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Best novels about loss, regret

thefriar

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'The Diving Bell and the Butterfly' by Jean Dominique Bauby.
 

Jenaimarr

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Old Yeller - Fred Gipson

This book absolutely destroyed me when I was in elementary school. I don't think I ever fully recovered from it.
 

crease

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Great Expectations.

Enough said. Game over. Best book about loss and regret.
 

crease

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Originally Posted by quevola
Steppenwolf
+1 Hesse is a very fluid writer, but I wasn`t much of a fan of Siddhartha...which was the first novel of his that I read. That sentiment spilled over when I read Steppenwolf. I enjoyed Narcissus and Siddartha much more than Steppenwolf, but to each his own.
 

grimslade

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Originally Posted by LabelKing
Most interesting books are about loss or regret so one could write in almost any worthwhile piece of literature.

For once, LK is right.

Originally Posted by crease
Great Expectations.

Enough said. Game over. Best book about loss and regret.


Crease, on the other hand... I don't think anything Dickens wrote is the best of anything.
 

LabelKing

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Originally Posted by grimslade
For once, LK is right. Crease, on the other hand... I don't think anything Dickens wrote is the best of anything.
You don't care for '60s era German automotive monsters, excessively pale makeup and taxidermy?
 

scenesreplayed

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platform by houllebeque is a great novel about loss, not so much regret though. it really examines the culture that we have created and critiques it nicely.
 

Manton

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Flame away, but ... The Lord of the Rings about winning a war and yet losing an entire civilization.
 

Piobaire

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+1 on Great Gatsby, LotR, and Wuthering Heights. I suppose we could toss in Tess, Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Paradise Lost, most of Steinbeck, Glass Managerie...I think LK was right.
 

Histrion

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To the poster that mentionned Plateforme by Houellebecq, I would say that if you are going to read Houellebecq, you should go for Les particules Ã
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mentaires.

American Pastoral by Philip Roth is a great book that certainly deals with loss and regret.
 

Saucemaster

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LK is right in one sense, but not all novels are necessarily ABOUT loss and regret. Most good novels inevitably feature them in some way, but the aforementioned Remains of the Day (and most other Ishiguro novels), for example, is about regret in a way that a book that merely features regret as one of its many topics isn't.

Originally Posted by DocHolliday
"The Sun Also Rises." That last sentence ...

That last line kills me every time.

Originally Posted by James Gatz
Samuel Beckett's trilogy (Maloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable)

Beckett is probably my favorite author. Loss, definitely, but I feel like Beckett's characters, given just how much they lose (those that have anything to begin with), generally have relatively little regret.

I also +1 Mishima, he didn't come to mind at first, but it definitely works.
 

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