10 Books For Depressed People
And it's not just that the characters find themselves in depressing situation after depressing situation (well, they kind of do), it's the fact that the scope of the novel makes every depressing instance so much more tragic because you're highly familiar with what lead each character to the sad place they're in currently.
8. Honored Guest (2004), Joy Williams
Honored Guest, a short story collection by Joy Williams, can be compared to Like Life by Lorrie Moore regarding prose style, scope, and subject matter (relatively), yet in this collection, Williams’ stories have a very absurd edge to them. Seemingly normal lines of everyday dialogue pop out at the reader suddenly, completely out of place but completely predictable at once. With Honored Guest, the depressed individual will appreciate the detached listlessness of Willams’ characters and her very existential take on story-arc/ time/ progression. Williams is a master at making reality seem bizarre while presenting reality in an extremely… realistic way, and her narrative scope almost always puts one at ease with depression, almost always makes it satisfying to experience.
