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.

@HeidiHaughton

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.

I had completely forgotten Go Ask Alice!

Presumably the nuns had it in our school library because of its anti-drug message, but it’s all the hip parties, the main character and her friend opening a jewellery shop, and the fact that their boyfriends turn out to be having sex with one another that stuck with me. (And the author’s bizarre obsession with her character preferring tampons to sanitary towels — she was always going on about Tampax and Kotex...)

Plus the fact that the author also produced lots more supposed real teenage diaries which warned against Satan worship, AIDS, shagging your teacher etc.

I liked most of the John Irving books but particularly A Son of the Circus. I loved all the interwoven elements of the plot around a 20 year old murder mystery and a new case in the present day. I can’t stop going back and re-reading good omens by Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett. Love both authors but this book is just one from my teenage years that I still find engaging and funny.

Birdsong: read it for GCSE or A level English and I knew then it was going to stay with me, I bought it and reread often.
The tattooist of Auschwitz: it’s impossible to forget how it made me feel

I really liked The Snow Child. Keep meani f to reread it. I can feel winter when reading it.

From teenagerhood, Children of the Dust.

The Auschwitz Museum doesn't recommend the Tattooist of Auschwitz.

@HeidiHaughton

The Auschwitz Museum doesn't recommend the Tattooist of Auschwitz.

No, likewise The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas. And it’s not hard to see why.

The Road is brilliant - it made me think I have a lack of survival instinct and only want to live in relative comfort.

The Goldfinch is a beautiful book even though it’s a strange story.

Adrian Mole.

Black Beauty. It opened my eyes at a young age to the cruelty that animals suffer. It also inspired my love of horses (and all animals). My mum gave me her copy from her childhood, and its one of my most treasured possessions - that copy of the book is nearly 60 years old now.

Both of mine have been mentioned already...

A Little Life, which is just utterly devastating, I felt incredibly unsettled when I finished reading it, and felt kind of restless, it was very bizarre.

And Wasted, by Marya Hornbacher, about her life with eating disorders and mental illness. I have read it perhaps three times, first when I was a teenager, and twice as an adult. It is a strange read for me, I find the author rather unlikeable, despite feeling dreadfully sad for her. A good read though.

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro. I don't know why, maybe it's the closeness to reality and the possibility that this could happen. There's a bit early on when one of the little girls in the school is pretending to cradle a baby and it's just so sad.

Following as need new books.

I forget books once I've read them it pisses me off but it does give me the benefit of being able to read them again and again and again.

'Flowers in the attic', I hadn't read the blurb before I read it and I remember being really disturbed by it.

Recently 'My dark Vanessa' by Kate Elizabeth Russell. An amazing book but one that really delves into a coercive relationship which made for some uncomfortable reading. And 'My absolutely darling' by Gabriel Tallent. I wish I hadn't read that last one

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas. I read it 2 years ago and it really opened my eyes to racism. I thought about this book a lot last year during the Black Lives Matter movement. It upset me quite a lot as well as making me angry that it was reflective of real life.

I recently read Homesick, Why I live in a Shed. Whilst it didn't haunt me as much as THuG, it made me take a step back and think about a few things.

Children of the Dust. It shaped my nightmares for years afterwards when I read it aged 11, especially the first section - an ordinary family experiencing a nuclear war.

Go Ask Alice is a strange one, isn’t it? I also got it free on the front of a magazine and was gripped, but as an adult can see how OTT and heavy handed it is. Didn’t stop me experimenting with drugs either...

The Fifth Child by Doris Lessing got to me. It bothered me that it was never explored or explained why Ben was how he was, and also the ease with which everyone but his mother rejects him. As the parent if a child with SN it haunts me.

I read quickly, can easily read a book in a few sessions, demands of kids and work notwithstanding. So I’ll read at least 100 books/year.

The best book from last year was The Natural Way of Things, by Charlotte Wood. You may not have come across it if not in Australia, although it was feted here. I read several books a week but this one left me reeling.

Ugly by Constance Briscoe. It broke my heart.

@JoyIsCounterfeit

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.

I've read a few books about the Wests, but not this one - thanks for the recommendation!

@latheritup

Ugly by Constance Briscoe. It broke my heart.

I've read this too. It was awful

Books that really powerfully evoke a place tend to stay with me.

Off the top of my head Wuthering Heights (the moors) and The Grass Is Singing (early Doris Lessing - rural Zimbabwe) spring to mind.

Most recently Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell. Such a beautiful, evocative imagining of a time and place.

Also, books written by women that give me strong identification and have lots of parallels with my own life tend to stay with me forever more. Recent examples - NW by Zadie Smith and Americanah by Chimimanda Ngozi Adichie.

@BurningBenches

YY to Never Let Me Go. His writing in general stays with me. I don’t actually enjoy reading Ishiguro’s books...they’re uncomfortable and his writing style is disarming and weird. But he is a powerful writer and anything I’ve ever read by him stays with me.

@Youreatragedystartingtohappen

God, I think a generation of girls were traumatised bu reading Flowers in the Attic! It’s stayed with me too, and I sometimes think I should re-read them (probably really shite writing to older minds?) but I’m almost too scared to. So uncomfortable and sad and heart wrenching. Well, it was to teenage me anyway!

I can't forget Meg Rosoff's 'How I live now'.
Another book that gripped me for years was Jung Chang's 'Wild swans'.

Two novellas I picked up years ago in Borders on Oxford St (many years ago!). I read them one after the other, and both have stayed with me ever since because the emotional punch they packed was outsize: Reunion by Fred Ulhlman, and Address Unknown by Kathrine Kressman Taylor.

Also love Silk by Alessandro Barrico, and Embers by Sandor Marai.

To kill a mockingbird. Eye opening as a teenager and the ethos behind it has never left me

Wuthering Heights.. I'm fascinated by the Brontes send the amazing prose that came from them given their strict, austere life in a little town on the Moors.
Never let me Go. The film too after watching it at the cinema I felt winded and couldn't move.
Memoirs of Geisha... Was so disappointed when I realised it wasn't real!