Looking for something depressing...

[Glorfindel]

the hunger games is rather depressing... if you skip the epilogue

[Gregg Bell]

Originally Posted by Glorfindel

the hunger games is rather depressing... if you skip the epilogue

Somebody is in their right mind! Thank you. I did not read the book but just watching the movie I was like, "This is so depressing: citizens have to kill each other--and they're so excited about it!" It made no sense really. And then when the killing started I looked at how much time was left, and I was like I am not going to watch an hour and a half of people killing each other and shut it off.

The Hunger Games is one of those pop culture phenomenons that really makes me think the great majority of people in this world are wacked.

[xg4bx]

Level 7 by Mordecai Roshwald

Level 7 is the diary of Officer X-127, who is assigned to stand guard at the "Push Buttons," a machine devised to activate the atomic destruction of the enemy, in the country’s deepest bomb shelter. Four thousand feet underground, Level 7 has been built to withstand the most devastating attack and to be self-sufficient for five hundred years. Selected according to a psychological profile that assures their willingness to destroy all life on Earth, those who are sent down may never return.
*** Originally published in 1959, and with over 400,000 copies sold, this powerful dystopian novel remains a horrific vision of where the nuclear arms race may lead, and is an affirmation of human life and love. Level 7 merits comparison to Huxley’s A Brave New World and Orwell’s 1984 and should be considered a must-read by all science fiction fans.

[samhy]

Originally Posted by caleb72

I recently read Requiem for a Dream by Hubert Selby Jr. I was both pleased and saddened to see that the movie was very faithful to the book...devastating.

Which would be Last Exit to Brooklyn, wouldn't it?
I agree with you, it's not an easy book.

[caleb72]

Originally Posted by samhy

Which would be Last Exit to Brooklyn, wouldn't it?
I agree with you, it's not an easy book.

They are different novels. Or are you referring to something else?

[orlok]

Probably got enough to be getting on with now, but I thought I'd mention J.G. Ballard. Pretty much everything he wrote (perhaps with the exception of Empire of the Sun, though this has its bleak moments too) was dark and depressing.

Particularly Crash:

When Ballard, our narrator, smashes his car into another and watches a man die in front of him, his sense of sexual possibilities in the world around him becomes detached. As he begins an affair with the dead man's wife, he finds himself drawn with increasing intensity to the mangled impacts of car crashes.

And The Drowned World:

In this future our old world has been gradually drowned as global warming melts the ice-caps and primordial jungles and swamps have returned to tropical London, recreating the ancient ecology of the Triassic age.

And Concrete Island:

An architect is driving home from his London offices when a blow-out sends his speeding Jaguar hurtling out of control. Smashing through a temporary barrier he finds himself, dazed and disorientated, on a traffic island below three converging motorways. But when he tries to climb the embankment or flag-down a passing car for help it proves impossible - and he finds himself marooned on the concrete island. In this twisted version of Robinson Crusoe, our hero must learn to survive - using only what he can find in his crashed car.

And lastly The Crystal World:

Through a ‘leaking’ of time, the West African jungle starts to crystallize. Trees metamorphose into enormous jewels. Crocodiles encased in second glittering skins lurch down the river. Pythons with huge blind gemstone eyes rear in heraldic poses. Most flee the area in terror, afraid to face a catastrophe they cannot understand.

All beautifully depressing...

[samhy]

Originally Posted by caleb72

They are different novels. Or are you referring to something else?

My mistake . I thought the movie Requiem for a Dream was the adaptation of Hubert Selby Jr.'s book Last exit to Brooklyn. Actually both are Hubert Selby Jr. novels and both were adapted as movies. But they're not the same.
I would bet that both are equally depressing

[applesauce]

Originally Posted by kacir

The Road.
The most depressing book I ever had the misfortune to read.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_road

Hands down the most depressing book I have ever read. I had never read a book before were there was not even the slightest chance of hope.
It was horrific and I love scary dark. Bring on post apocalyptic, bring on the worst most horrific serial killer books.

If they wrote a sequel I would burn it rather than read it.

applesauce

[NickyWithNook]

The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt. Very good but horribly depressing. I had to set it down and read something else a couple of times. It's also very long.

[covingtoncat73]

Originally Posted by NickyWithNook

The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt. Very good but horribly depressing. I had to set it down and read something else a couple of times. It's also very long.

Well, that's Donna Tartt for you.

[Yolina]

I've just purchased "anatomy of a night" by Anna Kim - the blurb seemed interesting and I think that one might well fall into the depressing category

"Amarâq, Eastern Greenland, the end of the world. A lonely, cold, hard place, yet one that’s filled with boundless joy and bewitching natural magic, Amarâq plays host to an annual tragedy: a spate of suicides races through the town each spring, a plague that leaves no family untouched. Anatomy of a Night details the events of one of these black nights, following the lives of eleven of Amarâq’s inhabitants—their loves and losses, their escapes from Amarâq and their inevitable returns, each victory and every defeat magnified by the unforgiving and unforgettably desolate landscape—and paints a portrait of a mysterious phenomenon that strikes a nearly-forgotten people, the Inuit of Greenland"

[badgerboy]

I thought both the "Elric" and "Hawkmoon series by Michael Moorcock were depressing. It's not a good idea to be a hero, seriously!

[4691mls]

The ending of the last book of the Charlie McKelvey mysteries by C.B. Forrest was depressing. Given the previous books and the main character's issues, I wasn't expecting a truly happy ending, but I hadn't expected it to be quite as bad as it was.

[little and large]

Lord Of The Barnyard is depressing in an uplifting kind of way. Great read. And When The Ass Saw The Angel sure fits the bill. Like one, you'll adore the other.

[BookCat]

Anything by Thomas Hardy, his books are very melancholic.

"Wuthering Heights". Yes, it has romance in heaps, but what a depressing romance!

"King Lear" by Shakespeare. Grim, gory and depressing. Well, you wanted something deep as well as depressing.