All of my favourite books have made me cry. The first was Bridge to Terabithia. I am still not over Jess’ anguish at returning home to discover his best friend Leslie drowned when the rope swing broke while she was trying to cross the creek, alone. Or perhaps the first book to make me cry was Old Yeller in that classic tale of boy-meets dog, boy-resents-dog, boy-grows to love-dog, boy-is-forced-to-shoot-dog-for-dog’s-own-good. Either way, it is stories like these – stories that dwell on the complex realities of life, that do not shy away from hard things – that remain with me.
I am not alone; gut-wrenching novels often sit at the top of bestseller lists – books like Rohinton Mistry’s A Fine Balance, Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner, Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief, and Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life. Why are so many of us drawn to reading sad stories? What purpose might reading sad stories serve? And how might the potential benefits be amplified if we read those stories out loud, together?
Research suggests we do not enjoy or benefit from sad stories because they are sad, but because they move us. We pay closer attention to sad stories. If we are absorbed into a story, when we are grieving alongside Travis about his dead dog, for example, we experience a deeper sense of purpose, vitality, and connection. Though a sad story may not bring us immediate joy or pleasure, our sense of wellbeing is strengthened when that story helps us name and contextualize our own complex memories, tensions, or worries. Literature allows us to feel visible and less alone; it widens what is perceived to be normal and accepted – including our traumas, failures, suspicions. As the inimitable author James Baldwin said when speaking to Life magazine in 1963, “You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read.”
In shared reading, small groups of people gather together to read aloud and talk about stories that depict the full spectrum of the human condition – the beautiful, but also the harrowing. In this way, the connection we feel between ourselves and a story is expanded into connections formed between ourselves and others in the group. We can recognize elements of our own lives in a story and in the stories shared by other group members. Through connecting around a painful story, we can sometimes feel relief, reassurance, and recuperation from complex experiences in our own lives. Through the conversations, group members find new ways to talk about, process, and reframe memories or experiences long hidden or pushed aside. Some have described these as moments of ‘recovery’ or ‘awakening.’ After reading a sad story, especially if we read it aloud and share our personal reflections on it, we can emerge feeling restored. Maybe I will pull Charlotte’s Web from the shelf and read it aloud with my family this fall.
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