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.

John Wyndham! How could I forget him. I think The Chrysalids was the most disturbing but The Midwich Cuckoos and The Triffids run it a pretty close second. I'd like to read them all again but I daren't.

Oh and chilling in a different way.... Once by Morris Gleitzman

I really wish there was a "like" button on this thing!!!!

‘Stoner’ by John Williams was haunting for its detailed exploration of isolation and sadness.

I agree with so many of the books mentioned here. Puffball by Fay Weldon really horrified me as a young woman. We need to Talk about Kevin lingered for months in the back of my mind, as did The Fifth Child. Nightmare books for mothers to read.

Barfly, Charles Bukowski
Last Exit To Brooklyn

If you've ever wondered what it would be like to be in a profoundly disabled body at the mercy of unpleasant carers, William Horwood's The Skallagrigg is an arresting read.

American Psycho is the toughest creepiest book I've ever read.

I who have never known man by Jacqueline Harpman

I'm currently reading the storyteller by jodi picoult and it is harrowing. i know the holocaust is not new information but it's very up close in this book. maybe it's because i've just had a baby. or because my mother is not a british citizen and has therefore been put on our great nations list of post-brexit undesirables... it's really troubling me but i can't stop reading it.

I read Brave New World. Never again! I could almost see what happened at the start of the book becoming true. I don't want to spoil it but I wouldn't recommend especially if you have children and even more if they are small.

Billy by Whitley Strieber, freaked me out for days

The Book of You by Claire Kendall and The Little House by Philippa Gregory are two I've read over and over and both have stayed with me. Different themes but similar feelings of suffocation and powerlessness.

Also We Need to Talk about Kevin and pretty much anything by Margaret Atwood. Especially Cats Eye which I studied during my gcse years nearly 20 years ago. Really captures that subtle, insidious bullying that can occur between young girls making sense of the world and their place within in. And how although it can seem like almost nothing to outsiders, it can have a huge impact over your life.

Phineyj Read Day of the Triffids at School in the 70s ! Agree disturbing and made a big impression on an unworldly 15 year old! BTW you are all so brave in your reading choices .I still like reading the Famous Five /Harry Potter!

The book I've read that's disturbed me more than any other is 'apple tree yard'- it literally ruined my holiday! I found the rape scene so disturbing and then the bit about the experiment on the mum and baby monkey - other people I know have read it and enjoyed it but I found it a traumatic read

Just ordered a couple from this list. I tried to read We need to Talk about Kevin and I found it tedious and couldn't get past the first few chapters. The film really disturbed me though. Another I would add is Lord of the Flies by William Golding.

I'll third Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk....it's the only book I can think of that I would never ever pick up again

Never let me go -Kazuo Ishiguro

Such an unnerving book. I told my best friend about it, who laughed at me and read it himself to prove a point. He called me very late at night that he's just finished the book and didn't think he could sleep at night now. The impact was way bigger than he ever could expect.

I’m the King of the Castle by Susan Hill is very disturbing.

I shot daddy by Stacey Lannert will haunt me forever.At several points during the book I struggled to hold back the tears.

It's an autobiographical book and what she went through was horrifying.

Ouija Board. J Gardner. On Amazon.

Story of teenage angst challenging authority, told through a horror story.

Interesting links with witchcraft/history of catholicism
showing links between organised religion and paganism.

Spares, by Michael Marshall Smith, is way better than Never Let Me Go.
He wrote one of the most horrible short stories I’ve ever read too - More Tomorrow.

The Gates of Janus by Ian Brady is interesting.

His Bloody Project by Graeme Burnet.

Also another vote for all things Minette Walters.

Jodi Picoult is more of a mixed bag, I really didn't like Spark of Light at all, but Small Great Things, Plain Truth and Nineteen Minutes are all great reads. The latter covers school shootings and in my view is way better than We Need To Talk About Kevin which while very readable is a complete cop-out.

Spares, by Michael Marshall Smith, is way better than Never Let Me Go.

Right, I have to go read that now just so that I can tell you to get out of here with the idea that ANYTHING could be way better than Never Let Me Go. Bang goes my productive day.

Some good ones here- I read the Road in the late nights when my son was first born and it really affected me. The Fahrenheit twins, Michael Faber's short stories, I also found grim, as was Aldous Huxley's The Island.
In kid's, Marianne Dreams.