I feel like I ruined reading for myself because I started with A Little Life… and now nothing compares.
I’m 35 years old & this was literally the FIRST fiction book I’ve ever read in my life, and I tore through all 800+ pages in 6 days. I couldn’t put it down. It COMPLETELY consumed me.
Now I’m chasing that same feeling and I can’t find it.
I tried The Bell Jar and I was bored. I only made it a couple chapters in. I also started Saving Noah and I’m about 60 pages in, but it’s not pulling me in the way A Little Life did.
What I’m looking for is very specific:
• Modern setting (or at least feels modern/relatable)
•Extremely heavy, traumatic, emotionally brutal
•Doesn’t hold back on details
•Deep character development where you feel attached
•Something that STAYS with you and WRECKS you
•Preferably NOT a happy ending
I don’t want something “sad”… I want something devastating. The kind of book that lingers and messes with you after.
I just ordered The End of Loneliness, Flowers for Algernon, and Bodies of Light, and I already own The Secret History but haven’t started it yet.
If you’ve read A Little Life and found something that even came close to that level of emotional impact, please tell me!!
by WeakLengthiness8183
7 Comments
A Little Life is one of my favourite books. I think the following have similar themes (coming of age, trauma, found family)
– Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver
– The Heart’s Invisible Furies by John Boyne
– The Road by Cormac McCarthy
– White Oleander by Janet Finch
– My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell
– My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante
– Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stewart
– Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
– The Great Believers by Rebecca Makai
Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow
I could live here forever (very different but SO good and devastatingly sad)
Shuggie Bain and young mungo, both by Douglas Stewart. Both set a little while ago, but still feels contemporary
Saving Noah is a terrible book. Proceed no further.
I just finished The Heart’s Invisible Furies and the vibes were very similar. I preferred it to A Little Life because it was very funny in addition to being absolutely devastating
I mean a little life was straight up trauma porn and disgusting. But when i think of emotionally devastating books I think of saving Noah, never let me go, the fault in our stars and the collective regrets of clover, song of Achilles
Story of Edgar Sawtelle, God of Small Things, Fall on your Knees, Covenant of Water. Tears!