7 books for lonely souls

Loneliness, that not-so-aberrant state that many people continue to avoid by clinging to something, which sometimes requires sacrifices in order to become someone freer but also miserable. Gabo knew it, also Murakami or Hesse, authors who converted these 7 books for lonely souls in unofficial manuals to understand a state of the soul as natural as it is undervalued.

One Hundred Years of Solitude, by Gabriel García Márquez

Many of us appreciate that the initial title of the house  was replaced by the name with which everyone today knows which is one of the great Hispanic novels of our time. Because loneliness, despite how many children with similar names you have and the ghost of your husband wandering in the rain, was always there for Ursula Iguarán, the most discreet heroine of that magical and existential literature that Gabriel García Márquez embodied in his 1967 work.

The Steppe Wolf, by Herman Hesse

As a product of the spiritual crisis that the German author Herman Hesse lived through in the 20s, The Steppe Wolf came to become the meat of misinterpretation and, at the same time, a new Bible for any transcendental reader who appreciated the portrait of a man. , Harry haller, torn between a dehumanized system and a precarious life. For posterity there are a trace of gold and phrases like «the solitude was cold, it is true, but it was also calm, wonderfully calm and great, like the calm cold space in which the stars move«.

Bridget Jones's Diary by Helen Fielding

From the wild men of the 20s who roam the lonely streets, we pass to women who, despite having a job, a house and a good salary, continue to be victims of the eternal cliché that considers singles in their thirties as playboys and mature women as. . . spinsters. The one that remains one of the feminist novels most influential of the turn of the century, Fielding's work, arising from different columns written by the author herself for The Independent newspaper, not only served to unite more to the thirty-year-olds of the West, but to show us how hilarious it could be Renée Zellweger in its film adaptation. One of the best books for lonely souls wanting to laugh at yourself. Once and for all.

The Old Man and the Sea, by Ernest Hemingway

You, me, the neighbor. . . each person has a goal in life, be it more or less ambitious, but. . . What if those purposes are never fulfilled? Do we accept failure? Or are we still looking for the opportunity to show the world what we are worth? More or less this was the problem of Santiago, the leading fisherman in Hemingway's famous work published in 1952. The story of an old man who entered the waters of the Gulf of Mexico to capture a fish so large that it could dazzle those who always saw him as a failure became the perfect excuse to narrate the eternal struggle of man against nature. . . and his own demons.

Madame Bovary, by Gustave Flaubert

They say that feeling alone surrounded by people is worse than doing it without anyone, which is why the protagonist of the work of the perfectionist Flaubert was always misunderstood. Because, did this wealthy woman, married to a loving doctor and a beautiful daughter, have reason to feel unhappy? Flaubert's work explores this dissatisfaction, that of a world that succumbs to social conditioning and in many cases sacrifices old dreams, something that perhaps has not changed as much as one might expect in the XNUMXst century.

The Catcher in the Rye, by JD Salinger

Controversial at the time for its foul language and the constant references to alcohol or prostitution, the most famous novel by American Salinger is an analysis of adolescent rebellion against the system, norms, family beliefs or education itself through the eyes of the protagonist,  Holden caulfield, that young man of 16 who did not dare give himself to a prostitute and who considered the world as "false."

Tokio blues, by Haruki Murakami

It was my introduction to Murakami, and as such I have very fond memories. Because despite seeming to be a simple story, Tokio Blues is also complex, the perfect portrait of a confused youth embodied by the characters of the lonely Toru and Naoko, the ex-girlfriend of his deceased best friend. Throughout the pages of the work also known as Norwegian Wood, in reference to the song by The Beatles, Murakami tells the story of characters immersed in their own universes and their inability to make all of them coincide at some point.

These 7 books for lonely souls They will become perfect allies to those reflections, existential crises and lonely afternoons in which, rather than fearing the most contradictory feeling in the world, it is about accepting it, about leaning on it to know our best version.

What books for lonely souls would you add?