THE BEST TEARJERKERS (according to the Penguin List)

Of Mice and Men
John Steinbeck
The Age of Innocence
Edith Wharton
Notre-Dame De Paris
Victor Hugo
Jude the Obscure
Thomas Hardy
The Old Curiosity Shop
Charles Dickens

Best Tear-Jerkers (according to Semicolon)
Not Steinbeck. I just think Steinbeck is sordid. And unfortunately, I’ve never read The Old Curiosity Shop, so I’ve never cried for Little Nell. I don’t remember Jude the Obscure, and I’ve never finished Notre Dame de Paris. I’ll go with Age of Innocence, so that leaves me four slots to fill with my own tear-jerking choices.

I’ve already used A Tale of Two Cities and Les Miserables and several other tragic novels in other categories. I could list dog stories like Old Yeller or Where the Red Fern Grows, but since I lack the animal-loving gene, those aren’t really tear-jerkers for me. So I’ll start with a different animal story that does pull out the emotion from me.

Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White. If you don’t cry when Charlotte . . . Well, you’re lying if you say you don’t at least feel sad.

Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton. If we’re talking tragic, this book is tragic. I will never forget the line spoken by a black priest in the novel, “I have only one great fear in my heart, that one day when they are turned to loving, they will find that we are turned to hating.”

Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton. Bittersweet ending.

Killer Angels by Michael Shaara. So. tragic. When all those doomed Confederates march across that open field in Pickett’s Charge, and when General Hood in the hopital after losing his arm says his boys could have taken that hill, and when Pickett yells at Lee, “General, I have no division!”

“Armistead turned away, walked back to his brigade. Now for the first time, at just the wrong time, the acute depression hit him a blow to the brain. Out of the sleepiness the face of despair. He remembered Longstreet’s tears. He thought: a desperate thing. But he formed the brigade.

Bridge to Terebithia by Katherine Paterson. A very sad book for children. Can children cry more easily and without embarrassment than adults can? Is that why children’s authors are not afraid to evoke emotion, whereas authors of adult books are afraid of being accused of creating melodrama or maudlin sentimentality?

What book brings the tears to your eyes? What is it about a book or a movie that can create a sense of tragedy?