Well, the title says it all really.
About twenty years ago (my daughter is now a young lady of twenty-two, recently graduated and visiting us briefly for the holidays before she flies off to be exciting in Europe), when she must have been three-ish, we were lying on my younger sister's bed together at my parents' place, and I was reading her an illustrated copy of "The Little Match Girl". You know those kinds of children books where each page is a full on colour illustration?
About the second match in I could feel the physical symptoms of sobbing rise in my throat, my voice began to shake, but I didn't think it was going to be so bad, and I was still hopeful my daughter would fall asleep so I kept reading and tried to fight it down.
A couple more pages and the dams broke loose- I didn't even cry like that for my parents' funerals, many many years later. It was full on ugly-crying such as is rarely inspired by real-life events, and can take only a master story-teller like Hans Christian Anderson to provoke. My poor daughter was confused and had no idea why I was crying, and I think my mom came to the room and told me off for confusing and upsetting my daughter, although maybe she didn't and I am imagining it, a constructed memory of what feels like could have happened, but may or may not have. And I think my sister laughed at me.
Have you ugly-cried at a book? When, where, what book?
by 1000andonenites