Villette, by Charlotte Bronte.  It's about five hundred pages of well-written, debilitating "life sucks, and then you die."  God, that was nihilistic.  Thwart, agonize, suffer patiently, grit teeth, endure crippling depression, be tough at heart--woo, three pages of unalloyed happiness!--oh, what the hell, let's crush the narrator one more time.  ( Read more... )