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Most disturbing book?

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24

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    #32
    mct1
    Registered Users Posts: 251 ✭✭mct1


    Gil Courtemanche's novel "A Sunday at the Pool in Kigali" about the Rwanda genocide - all the more horrifying for being based on fact.


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    #33
    Fad
    Registered Users Posts: 7,231 ✭✭✭Fad


    missingtime wrote: »
    Mo Hayder wrote a couple of books i found hard to read.
    Birdman and The Treatment.


    I love her books, creepy as hell though.

    Pig Island was pretty out there to say the least, and Tokyo wasnt too pleasant, i ll give those other two a whirl.

    As mentioned Haunted was pretty grim, hopefully Survivor which is on my ''to do list'' wont be as bad, but i wont count on it.


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    #34
    Inglorious
    Closed Accounts Posts: 137 ✭✭Inglorious


    I don't think Haunted is half as bad as people are making out. Sure that one particular short story by Saint Gut Free (anyone who wants to read it can find it here) is pretty rough but most of the rest were just dull and drab... amateur painter turns into hitman... woman kills people by rubbing their feet... rich people pretend to be homeless... etc. The main plot itself was also so off the wall that it could never really be taken seriously.

    I'd consider the following to be some of the most disturbing books:

    Hogg by Samuel R. Delany
    The Consumer by M. Gira
    The Girl Next Door by Jack Ketchum

    Also an honourable mention to Less Than Zero by Bret Easton Ellis. It's not particularly violent or perverse or anything but leaves you feeling utterly empty after reading it.


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    #35
    AJG
    Registered Users Posts: 348 ✭✭AJG


    'Z for Zachariah' - Richard C. O'Brien. I read this when I was about 11 and it definitely shook me up. From what I remember it was about a girl surviving a nuclear holocaust and it is very bleak.


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    #36
    Captain Ginger
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,082 ✭✭✭Captain Ginger


    120 Days of Sodom for me - Marquis de Sade, had no idea what I was getting into when I read that.


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    #37
    pookie82
    Registered Users Posts: 2,217 ✭✭✭pookie82


    Steve01 wrote: »
    American Psycho is pretty disturbing, but the only novel to scare the bejesus out of me is Stephen King's 1408. All 30 pages of it. Seriously!

    The movie didn't translate though! It was horrific, and not in a scary way - in a really cringeworthy waste of an hour and a half. (The Stephen King film, not American Psycho). But Stephen King books are not translating well into movies of late anyway.

    Caroline Smailes' In Search of Adam was particularly disturbing to read - not because of horror but because it described the abuse and rape of a young girl and her later depression and it was a tough read in that sense. In places I had to put it down and in others it had me in tears.


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    #38
    Oscholar
    Closed Accounts Posts: 29 ✭Oscholar


    Cujo by Stephen King. It might seem like a strange choice but it's a very stark book. King really makes you feel for the safety of the two main characters as it's more reality based than many of his novels.


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    #39
    boobookitty
    Closed Accounts Posts: 232 ✭✭boobookitty


    Cujo wasn't that bad for me, but I can see how it was disturbing. As a guy though, there was a bit afaik which made me cringe.


    Just finished Exquisite Corpse by Poppy Z. Brite.

    It involved necrophilia and cannibalism so it was pretty weird. Even weirder since it's about a real life serial killer.


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    #40
    toomevara
    Registered Users Posts: 5,772 ✭✭✭toomevara


    Dades wrote: »
    Recently, The Road was somewhat disturbing.

    I also remember being somewhat perturbed after reading Atomised, too.

    +1, both books that live long in the mind after reading. I found The Road to be one of the most affecting books i've read in a long, long time, but then McCarthy has a way of getting under your skin...I remember finding Blood Meridien as challenging many years ago...Ballard's 'Crash' is also one which tends to disturb in the literal sense of the word....


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    #41
    Valmont
    Registered Users Posts: 5,856 ✭✭✭Valmont


    A book that really unnerved me was The Castle by Franz Kafka. It really creeped me out and I thought about it quite a bit after I read it. American Psycho for pure gratuitous violence and nastiness (I loved it though) and The Road was especially creepy.


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    #42
    DesignLady
    Closed Accounts Posts: 150 ✭✭DesignLady


    Sabbaths Theatre by Philip Roth. Trying to blank that one from my memory.


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    #43
    Silent Partner
    Registered Users Posts: 148 ✭✭Silent Partner


    AJG wrote: »
    'Z for Zachariah' - Richard C. O'Brien. I read this when I was about 11 and it definitely shook me up. From what I remember it was about a girl surviving a nuclear holocaust and it is very bleak.

    We studied this book for our Junior Cert. and it was very very bleak alright.

    I have to agree with Haunted. The levels of gore meant you could not read that book comfortably or while eating for that matter!


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    #44
    DjAloldskool
    Registered Users Posts: 622 ✭✭✭DjAloldskool


    Any body know any good horror books?


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    #45
    InvisibleBadger
    Registered Users Posts: 134 ✭✭InvisibleBadger


    I agree with The Road, it stayed with me for a long time. The Wasp Factory was a pretty disturbing read too.


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    #46
    Hagar
    Closed Accounts Posts: 16,793 ✭✭✭✭Hagar


    DjAloldskool wrote: »
    Any body know any good horror books?
    Anything by Richard Layman. A bit formulaic but still a good read.


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    #47
    longshanks
    Registered Users Posts: 4,990 ✭✭✭longshanks


    having read a bunch of the books mentioned i dont think i've found any too disturbing if i'm honest. stylised violence and arty horror, the fact its often well written somehow making it seem unreal. repeated in every book. i dont know is it because in the back of my mind i know this is just some story.
    thats the fiction side of things anyway. i read a book on the moors murderers, complete with transcribed exerpts of the recordings those sick fuckers made of one of the kids they tortured and killed. that was disturbing


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    #48
    Shryke
    Closed Accounts Posts: 4,199 ✭✭✭Shryke


    I believe House of Leaves is quite unnerving but I haven't read it yet. It seems to get good bit of praise. I'd check it out if you want an unsettling read.


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    #49
    Quality
    Registered Users Posts: 6,900 ✭✭✭Quality


    Read The Road there at the weekend.. My heart was thumping all through it.. Not quite disturbing as distressing..

    The worst book I ever read was Ma he sold me for a pack of cigarettes... True story by a lady called Martha Long..


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    #50
    di74
    Registered Users Posts: 10 ✭di74


    Just recently finished The Road by Cormac McCarthy...... really unnerved me....


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    #51
    tallulah_crack
    Registered Users Posts: 44 ✭tallulah_crack


    the heart is decietful above all things by JT LeRoy


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    #52
    Lizzykins
    Closed Accounts Posts: 637 ✭✭✭Lizzykins


    Dean Koontz- The Taking frightened the living daylights out of me.


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    #53
    Dudess
    Closed Accounts Posts: 37,214 ✭✭✭✭Dudess


    Nineteen Eighty Four terrified the living sh1t out of me when I read it as a teen.


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    #54
    MadRush
    Closed Accounts Posts: 30 ✭MadRush


    First Love, Last Rites by Ian Mcewan is seriously disturbing....

    its the kind of book that makes you feel like a shower after reading :D

    still contains some brilliant short stories, and if you want to read more Mcewan after Atonement or Saturday, start here


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    #55
    Ole Rodrigo
    Closed Accounts Posts: 3,013 ✭✭✭Ole Rodrigo


    Dades wrote: »
    I also remember being somewhat perturbed after reading Atomised, too.

    +1. Also Platform and Whatever.


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    #56
    Denerick
    Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 6,488 ✭✭✭Denerick


    Henry James wrote an amazing little book called 'The Turn of the Screw'. At the end of it you will begin to question your own sanity.


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    #57
    Callan57
    Registered Users Posts: 4,160 ✭✭✭Callan57


    Denerick wrote: »
    Henry James wrote an amazing little book called 'The Turn of the Screw'. At the end of it you will begin to question your own sanity.

    God yea .... it's brilliant


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    #58
    DazMarz
    Closed Accounts Posts: 8,493 ✭✭✭DazMarz


    Afraid by Jack Kilborn... That has several scenes of intense violence that made me cringe, especially one scene where
    one of the supersoldiers/criminals ruptures a sheriff's kidney with his bare hands...
    that had me rubbing my own sides tenderly!!!

    Last Light by Alex Scarrow... A brilliant thriller regarding the "what-if" scenario of the world's supply of oil being cut off. The scenes where modern-day Britain grinds to a halt and slowly disintegrates are chilling and horrifyingly plausible. Ordinary people turn into mindless savages as pure Darwinism takes over and everybody is involved in that desperate scramble to survive... Or the even worse horror of when the so-called chavs suddenly realise that the police are too busy trying to keep a lid on things to be concerned about them. Society's collapse has never been more chilling and realistic.

    Filth by Irvine Welsh... Another brilliant piece of writing from the Scottish master. Centred around a misanthropic and sociopathic Edinburgh police detective, there are several passages where disturbing portrayals of violence and sadism are difficult to stomach.

    Infected by Scott Sigler... A murder-torture scene towards the end involving the protagonist and his former best friend was agonising... and then what the protagonist inflicted upon himself nearly stopped me from reading further!

    and many more, I'm sure...


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    #59
    metrovelvet
    Closed Accounts Posts: 9,376 ✭✭✭metrovelvet


    Shirley Jackson's The Lottery

    The description of a nose job in a Thomas Pynchon novel I read [forgot the title.]

    The Collector - John Fowles

    Silence of the Lambs


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    #60
    calex71
    Closed Accounts Posts: 13,126 ✭✭✭✭calex71


    currently working my way through the Dark Tower, all 7 books and the demonic rape from the 3rd book is coming home to roost in the 5th, nothing too graphic as yet but the mental imagery it stirs is sickening. Been reading Stephan King a lot recently, and numerous bits of 'under the dome' disturbed me none more so than the rape in that and the aftermath with the girl walking the road with 'lil walter, or jr reme defiling corpses of those girls, just bits of recent memory that disturbed me.


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    #61
    IvyTheTerrible
    Closed Accounts Posts: 14,949 ✭✭✭✭IvyTheTerrible


    American Psycho, by a long long way.

    The scene
    with the rat
    made me physically sick. No other book ever had that effect on me.


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