Best novels about loss, regret

Originally Posted by TheIdler

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Atonement, by Ian McEwan, is also excellent.

I have to agree.
I was surprised by how moved I was by the book.
(Never saw the movie)

The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion.

A Prayer for Owen Meany is one of my favorites. I read it a second time about 10 years after the first, and enjoyed it even more.

The Wanderer, written by a French kid (Alain Fournier) who died at 22 in WWI.

Hey Nostradamus! by Douglas Coupland. Its about a high school shooting and each chapter is told from the prespective of a different person at a different point in time. The first one is a girl and her day leading up to and when the shooting actually happened. The second is that girls boyfriend and how it has affected him years down the road. The third is about the boys father and the forth chapter is about the boys girlfriend in the future. At least I think it was in that order. Another book, although not a novel, is Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72 by Hunter S Thomspon. His discription of election night in '72 and how everyone reacted is just great and I felt so sorry for them. Although there were some dry parts in the book, it is politics after all. It was a great book and had some great insights into politics.

Suttree -- just because it hasn't been mentioned.

Originally Posted by DocHolliday

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"The Sun Also Rises."

+1

Also Death In Venice (It's a novella, but close enough)

And I would put Brideshead Revisited on this list as well.

Thanks so much for the suggestions guys. I just started The Remains of the Day and I have very high hopes. The "outdated" prose the narrator uses is subtly pathetic. I was struck by it only 3 or 4 pages in. Now that's writing.

Margaret Mitchell's "Gone With The Wind".

Yawarakana hoho by Natsuo Kirino, not sure if this one was translated in english and her other books appear to be thrillers/ero-guro. Two couples go on vacation, the little girl of the main character disappear (we never learn how/why) but we sure do see how this affect them; each character ruminates the meaning of the event until all is left is the bitter taste of shredded metaphysical musings.

I read The Remains of the Day this past summer and it lingers with me still. A powerful book. I'd like to get some more Ishiguro, but I'm not sure what's best. Never Let Me Go sounds haunting. How was it?

The Leopard

A Dance to the Music of Time

The Snow Goose

The Dying Animal by Philip Roth

About an old professor with minor celebrity status that he uses to lay a boatload of young women

He then finds one that is ridiculously beautiful and then falls for her. Her youth and beauty sorta act as a first time reflection of his own fading life, and he begins to become extremely jealous, possessive, angry, as their "fling" comes to an end and he tries to cope.

It's a truly remarkable book. A tad on the raunchy side, and with countless passages dedicated to breasts.

But the book is only like 120 pages, so well worth the read.

Originally Posted by darkoak

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Kazuo Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day.

Originally Posted by audiophilia

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^^^

Masterful book.

Spectacularly mediocre like his other books. He's very clever in terms of set up, but not much of a sentence by sentence writer and incapable of producing characters who can speak to each other. Everything he writes relies on the same couple tricks, which can be oppressive.

didn't read through the whole thread so i imagine this one's been mentioned already, Milan Kundera's "Unbearable Lightness of Being".

-Jeff