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.

I've read a lot of the other books mentioned and those three are the ones I've never forgotten, along with a very disturbing children's book where the adults all die of the plague and they can't get rid of the bodies (they leave them in the bedrooms) but fortunately I can't remember the title of that one. What is it with the terrifying children's fiction?

Reading others' suggestions I agree I was unsettled by The Cement Garden, The Wasp Factory and Flowers for Algernon.

Recently read teenage fiction The Bunker Diary by Kevin Brooks; wish someone had warned me.

On the beach has stayed with me for nearly 30 years. It’s massively still relevant.

I also really like Jodi picoult. A spark of light effected me

Have you read the pat barker books? They are interesting from the perspective of someone living through war. Her famous trilogy is about a ww1 poets.

The flame alphabet. Is the most nightmarish creepy book I’ve ever read. And so unlike anything I’ve ever read that it’s impossible to describe it.

Just realised I missed @TimeIhadaNameChange 's mention of it.

Also - Tobacco Road by Erskine Caldwell. Not controversial as such but disturbing and one which has that kind of timeless quality although it was written in 1932.

Yes indeed if you think 'Child of God' is hard going, Blood Meridian is on another stratosphere. It's beautiful and almost biblical, but also the most violent book I have ever read (and I read a lot).

My Absolute Darling is excellent but very triggering.

The Lovely Bones is beautiful and tragic; violent yes but necessarily so.

Crash (Ballard) is disturbing but so is a lot of Ballard.

Edna O'Brien's 'Little Red Chairs' - brilliant read but contains one of the most horrific scenes of violence imaginable.

Has anyone read Sebastian Barry's 'Days without End'? this is another example of a novel which is brilliant and based on historical events (the Wild West) but also necessarily very violent indeed.

If violence is integral to the story then it is justified in my view. I'm sure there are plenty of trashy novels and pulp fiction which portray violence merely for the sake of it.

Oh yes @KatyN, On the Beach - gave me that awful, sick anxiety feeling for ages afterwards.

My Idea of Fun by Will Self. Not recommending it though, as twenty odd years have passed since I read it and he’s an absolute cockwomble.

For some reason I can't bring myself to read dystopian teen novels though; I saw the Hunger Games film and enjoyed it at the time but haven't read the book although it gets recommended alot.

I haven't read IT either.

Oh! On The Beach is on my bedside table right now! I've stopped after a few chapters, trying to get the courage to continue. It's disturbing how calm everyone is and Shute's detailed knowledge of things like submarines makes it all the more chilling.

The End of Alice is the only book I’ve ever just thrown in the bin after I read it - I just wanted it out the house.

The Debt to Pleasure by John Manchester. Takes you inside the mind of a quite engaging, quite revolting, cultured psychopath. Your mind will feel dirty afterwards. It's set in Brittany where by accident I actually read it. Brrr!

Oh and an honourable mention for M R James' ghost stories, especially Whistle and I'll Come for You, but they're all terrifying.

Lanchester. Not Manchester, auto correct.

The Passion of New Eve by Angela Carter (she described it as her evil book or something similar) and Cock and Bull by Will Self which is odd. Also as others have said American P

I've just bought several of these and chosen one for this month's book club. I'll blame you all if they throw me out of the group 😂

I’m so pleased that somebody else mentioned ‘Under the skin’ by Michael Faber. That really stayed with me!

Also, Cloud Atlas and Slade House by David Mitchell.

Short stories are often the ones which get me. Lots of Stephen King like Night Shift our Skeleton Crew. The John Wyndham story “Survival” (in the Seeds of Time collection). The Gerald Durrell story “The Entrance” (at the end of the otherwise nice fluffy Picnic collection).

Many of Rupert Thomson's novel are a bit weird and unnerving and like nothing I've read before. Some quite hard to get hold of now but worth looking out for.

The most appalling, awful book I ever read was 100 Days of Sodom by the Marquis de Sade. It's divided into sections of sexual fantasies which escalate in violence until they become truly, breathtakingly horrific.

No wonder he was imprisoned. The book was banned for the longest time, it might still be for all I know. I can't remember how i got hold of it but I wish I hadn't .

actually it's entitled '120 Days of Sodom'.

If you can track them down, Bentley Little, especially the earlier ones.
Also, it’s been withdrawn now, but old copies of The Bachman Books (Stephen King) contain ‘Getting It On’, about a school shooting. It goes into the motivation of the shooter, what his peers think etc and is fantastic.

The Unwomanly Face Of War by Svetlana Alexeievich. I made the mistake of reading it in a pub. It's about WW2 in Russia told by women and it is utterly horrifying.

The Reflecting Eye by John Connolly. It's a novella at the end of Nocturnes, a collection of short stories. I can't remember being that creeped out by a work of fiction.

Second the recommendations for Tampa by Alissa Nutting and Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk.
Also - Kimberly's Capital Punishment by Richard Milward and Wetlands by Charlotte Roche.

Gather the Daughters by Jennie Melamed - have read it about four times because I just can't get over it?!

Also agree with previous suggestions of we need to talk about Kevin and life of pi.