Renting a single room next to the highway because that's all I can afford. The traffic outside my window is relentless and gives me no peace. The neighbours scream at each other every night. The mad old landlady will not stop talking in my ear about inane nonsense, criticising my food and the places I go to get away from her, harassing me to clean up after myself though her house is filthy. Her grandchildren come over and run about shouting in the nude, so I stay in my room. My only chair gives me terrible back pain, the lights flicker. I work with cheerful fools who never stop talking, and when they fuck something up I am left to clean up the mess. The hours are long and the demands are never ending. My friends seldom answer my messages, and the woman I like has lost interest in me since I kissed her. My family is far away and in turmoil, my mother does not speak to me and I do not know why. Every day I feel I am close to breaking point, but what would be the use of screaming and beating my fists? It would only make things worse. Today I sighed at the wrong moment and the boss gave me a lecture.
Can anyone recommend a book that feels like this? Somehow I think there must be a grim Russian novel from the 1800s about a menial clerk who succumbs to the stress and murders a homeless man and ends up in an absurd prison colony or something.
by andrew3young
2 Comments
Well you have the perfect book for that : crime and punishment by Dostojevskij if you haven’t read that one already. I would also suggest writing your own novel as you have some great stuff right there. Even though life seems hard I must say your life sounds very interesting. I would also recommend ”Homesick for another world” by Ottessa Moshfegh- short stories about real life.
This reads like a novel itself. Maybe Dostoyevsky or (for something a bit more hopeful) Dickens would be what you’re after right now. There’s also One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, which might be worth checking out.