Seven books — fiction, nonfiction and a graphic novel — that cue the waterworks.
It’s easy for a book to produce a tear or two from me, but I can only recall a couple that led to full-on heaving and ugly-crying: Alice Sebold’s “The Lovely Bones” and current bestseller “Hello Beautiful,” by Ann Napolitano.
Napolitano wrote the blockbuster “Dear Edward,” which I liked, but it’s nowhere near as good as “Beautiful,” which is about four adult sisters in suburban Chicago. Set over the course of decades, it charts marriages, births and family rifts. But what makes it great is Napolitano’s gift for capturing the tiny behaviors and reactions that make us human. Several tragic things happen in the book — although I should mention that it’s also funny — but Napolitano’s characters are too focused on getting through challenges to spend time crying about them. Which means that job is left to us.
If you like a good cry, I’d also recommend Rob Delaney’s “A Heart That Works.” The comedian’s sense of humor is intact but his subject could not be less funny: the death of his 1-year-old son, Henry. It’s an unflinching and beautiful memoir because it insists that, despite his brief time on this planet, Henry has a story to tell.
Not to spend too long in that category of tear-jerkers-about-the-dying-infants but another fantastic, very different book about a child’s death is Tom Hart’s graphic memoir “Rosalie Lightning.” When little Rosalie died unexpectedly, her parents were angry and confused. “Rosalie” shows how they found their way back to each other, in stunning words and drawings.