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.

Our RE teacher read excerpts of Go Ask Alice to us each lesson when I was about 15. I was spellbound and bought the book. I found it sad and disturbing and never dabbled in drugs. Surprised to read the posts about it.

Some fantastic books on this thread!

Tuesdays with Morrie is my one. An absolutely beautiful memoir of the writer going to visit his old lecturer who is dying of motor disease on Tuesdays. Stuck with me for so many reasons, not least the simplicity of it

@OnceUponAMidnightBeery

This is very exciting! I almost think that I should track a copy down and read it again. Will put the books you have mentioned on my list as well

@LesleyA

I know this much is true, Wally lamb. She’s come undone, Wally lamb An equal music, Vikram Seth The God of Small Things. Dry White Season (an absolute must)

So glad someone else appreciates I Know This Much Is True as much as I do! Have you seen the TV series? I sobbed for hours!

A little life
Shutterbabe

There's a tv series of I know this much is true?

I Know This Much is True for me too. Wally Lamb is a beautiful writer - I also really love She's Come Undone. He can write a female character very well.

I'd also add:
The Goldfinch - I particularly loved the section of the book where he is living with his Dad in Las Vegas
Station Eleven
Life After Life
Memoirs of a Geisha

@Panticus we have the same taste ! The Las Vegas bit of the goldfinch is almost dystopian but fascinating

Violinist - yes I read The Radium Girls. Tragic.

[quote Carriemac]@Panticus we have the same taste ! The Las Vegas bit of the goldfinch is almost dystopian but fascinating[/quote]
Totally. And Boris is such a good character as a teen

All LM Montgomery (not just Anne)
Still Missing by Beth Gutcheon

Flowers for Algernon! It’s devastatingly sad but I adore it and have read it multiple times

A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry.
Yes , totally tragic and a view into a world I’ve never really known about
But too harrowing to read again

Beloved , Blonde Roots and The Underground Railroad - the older I get the more horrified I get by the slave trade . Such mass inhumanity and over centuries , I just cannot reconcile such cruelty . I actually can’t read any more

This little life , well I have not re read it . It annoyed me . Main character annoyed me and so did some of his friends . A relentless book

Another vote for A Fine Balance.
I wasn't expecting to be so completely transported into that world (poverty in India)
Also the Grapes of Wrath hasn't been mentioned yet, that stayed with me a long time too.

Hi

@LakieLady

Le Grand Meaulnes by Alain-Fournier: a lyrical, magical rite of passage novel that I fell in love with and have re-read possibly 10 or even 15 times. I've given copies to several friends, all of whom have loved it.

Jude the Obscure (Thomas Hardy). Possibly the saddest book I have ever read, but it also made me angry.

Oh God. "Done because we are too menny" This still punches me in the gut whenever I think of it. It's just so fucking sad.

Also We Need to Talk About Kevin. I do love an unreliable narrator, and I'm still not sure if Kevin was bad, or if he was made bad. I change my mind a lot.

Billy by Albert French. I cried and cried. Just so unfair, and even worse because you know full well that people would have seen it done and been glad about it.

The Road. Just bleak.

Just thought of another, slightly more obscure one I read as a teenager. I Never Promised You a Rose Garden, about a girl with schizophrenia. I remember being totally absorbed by this imaginary kingdom she had created and the description of life in a psychiatric hospital. Very immersive.

@Aspiringmatriarch

Just thought of another, slightly more obscure one I read as a teenager. I Never Promised You a Rose Garden, about a girl with schizophrenia. I remember being totally absorbed by this imaginary kingdom she had created and the description of life in a psychiatric hospital. Very immersive.

I adored that novel and was thinking about it recently. I don’t think I’ve read it since I read and loved it in my teens, so part of me is afraid to revisit it in case it doesn’t stand up. The falling god, and the nice, tough psychiatrist and the fact that the happiest thing that happens to the heroine once she has battled her way out of the hospital is that a neighbour lets her look after her baby without being suspicious.

A deeply obscure one that I did revisit for the first time since I was about 12, and it absolutely stood up was The Ghost Garden by Hila Feil, published in the late 70s and would now be classified as YA, about two girls who try to contact ghosts on Cape Cod, but is really about growing up, change and death.

The Grapes of Wrath.

Bitch: In Praise of Difficult Women by Elizabeth Wurtzel.

Everything I could find by Cynthia Heimel

I adored that novel and was thinking about it recently. I don’t think I’ve read it since I read and loved it in my teens, so part of me is afraid to revisit it in case it doesn’t stand up. The falling god, and the nice, tough psychiatrist and the fact that the happiest thing that happens to the heroine once she has battled her way out of the hospital is that a neighbour lets her look after her baby without being suspicious.

Yes! I remember that bit too. I think the book was based on the author's own life actually. Nice to come across someone else who has read it.

Children of Greene Knowe by Lucy M Boston and The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper were my childhood favourites.
I've just read the Queen of Bloody Everything by Joanna Nadin what a book

As a mother of teenagers - asking for it

Life and death in shanghai.

Starts out, lady writing at her beautiful table in her beautiful house and is quickly imprisoned, nealry killed, crippled under the absurdity in communist China...

Very, very powerful book about the injustices of communist China, socialists, useful idiots etc...

The private life of chairman mao again as above. Scintillating book about the inner court of the world's biggest raging killer.. Psychopath in charge of millions and millions of Poor Chinese, subjected to his sheer Maddness, sorry socialism!!

Rebeccas Tale by sally beauman. Brilliant book but you'll never quite look at Rebecca in the same way again.

His dark materials
A man called Ove