Books that have stayed with you.

[FrostyChocolateMilkshake]

Currently reading a book called Unravelling Oliver and I already know it will stay with me; the writing is fantastic but the subject matter is surrounding domestic violence. A powerful read so far.

Another book was The Girl Next Door by Jack Ketchum. Based on the murder of Sylvia Likens in the 1960s (don't Google if you are easily upset).

So AIBU to ask, what is a book that has stayed with you and why?

Any recommendations (I enjoy controversial books in particular) would be greatly appreciated too.

Elli. I read it a bit too young, after the Diary of Anne Frank.

A Little Life

If I were a man - Primo Levi;
Heart of Darkness-Joseph Conrad;
A Secret History-Donna Tartt;
American Psycho-Bret Easton Ellis;
The Beauty Myth-Naomi Wolf;
Wolf Hall trilogy-Hilary Mantel,
Silmarillion-JRRTolkien.

Oops, why: Levi- documenting his tenacity in surviving the brutal Holocaust; it was his journey post-liberation that particularly imprinted into my long term memory, but all of it is a cold, hard look at an unimaginable, horrific, experience.
Secret History has bizarre story but so well-written it's compulsive. The lives of friends, and their binding secret.
American Psycho is just hilarious and unique; excessive & comedic.
Wolf Hall is the best historic fiction ever: I felt like I had lived in Henry VIII's court!
Beauty Myth is the text that helped partially free me from my eating disorder.
Silmarillion is beautiful genesis myth, heroic gods and elves, battles & romance. I re-read it a lot.
And Heart of Darkness is a journey into obsession.
Would like to add Will Self - great ape, for the fantastic reality flip he pulls off with savage critique of society between the lines.
Hope these aren't too old?

Have you read Happy Like Murderers about Fred & Rose West? And the Bugliosi book about Charles Manson? If you like controversial, these real life insights are detailed and well-written. Not soap box cheap cash ins.

Wasted - Marya Hornbacher.

It’s a memoir of her teenager anorexia and serious longterm mental illnesses.

It’s just bloody good, basically. Well worth a read.

As a kid - - Z for Zachiarah
and the wonderful Magic Faraway tree.

They both still pop into my head in different scenarios!

More recently:
The Midnight Library by Matt Haig was good, all about the what if's in life.
For sci-fi Blake Crouch and 'Dark Matter' or his more normal stuff 'Abandon' a very good mystery book, that actually seems impossible and works out completely explained.
For anyone into physics 'The Hidden Reality' by Brian Greene

Looking forward to seeing suggestions, I bought some books off the back of a previous thread here, which were good.

Night - Elie Wiesel - Holocaust memoir - sobering, harrowing, needs to be remembered and respected.

Lucky - Alice Sebold - rape memoir - equal parts upsetting, madenning and inspiring.

The Hearing Trumpet - Leonora Carrington - surrealist novel which is just bonkers and like reading someone’s extended dystopian dream

Marley & Me - John Grogan - was made into a film but just a memoir about a faithful family dog, as a dog lover it is very close to home simple and lovely, sad when the inevitable happens, celebration of life with man’s best friend.

The Wizard of the Crow. It's a love story, looks at corruption in Africa in an outrageous way, colonialism and witchcraft. It's one of the most original books I've ever read.

A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
The Bone People - Keri Hulme.

Anything by Khaled Hosseini. and the mountains echoed was particularly good

Birdsong - never looked at old men of the war generation with the same eyes again.

A Fine balance. A pp has mentioned this and it's my all time 'stayed with me' book.

Was an amazing insight into a completely different type of life.

Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton. Read it as a kid and it inspired me to value mathematics and its applications

The City and The City by China Mieville. I cannot explain why it has stayed with me so vividly but it has.

Everything I've ever read by Diana Wynne Jones or Ursula K. Le Guin.

A little life. Just the most harrowing story about the protagonist’s life. Beautifully written but desperately upsetting.

To Kill a Mockingbird. Probably the first time, as a young child, that I realised that racism was not just a dislike or a bit of bullying.

The Best Little Girl In The World. About a child’s decent into Anorexia.

Go Ask Alice. Came free with a magazine. A 70’s journey into drugs, published after Alice’s death from OD from her diaries.

Probably a few more i can’t recall atm.

The Indifferent Stars Above by Daniel Brown. It is a beautifully written and very eerie recounting of the Donner Party. I listened to a podcast about it and they recommended the book. I couldn't put it down

From childhood Lorna Doone.
Woman on the Edge of Time by Marge Piercy, I often think about that book.

A Little Life broke me. I couldn't read anything for weeks afterwards

Parts of the Goldfinch I also thought were beautifully written and made an emotional impact

A Fine Balance as it was so incredibly vivid and engaging. Its years since I've read it I think I need to read it again

The Northern Lights trilogy by Philip Pullman

Afterwards by Rosamund Lupton and Every Last One by Anna Quindlen both stayed with me too to a lesser extent.

Go Ask Alice, because it's so hilariously ridiculous and over the top. Can't believe we all were told soberly it was a warning from a dead girl. Reactionary fiction.
The Road. Wish I hadn't read it.

Another vote for A Little Life

The Book of Negroes is also a fantastic and heartbreaking read. I can’t recommend it highly enough

Birdsong and Charlotte Grey are both epic tales too

A Prayer for Owen Meanie

A little life is amazing, I loved that book

The shadow of the wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon is another that stayed with me because the language is so beautiful

There’s thousands, I’d be here all day.

But as people are taking about true crime, it’s Ann Rule’s book the stranger beside me that shocks more than any other.

She was a crime writer, ex police officer, commissioned to write about women being murdered at the time. The killer wasn’t identified or caught yet. It was Ted Bundy, who was a friend of hers.

It’s massively chilling to read her realisation that her friend, who she believes to be a kind and decent man, is the man responsible for these brutal acts of terror against women.

I read the original as a child, borrowed from the library. Bought a copy as an adult to reread and it had an updated afterword. In the earlier edition she ends saying what a waste of a life that this is who he is, but that despite everything he was still a friend in some form. In the updated one she’s reached the point of realising that there was no real friendship, that he has no capacity to care for anyone else, that their time working together on a suicide hotline wasn’t some good act that went a tiny way to humanising such a violent man, but that in fact it wasn’t a good action, just merely part of the act of a violent man to enable him to slip by undetected and carry out his crimes of sexual violence against women. It’s like reading her grow up and see the truth about how men see women, how there’s just nothing redeemable ever about him, how never did he ever have any genuine care or respect for her what’s so ever. It’s chilling to see her realise this, but it’s also very refreshing compared to the back drop of such huge sympathy he received from female fans, from a judge that congratulated him on his self defence and claimed he could have been a lawyer. He couldn’t have been, he could only ever have been a killer because his violent fantasy’s and entitlement to women were all of who he was, everything else was just carefully controlled disguise to enable the predator to access his prey. Watching Ann Rule grasp that between the army editition and the later one made the veil drop from my eyes too.

Oh gosh so many..
but the first one to pop into my head was A Thousand Splendid Suns.. I always tear up remembering the final chapter/Paragraph.