I know this is not the theme this week. I will make a tough guy confession...I have never cried while reading a novel. Call me insensitive, call me a bad reader, I never did. Maybe it's that I never LOOKED for it, but I did found sadness in many books I have read.
1-Mystic River by Dennis Lehane: This book, particularly its sadness, made me want to write. Lehane shows how a crime can affect people's lives and create a vicious circle they can never get out of.
2-White Noise by Don DeLillo: It will make you feel lonely inside. It's a testament to frailty of existence. If you pick up White Noise, please be patient with it. It will sucker punch you.
3-The Temple Of The Golden Pavillion by Yukio Mishima: The heartbreaking portrayal of my biggest dilemma: making a choice between life and beauty. A superb downer.
4-The Silence by Haruki Murakami: A short story in The Elephant Vanishes collection. Moved me, once again because I know I've been there, in the lonely silence.
5-7 by Patrick Senécal: Not sure it's translated yet, but the movie adaptation is. It was a riot in Sundance Festival. The revenge story of a father. Will make you puke and cry at the same time.
6-The Great Gatsby by Francis Scott Fitzgerald: Yeah I was really bummed out when I finished it. It just shows how dark people can get when they kiss their innocence goodbye.
7-Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami: It will make you smile, cry and smile again, knowing you've lost something along the way. Only a true master can make you feel the way Murakami can.
8-The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky: I was young and easy to impress back then, but this family left their print on my soul. I've never read any other novel with such a sense of impending doom.
9-Darkness, Take My Hand by Dennis Lehane: Lehane just has this uncanny talent to shake his characters up to the bare threads that holds them together. Scary, sad and enthralling this book is.
10-Chess Story by Stefan Zweig: A 104 pages long slap in the face. Despair and insanity are put together here like 2 and 2. Zweig peeks into a human soul and it's disturbing.
