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.

@FredaFrogspawn Stoner is one of my all time favourites. You are so routing for one thing in his life to go right and for him to find happiness.

I would recommend Educated by Tara Westover, it’s her account of growing up in a very disfunctional family and how she escaped. If it was a MN thread it would have trigger warning stamped all over it and the content would probably lend itself to the Stately Homes thread.

YellowRanger thank you for the recommendation of The Fahrenheit Twins. I like Michel Faber's writing.

Oh yes @rainbowshine I loved Educated.

Great idea for a thread OP.

I read The yellow wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman years ago and despite it being a tiny short story (about 25 pages), it’s probably the book that’s had the most impact. It’s about a Victorian woman’s decline into insanity and how her ‘hysteria’ is belittled and dismissed.

Also All Quiet on the Western Front, WW1 novel told from the POV of a German soldier.

There's a short story called Green Amber Red by Jane Casey (readable in 10 mins) - it's the bottom story on this link:

www.writing.ie/interviews/writing-ie-short-story-of-the-year-shortlist-read-vote/

Push by sapphire (the book Precious was based on)
American Psycho (my absolute fave but horrifying)
Sophie's Choice

Ohh, I just bought Educated for my holiday book Rainbowshine. Good to hear it recommended.

@basilofbakerstreet thank you 😊 some really good recommendations coming through on this thread isn't there!

American psycho is so disturbing that it makes you worry a bit for Bret Easton Ellis' mental health.

The Marquis de Sade wrote some pretty gruesome shit. My parents had one of his books which I read at the age of 14 or so and I think it might have messed me up a bit. 😳 But you might find it interesting if you're after controversial stuff.

Once in a house on fire (true story about growing up with abuse and poverty)

Mend the living - amazing story following a heart through the process of a heart transplant. A wellcome trust winner a couple of years ago.

Ian McEwan’s short stories from early 80s including cement garden and the one where the two nurses surgically remove the willy of the guy cheating on them eek and the one where the woman makes the man disappear through a complex sexual contortion!

Nancy Friday - women in love and secret garden!

The Roald Dahl adult short stories.

Deadkidsongs by Toby Litt - Very unusual narration style for people who would like something a bit different.

Agree that Skallagrigg by William Horwood is disturbing, horrific and inspiring and every time I read it I cry at least 4 times. Horwood is a vastly under rated writer, his 4 books about moles also make me cry, different thread though!

Also agree with John Wyndham books, although for me Web is the most disturbing, spiders and nuclear testing, or an age old curse....

Stoner - yes definitely. Such a beautiful book.

The Perfect Stranger by PJ Cavanagh - about his love of his wife and her early unexpected death - I still remember how it made me cry 40 years ago.

If you like dystopian stories try Swan Song by Robert Mccammon. I got it after seeing it recommended several times on here. It was well written and a good story but so extremely disturbing I wish I hadn't read it.

Thank God my parents didn't have that one then! I'm arachnophobic and the others were bad enough!

'Web' I mean.

Donna Tartt Secret History

The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara kingsolver

Legend of a Suicide by David Vann (very disturbing, especially if you have personal experience of suicide but an extraordinary book).

Chuck Palahniuk (or however he spells himself) Lullaby. At least, I think that's the one with the snot collection, the deliberate spider bites and the disturbing ruminating about how sanitary towels are disposed of? Although to be fair, it could have been any of his oeuvre. I'm glad not to be inside some of these guys' heads tbh.

Loved Iain Banks' The Crow Road but The Wasp Factory was uuuurgh and the later one with the gang rape and the exploding Stradivarius. Just no.

The Secret History is somewhat amusing if you imagine people actually drinking and drugging that amount. Their livers wouldn't actually make it to the later dramatic stuff... It has got the most realistic ever depiction of a bad migraine though. I assume the author probably suffers.

Definitely going to get some of these.

Last Exit to Brooklyn ?

Spycatcher ?

A little life.

Incredible book.

**Phineyj Web is one of those that the thought is worse than the description. Really well written. I love John Wyndham, re-read my early 1980's paperbacks every year, they are very tatty now!
Sorry for de-railing OP.
Another disturbing one I forgot is Apt Pupil by Stephen King, another 'novella' as he calls them. It really hits home that 'ordinary'people can do dispicable things, but is evil lurking within or can we be corrupted?

The Butcher Boy by Patrick McCabe. So sad and disturbing.