Six Brilliant Reads: Funny Sad Books

28 July 2026

There’s nothing like the pleasure you experience from a book that leaves you emotionally exhausted. Here’s a selection of novels that pull your emotions in different directions.

Alison Espach’s novel, The Wedding People takes main character Phoebe Stone from despair to new beginnings over the course of a week at a luxury hotel. Phoebe has hit rock bottom and takes herself to the resort she’d dreamed of visiting with her husband, only now divorced and miserable, it’s going to be a final splurge before ending it all. When she’s mistaken for a wedding guest, Phoebe becomes caught up in the dramas of another family with hilarious and poignant results.

Adora Hazzard is a Stoic philosopher in Maria Semple’s latest novel, Go Gentle. She lives a pared down, carefully curated life, which has been a means of dealing with the trauma of her past. She has decided that the secret to happiness is to only desire what you can have. A handsome stranger, a black-market art deal, and events that will take her to Paris all upend her life and have her considering another way to live.

New Zealand author Meg Mason’s novel Sorrow and Bliss accrued a lot of media attention – a darkly funny book about serious things. It follows Martha who is convinced something is wrong with her brain, even though she’s also clever and beautiful and much loved by husband Patrick. So why is she always sad? Forced to return to her childhood home and her dysfunctional parents, she has the chance to examine where everything went wrong, and maybe start over again.

Another book that looks at mental health is The Burnout by Sophie Kinsella. After Sasha is forced to take a break from work, she ends up at the seaside town of happy family holidays years ago. Only now it's winter and everything is dismal, the hotel dilapidated, her only fellow resident a grumpy guy called Finn who she'd had a run in on the train. The two strike up an awkward alliance to keep the peace, until weird messages appear on the beach. Can surfing be the answer?

This Is Happiness by Niall Williams is set in the small Irish town of Faha in the 1950s – a community on the brink of change with the arrival of electricity. Young Noe has abandoned his studies to be a priest and is taken in by his grandparents who find themselves also hosting Christy, a man in his sixties working for the electricity company. The two strike up an unusual friendship, have their hearts broken and learn a lot about life and grief in this warmly funny, and gently philosophical story.

Catherine Newman’s recent novel Wreck explores life around a messy, unpredictable and relatable family. Rocky suffers from anxiety, so when a young man who went to her children’s school is killed in a random accident, she begins to imagine the worst. Then there’s the expanding rash on her arm – after all, just because you’re a hypochondriac, doesn’t mean you’re not really ill. This is a very human, wise and funny story that deals with the kinds of stresses that can beset any of us.

Posted by JAM

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