Controversial/unnerving books. Recommendations?

[JasonVoorhees]

Hi all

Been browsing the good old World Wide Web this chilly Saturday evening while my LO is with her dad, and came across an article regarding the most "traumatizing books people have ever read". Basically books that stick with you forever, due to their disturbing content.

I'm an avid reader and pretty bored of mainstream novels. Read a few weird books in my time and recently bought Lolita (a literary classic, so I've heard). WIBU to ask your experiences and/or recommendations?

Looking forward to your replies, hopefully some of you Mumsnetters are as weird as me.

@YouthGoneMild - you piqued my interest enough that I downloaded Cows onto my kindle.

Wow. Bloody hell. I don't think I've ever read anything quite like that before. I kept wanting to stop, but I also wanted to find out where he was going with the story!

I don't think I'd want to be in the author's head...

@Zoidbergonthehalfshell I’m sorry!

Easily the most disturbing book I’ve read, but I also read it all the way also and I read it quite quickly as I wanted it gone.

That one definitely stayed with me as it read it about 10 years ago.

I’ve not read anything else by the author, but I wonder what his other books are like.

Again, sorry!

@YouthGoneMild Please don't apologise! I wouldn't say I enjoyed it, but it was an experience, and oddly absorbing. I'm glad I read it!

One of the most disturbing books I remember reading was What Niall Saw by Brian Cullen - a diary kept by a 7 year old boy in the immediate aftermath of a nuclear war. You see it all through his eyes as he and his family deteriorate.

It's horrible, and strangely haunting.

@Zoidbergonthehalfshell as you read my offering, I’ve just ordered a copy of your suggestion on amazon.

As a child of the 80s I’ve always been terrified of nuclear war, so I’m sure I’ll find it horrific. Cheers

@YouthGoneMild - I'll be very interested to know what you think!

If you are sci-fi fan near London here’s something interesting -
royalsociety.org/science-events-and-lectures/2020/02/science-fiction/?utm_campaign=6756&utm_source=adestra&utm_medium=email

Placemarking for recommendations later but a few I remember as being disturbing.

Schindlers List absolutely haunted me and I won't read anything like it again. I really want to read The Tattoist and Boy In the striped pjs but won't.

Brother in the land. Read it in year 8 at school and did a full topic about it. Was horrendous.

Grinny. We also did this at school.

Flowers In The Attic. Awful.

Does anyone know a novel that was about the SARS virus and a family / community going into lockdown
I can't remember the name or the author but i couldn't put it down

Don’t know about a book but there was Val mcdermid’s compelling radio play a couple of years ago about antibiotic resistance, starting with a disease from a bad sausage sold from a van at a music festival - Resistance. Compulsive listening that was.

The Story of O ...I read this book many years ago and it has stayed with me forever. Well worth a google to see if you can find it.

I have found my people!

I found Animal Farm very unpleasant and disturbing. Also, Perfume by Patrick Suskind, as previously mentioned. I did really enjoy Engleby by Sebastian Faulks, though it did have unnerving elements to it.

When the Wind Blows by Raymond Briggs. Not a book but a graphic novel.

It’s been said many times but also American Psycho. 🤮

Most of my recommendations are already here, eg American Psycho, Marabou Stork Nightmares, Perfume, etc. I’d also suggest The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood (actually pretty much anything by Margaret Atwood) or Catch 22. Catch 22 has been a bit of a white whale for me for years as I’ve never managed to get into it. I watched the TV series recently and decided to have another go and FINALLY got it. And loved it, but some of the horrific, black humour is stuck in my head.

And on American Psycho, I was once on a long flight where a late teen/early 20s girl next to me was reading it. She got about 1/3 of the way through and physically dropped the book with such a look of horror and disgust. We had a bit of a chat about it and I had a look where she had got to and suggested not to go any further as it wasn’t going to improve. She left the novel on the plane when we disembarked.

Beloved, by Toni Morrison
Kafka on the Shore, by Haruki Murakami

Barefoot Gen by Keiji Nakazawa. Graphic novel, extremely brutal.

I'm surprised no-one has mentioned Edward St Aubyn. Never Mind is so beautifully written but so utterly shocking. I couldn't bear to finish it and the shocking part haunted me for months.

'A child called it', stayed with me for such a long time.

On the beach by Neville Shute. About nuclear war
Room by Emma Donahue
And another vote for American Psycho

Anyone else think they must be very strange?! The Wasp Factory didn't affect me at all

Nineteen Eighty-Four, written in 1948.

You’ll be amazed at the parallels.

CCTV everywhere (“Telescreens”).

A three class society where:

• The Inner Party- the elite who make the rules (Like the business and political class).
• The professional class are the most restricted as to what they can do or say (think about how professionals can lose their job for expressing the wrong opinion about something today.)
• The Proles (working class) are impoverished and downtrodden but more or less free to express whatever views they like because they have no power. (A self employed builder or person on benefits would not lose their job for gender critical tweeting in the way a middle class professional would).

Scary stuff!

The god squad by paddy doyle.
Its heartbreaking and a true story

@Dieu me too, The Wasp Factory is one of my favourite books

A Little Life
Finished it a couple of weeks ago and am haunted by it. There were times when it was so disturbing/ upsetting that I thought I couldn't read it anymore but I am glad I got to the end.

The Last Days of Jack Sparks