I never used to cry much in movies when I was younger. But there was still the odd movie that could tear the heart out of my chest and stomp all over it. Who remembers the final moments of the film Gallipoli starring Mel Gibson and Mark Lee? OMG I bawled my eyes out! Until then I hadn’t known that movies and stories could end sadly. Oh, and then Dead Poets Society came along. One “Oh, Captain, my captain,” and I was in floods.
Nowadays, though, a movie can have me sniffling and wiping my eyes at the drop of a hat, and that’s started me thinking about books that make me cry. It hardly ever happens. As a reader, I rarely cry. Why not, I ask myself?
Don’t get me wrong. I can become totally invested in a character's story. My heart can pound with fear for them, and it can ache so badly for them that if I’m interrupted in the middle of a scene of high emotion I'm likely to snap the offending interrupter’s head off. I breathe many a happy sigh at the end of a story too when everything has worked out brilliantly. Is there a better feeling in the world? But the fact remains that I hardly ever cry while reading.
Off the top of my head I can think of three books that have made me cry:
* The final three chapters of Seven Little Australians when Judy dies
* Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, when Cedric has been killed and Harry gets him back to Hogwarts and then won’t let him go
* And in the Forsyte Saga (John Galsworthy) in relation to a particular character’s reaction to the death of their much-loved son
I reread the Harry Potter scene again yesterday…and it didn’t make me cry (though it did make me ache). I couldn’t find my copy of the Forsyte Saga so I couldn’t reread it, but I did find Seven Little Australians. So I reread those last three chapters and by the end of it I had tears running down my face. Those chapters are as harrowing now as they were when I was a kid.
So what about you—do books make you cry? Are there one or two guaranteed to start the tears flowing regardless of how many times you’ve read them?
