by Alison Janssen
I have to be passionate about every book I edit -- something about the manuscript has to grab me and make me feel. A manuscript can make me laugh, or endear me to the main character. It can take hold of my attention and go go go until the end, or it can be coy and tease me with a mystery that just gets deeper and deeper.
Or, it can make me cry. And by "cry" I mean weep. Weep torrents of cathartic, pent-up tears. And once I've mostly finished, while my face is still puffy and swollen and with wads of tissues balled up in my hands, a manuscript can inspire me to stop people on the street and say, "Hey, read this."
UNTOUCHABLE by Scott O'Connor is one of those.
Scott has put together a beautiful trailer for the book -- out in May -- and I encourage you to click the link and watch it full-screen. (I'll embed it below, too.)
The book has been selected as part of Barnes & Noble's Discover Great New Writers Program, but not until May and ...
I've got an ARC to give away.
Who could use a good cry? Leave me a comment! Tell me the last book or movie that gave you a good, long, cathartic sob session. Or the classic that always gets you (Ahem, Dr. Zhivago, ahem.) I'll pick a name out of a hat next Thursday at 8am.
I'm not one for the crying because I'm big and tough and strong and all that, but if I were, I gotta say -- that Dennis Lehane is a soul-breaker. MYSTIC RIVER was a five hankie kind of book. I mean, you know, if you're one of them there cry babies.
Of course, had you asked about TV shows that pull at you, I would have mentioned THERE ARE FOUR LIGHTS. But you didn't, so I won't mention it.
Posted by: Steve Weddle | February 10, 2011 at 12:59 PM
Well, that trailer did it for me. . .
The Remains of the Day is a tearjerker for me . . . but so is that part in Mulan where the Emperor reads her list of crimes - any one of which condemns her and her family - and then bows to her, leading everyone in the city to do the same. Don't know why.
Posted by: Sarah W | February 10, 2011 at 01:09 PM
I can remember sobbing in the theater--an ADULT sobbing--at GHOST with Patrick Swayze. I wasn't the only one either. At one point you could hardly hear what little dialogue there was.
And reaching back into the memory banks, the YA book BEAUTIFUL JOE turned a sunny summer day bleak. No one bothered me when I read, so I held the book up in front of my face and pretended those weren't tears.
Posted by: JJ | February 10, 2011 at 01:36 PM
JJ - Beautiful Joe made me cry, too.
The last book that made me cry was The Book Thief. I honestly thought it hadn't got to me, that I'd liked it but not that much, and then I read the last 100 pages. It probably didn't help that I was in a hospital waiting room, wondering how a relative in surgery was doing.
I still resent, just a little bit, how Zusak made Rudy so perfect.
Posted by: Carrie | February 10, 2011 at 03:18 PM
OK, I'm so sappy that I cry at my own book - the one I'm finishing up now - so that's what I've read most recently.
But I did go through several hankies with Amy King's PLEASE IGNORE VERA DIETZ.
Posted by: Sara J. Henry | February 10, 2011 at 07:05 PM
This may sound odd but there's an episode in season 3 of "Farscape" where one of the Crichtons dies surrounded by his loved ones. He tells his former enemy to find the better part of himself and take care of the others. Anyway, it is the most amazing and touching death scene I've ever read or seen in any medium, and if you don't cry while watching that, you're a different sort than most.
Posted by: Rick Ollerman | February 11, 2011 at 06:43 PM
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers first did me in when I was 15 years old.
Heart-wrenching doesn't begin to describe it. I read the final chapters at the library and was so overcome I took refuge in the washroom where I could sob in private.
I'm grateful to the teacher who assigned my lit class to read such an amazing book.
Posted by: Brenda B. in Maine | February 13, 2011 at 10:41 AM
Wow, that trailer was amazing - I hope I'm not too late to enter. I'm currently reading Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout for my book group and it's definitely making me cry. It's a beautifully written collection of interconnected stories about damaged relationships and all the ways that things can go wrong in life. I'm not quite finished with it yet but I can totally understand why it won the Pulitzer.
Posted by: Dale Spindel | February 16, 2011 at 09:55 PM