Have undergone some kind of life-altering trauma that's left you in the depths of misery.
For all Scrooge's personal renewal, the story has glimpsed depths of misery and cruelty that can't simply be erased by one man's reclamation.
Today, the society of entrepreneurial individuals competing in the rational market reveals unplumbed depths of misery and despair; it spawns a nihilistic rebellion against order itself.
"It's a novel which speaks of the moral decay, the baseness of humanity, of suffering humanity, but which suggests, in the depths of misery, the possibility of redemption," said Le Monde of the novel, hailing NDiaye's "exceptional virtuosity".
A year after the Tet Offensive, student riots, the killing of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, and the Prague Spring and its suppression, it felt as if new depths of misery, violence and grimness were being plumbed.
(The latter's response to the question about his "lowest depths of misery": "Did you read the reviews for 'Last Action Hero'?") Television had an even more powerful effect.
Even in the depths of misery - most notably against England and Wales - Scotland have found a way of being competitive against the French.
You see, the show has reached new depths of misery with each passing week, and my experience of recapping has transformed from one of delightful mockery into, well, the literary equivalent of pulling teeth -- or something else just as miserable.
