Sad, Depressing Books with No Redeeming Value

It’s a trend and it’s a trend a lot of us are starting to question. Why do people want to spend money and invest hours in reading books about horrible, awful things that happen to helpless children and, at the end of the book, be left with a sense of bleak hopelessness? I don’t get it.

My friend Jane was telling me about the Boy Called “It” phenomenon. In case you don’t know, this self-published book has been on the New York Times Best Seller list for awhile now. I have not read it. I am told that it is a story about a little child who is horribly abused by an alcoholic, insane mother. Now, I want to say that I am well aware of the fact that there are many children who live lives most sane adults cannot even imagine. This is a horrible shame to all of us and is something that needs to be addressed and needs to be stopped. I also want to say that I have nothing but admiration for the people who go through horrific experiences and have the courage to tell about them and to show how they have survived and gone on with their lives. That’s not my point. What I am questioning is why people can’t get enough of this stuff.

A Boy Called “It” has the distinction of being non-fiction, thus all the more horrific for it. But over the last decade or so there has been an excess of fiction about this subject. After reading half a dozen novels with the same theme I began to call it the Poor Abused and Abandoned Little Girl Genre. I hope no one thinks I am making light of child abuse. What I am totally puzzled by is why this has become such popular entertainment. Are we gaining enlightenment because of it? Are we finding strength and hope and courage from these works of fiction? Or is it some sort of bizarre wallowing in misery that attracts the thousands of readers who make these books a sensation.

One of my friends was telling me about a book she started and abandoned. She said, “It wasn’t an Oprah book, but it could have been.” I laughed but I knew what she meant. Somehow a good percentage of the novels that have gained acclaim thanks to being chosen as Oprah Books are about people who lead horrific lives.

I’m trying to look at this from a classical perspective. Charles Dickens wrote books about poor, abused children who were abandoned and harmed by both the people who should have loved them and their own societies. He wrote his books to call attention to a world that many people overlooked. And his books were inspiring and, at the end, left you feeling a better person for having read it. That’s a book worth writing.

But I was thinking about the Poor Abused and Abandoned Little Girl books that I read before I gave it up. One in particular stayed with me for a long time after I finished it - and not in a good way. It was about an entirely self-involved, H.U.A. woman who, in her obsession with revenge on a guy who dumped her, committed a crime that landed her sorry butt in jail and condemned her poor little daughter to an absolutely horrid life spent among abusive, crazy, and/or exploitative foster families. Through the whole book I kept looking for some little glimmer of light for this poor child. It never came. When I finished the book I felt smarmy - as though I had just participated in something nasty - and I genuinely wished I’d never read it.

I’m not asking writers to sugar-coat anything. I think writing the truth is the only reason to write. But, when a writer writes something so bleak and sad that one is left with nothing but a sense of helplessness and sorrow at the end, I wonder why readers can’t get enough of that. That’s the question. Why do we want to feel helpless and hopeless and as though these poor children are beyond our powers to help them? Or is that it... Is it that we know how screwed up the world is and we know these horrible abuses exist and these books reinforce our belief that there is nothing we can do for the abused and abandoned? All we can do is buy the books, cry as we read, and come away saying “how horrible - and there was nothing anyone could do either” - and then wait for the next one to hit the stands. How convenient.

Thanks for reading.