dangers likely to befall the average person).
Silence - I cannot recommend it. It raises some interesting questions, but the answers that it gives are bad and wrong. The disturbing content is very disturbing, but secondary to its wrongness.
Picnic at Hanging Rock has creepy vibes but very little solidly disturbing content. I liked it pretty well but dont consider it a must-read.
But Tess!!! So gorgeous. FWIW it made me incandescently angry, rather than sad.
Oh wow you're the first person I've come across to object to Silence. Really devout, well-read Christians have raved about it. I want to know more of your perspective.
Good to know about Picnic at Hanging Rock. I can see myself either loving it or finding it too eerie. And I guess I won't find out until I actually try it haha
Lol I do also have my list of books that make me angry.
It's been a few years! It asks hard questions about our relationship with God that resonate with a lot of people, including me, but ultimately I think it falls short in the answers it offers, in some cases dangerously so. (I'm Anglican, in case that matters)
Quick bullets
- I think the underlying assumptions of the novel are very secular
- I think the action of public apostacy actually means something, and the question of whether you "really meant it in your heart" is kind of silly
- I don't like cultural/ethnic essentialism, and I still think it's bad if you're doing it about your own culture/ethnicity
The Power and the Glory is a better exploration of similar questions/struggles imo.
Have you read the Patricia Snow critique of Silence that she wrote for First Things some years ago when this book was making the rounds? I think she raises some of these objections and quite well. I can't remember when it was... perhaps 2020?
Thank you for the recommendation! I dont think I had - I remember similar articles from when the movie came out but this one is excellent and (I hope) I would have remembered it specifically.
Ah, this is an amazing article! It is helping me rethink my "to be read" one day list, and what emotion keeps me away from them. Fear, that ugly friend, yes, stands likewise as a foe at times. In recent years, I have plowed through books and found that they were timely and not to be put off any longer. For example, The Road, by McCarthy. (Entrance for me was through the Close Reads podcast.) There is some gruesomeness, google it if needed to know the summary, but there is not unreconcilable tragedy. It's actually remarkably hopeful, and comedic in nature, in while it ends solemnly, it also ends hopefully. For me, it was an even dish of melancholy, survival, and hopefulness, and turned out to be a great read. Easy to read, lightly written, and a futuristic odyssey in its own right. Also, the relationship between the father and the son, highly recommendable, and the father's adherence to remaining faithful to truth and goodness, and his teaching these notes to his son on a daily basis - yes, this. While it may not be one of my top books of all time, it is reachable, and left me with more hope, similar to I Cheerfully Refuse, by Leif Enger, than anything else.
I think if I do read The Road, I'm going to have to have to do it alongside Close Reads, but your description of it does cast it in a more desirable and approachable light. Thanks for this thoughtful comment!
I haven’t read most of these, particularly Jude the Obscure for this VERY reason. I read a bit of the summary on Wikipedia and decided my heart and brain do not need that.
Ruth by Elizabeth Gaskell is a great book with a semi-depressing ending. However, I found the whole book so great that it helped my disappointment at the bittersweet ending.
True Grit is wonderful. While violent, it isn’t so bleak or depressing. I found it a very satisfying read and ending.
And Then There Were None is another book, that while violent, isn’t plagued with the emotional violence or violence against children. I really enjoyed it and actually taught it. My students loved it and it actually opened them up to reading a lot of Agatha Christie on their own!
One book I’ve avoided reading is Wuthering Heights. I also read Summer by Edith Wharton and got 3/4th of the way through it, asked my husband if it ended in the most depressing possible scenario, he said it did, and I decided to stop there.
I have Ruth coming in on library holds. I'm not too worried with that one despite knowing how it ends. I've never had a bad experience with a Gaskell novel. She's just a lovely story-teller.
That's so fun that And Then There Were None spurred your students to read more Christie :)
Haha ohh Wuthering Heights. I was a very soppy teenager and LOVED it. Like reread quotes between Cathy and Heathcliff because I thought it was just the heights of romance. Fastforward to rereading it as an adult and I was so irritated by how dysfunctional all those characters were.
Summer is very, very sad. I always appreciate Wharton for really getting into the socio-economic difficulties of women at different strata of society and how their inner moral code shapes them, but yeah I don't think I'll reread Summer.