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.

Alma Cogan by Gordon Burn, I actually threw it across the room at the end.

The Beach (not to be confused with On the Beach - I'm talking about the 90s backpacker novel) is one of my favourite books of all time. The film is a decent adaptation but it can't really capture the overarching atmosphere of dread and the narrator's slow descent into psychosis.

John Lanchester is brilliant. He sometimes publishes unnerving short stories in the LRB.

Here is a link to a very unsettling one called ‘Love Island’.

(It’s a subscription mag (a very good one) but you should get to read one article without paying.)

www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v40/n15/john-lanchester/love-island

Tampa (Alissa Nutting)
Forbidden (Tabitha Suzuma)
120 Days of Sodom (Marquis de Sade)
Good Samaritans (Will Carver)
Boy Toy (Barry Lyga)
A Certain Age (Rebecca Ray)
The Fog (James Herbert) - read this as a teen and have never forgotten one of the early scenes.

Last one - I never quite recovered from reading Pet Sematary by Stephen King.

One second after

The Girl With All The Gifts stayed with me for a long time, one of the best books I’ve ever read even though I’m not normally interested in sci-fi.

Also Only Child by Rhiannon Navin. Harrowing and heart wrenching but very very good.

The Bachman Books were great - the long walk was incredible

Grasshopper Jungle: ‘If you only read one book this year about sexually confused teens battling 6 foot tall head-chomping praying mantises in small town America, make it this one.' Charlie Higson

In the small town of Ealing, Iowa, Austin and his best friend Robby have accidentally unleashed an unstoppable army. An army of horny, hungry, six-foot-tall praying mantises that only want to do two things. This is the truth. This is history. It’s the end of the world. And nobody knows anything about it.

A book called ‘trapped’ by Jack Kilborn. I had to stop reading it as it gave me nightmares. It was pretty horrible.

Not quite in the same vein but for books that really affected and upset me, Captain Corelli's Mandolin sent me into an acute depression . I
Was on holiday in Kefalonia when I read it (where it's set). It's so unbearably sad and horrific at times when detailing what happened when it was invaded, which of course was all true. I just couldn't comprehend how this most beautiful of places had experienced such horror. I took me ages to get over it.

Jonathan Littell Les bienveillantes. i borrowed it from a friend and understandably she didnt want it back. It is very well written and i finished it in a couple of days despite its size, but it is really disturbing, I seriously think it can mess up your mental health. now I don't know what to do with this book, I can't throw it away as i still think its a masterpiece but i also don't like to see it on my bookshelf.

FromTheAllotment you won’t regret it!
When Never Let Me Go came out I said But.....but....that’s just SPARES!

Shawnee by Ed Trewavas is brilliant.

Engleby by Sebastian Faulks

👀

Comfort of Strangers - Ian McEwan. Even now it gives me the willies thinking about it!

@RumpoleoftheBaileys The Long Walk is my favourite Bachman and maybe Stephen King book.

I love this thread!!! I'm off to go order loads of disturbing reads...my DH will sleep with one eye open!

What they do in the dark by Amanda Coe is horrible, the ending is so vile I had to take it back to the library straight away as couldn’t bear it being in my house, and it still upsets me now.

We have always lived in the castle
The Haunting of Hill House both by Shirley Jackson - both excellent!

@TorysSuckRevokeArticle50 you should read the real case the girl next door is based on, the real girl was Sylvia Likens.

LePimpernelScarlette agreed! Also a Shirley Jackson short story called The Lottery.

The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks left me feeling creeped out for days.

Oh, and Rant by Chuck Pahlaniuk is properly weird.