Recommendations for books that are both heartbreaking and funny

I love a writer who can express something that is so true it is heartbreaking, but they somehow also manage to make you laugh. Possibly bittersweet laughter, possibly that laughter that comes because you can relate. Here are two examples:
From Jo Ann Beard's In Zanesville
Forget fathers, forget teachers: our mothers are the ones with the answers, the only people who know something about everything, although it’s true that the answers are never that great and that both mothers are incredibly bossy and both have at least one disturbing trait.
Beard, Jo Ann (2011-04-25).

From Liz Moore's Heft, our first introduction to one of the main characters:
Her lips do not gracefully close over her teeth. The frames of her glasses are too wide & they give her a look of being mildly cross-eyed. Her bangs are worked into an astounding arc at the top of her head.
Moore, Liz (2012-01-16).

If anyone has recommendations of favorites, I'd love to hear them. My hammock is wondering where I've been.

Hmmm, poignant yet amusing. Yes, I agree, that is a very fine quality in a writer. Some that come to mind are Margaret Atwood, Jane Austen (and along the same lines a lesser degree humour-wise, but still worth pursuing, Edith Wharton), Jennifer Egan, Jenn Farrell (heart-breaking!), Muriel Spark. In non-fiction, Nora Ephron comes immediately to mind. And of recent reads, I liked The Book of Lies for exactly those qualities. See my review here: http://www.belletrista.com/2012/Issue16/features_2.php

Thank you for The Book of Lies. I just read your review and it appears to be exactly what I'm looking for. I will check out Jenn Farrell as well, who I have not read. I could swear Margaret Atwood has gotten even funnier as she's aged, in her dry, wry sort of way.

I recently finished The Little Ottleys by Oscar Wilde's friend, Ada Leverson. It was both sad and utterly hilarious.

That's an interesting suggestion. I just downloaded the Audible version which, as an added bonus, will help me improve my fake british accent.

The Girls of Slender Means by Muriel Spark is another funny/sad book. So is Swamplandia by Karen Russell.

Hey, good luck with that English accent! I like to listen to Brits try to do ours. There's always some giveaway. For instance, "goddam" in "English" doesn't have the same full stop between the syllables as the American pronunciation.

I find "flowers" very difficult to do right in "English." I always end up with "flahs."

Hugh Laurie, whose American accent is pretty flawless, says "murder" is the hardest word to master in "American."

And since I'm hopelessly off-track now, Colin Firth did a good American accent in "A Thousand Acres," and his sex appeal factor dropped about 4 points the minute he started talking. It really is all about the voice ...

That's the same A Thousand Acres based on the Jane Smiley novel, which is not funny in any way, shape, or form.

Hugh Laurie does have an amazing "American" accent. I'm always impressed with a writer who can authentically, convincingly write with an accent. Alice Walker's The Color Purple of course springs to mind. Nickelini's recommendation, Mary Horlock's Book of Lies, has an incredibly winning high school girl first person narrator who has such a unique voice and personality, it feels like reading someone's diary. I guess that could be just awful, but it is so not in this case. Anyway, when I'm done, I plan to go to The Book of Lies page on Amazon and leave a glowing review to offset the "WTF" reviews I noted when downloading the Kindle version.

#8 Margaret - I'm so glad you're liking The Book of Lies! I know it's garnered some mixed reader reviews, but I really think, based on their comments, they are missing out on a lot of the story. One of the tells is that the people who don't like it dismiss it as YA fiction. Which it's not, unless you read it on a superficial level.

Nickelini, I couldn't agree more. To label it YA would be like calling The Catcher in the Rye YA because Holden Caulfield is boarding school age. Moreover, Mary Horlock's ability to write in the voice of this lovably flawed, very fresh, unique 15 year old voice was impressive. Also, the footnotes were priceless.

#10 - and I was going to say that the published reviews from newspapers have been positive, so I'm not just makin' stuff up!
And yes, the footnotes were great!

On this relaxing Saturday afternoon, I am knitting and watching some TV: Heartburn by Nora Ephron, funny, sad, bittersweet -- and the movie well acted with Meryl Streep and Jack Nicholson.

I always thought Nicholson getting the pie in the face was such a waste of a good key lime pie ...

One I just read for AV/AA -- Barbara Comyns's Our Spoons Came from Woolworths. First-person narration by a young woman who isn't simple-minded but is definitely deadpan naive.

Also, one of my all-time favorite books ever, Rita Williams-Garcia's mother-daughter coming-of-age story One Crazy Summer, winner of the 2011 Coretta Scott King Award (and also Scott O'Dell and Newbery honors and National Book Award finalist).

Most of Ann Tyler's books fall into the "Sad-funny" shelf. I think St. Maybe was one of the best. Her later books, not as much, but still good reading.

Interesting – I didn't find St. Maybe as sad-funny as some of her others. It didn't resonate with me the way Ladder of Years did or Back When We Were Grownups, which probably says more about my stage of life than anything else.