What's the most disturbing (also good) book you've read?

[ATOMIC SUPLEX]

Shhhhhh, it's a secret

 

[undercover]

Filth by Irvine Welsh is the book that left me feeling most disturbed (nearly three days of nausea whenever the book crossed my mind again) but the jury's still out on whether it was "good" over-all or not. Probably.

Yep, Filth was up there with the worst of them for me.

And as Welsh has been mentioned, I should add Mailbou Stork Nightmares as well. Not a pleasant way to go..........

 

[undercover]

Oh and a mention should be made to The Davinci Code for disturbance on an entirely different level....

 

[Philbc03]

its the most disturbing book i've read

I thought it was very disturbing ... but American Psycho is also one of the funniest books I've read.

 

[Orang Utan]

Cows by Matther Stokoe outgrosses all of these - shiteating, incest, animal cruelty, violence, murder, bestiality, psychotic talking cows - it's got everything

 

[Mrs Miggins]

And as Welsh has been mentioned, I should add Mailbou Stork Nightmares as well. Not a pleasant way to go..........

Seconded...it was the rape that got me.

 

[suitgirl]

Deffo American Psycho for me...I read it hiding behind my fingers for alot of it - I really didnt want to read on at the horrific points but i just felt compelled...horrible but strangely enthralling book...

I have House of Leaves at home but never read it, must give it a bash someday

 

[Deadman97]

I have House of Leaves at home but never read it, must give it a bash someday

Do! It really keeps you reading, if only to see what the next page will look like.

 

[astral]

Another vote for the Wasp Factory here, and The Cutting Room by Louise Welsh left me feeling fairly unsettled as well.

 

[grosun]

Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy is weirder than any of the books mentioned so far that i've read. Disturbing & increasingly violent apocalyptic descent into an amoral world (well, it starts off amoral & gets weirder from there on in) set in the cowboy-style American West/Mexico.

Astounding book though; he uses language in an amazingly beautiful, awe-inspiring way, but i'm still disturbed if I think about it now (having said that, i've read it twice so far & am tempted to do so again).

 

[trabuquera]

I'd second Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy and anything by Jack Womack as being both disturbing AND good.

I thought American Psycho was simply a cynical marketing exercise (of selling a dull-as-ditchwater, pisspoor 'satire' by wrapping it up in lots of lovely slavering woman-butchery) so I simply refused to read it in full - and I've not seen any extracts yet to change my mind.

If you want more in the truly disturbing sci-fi-ish vein, try anything else by Jack Womack, or a book called Kaleidoscope Century by one John Barnes (no, definitely NOT the cuddly footballer), which somehow pulls off the trick of making you feel almost sorry for a man who's spent the last 100 years or so being a mercenary, ethnic cleanser and rapist.

For real-life "disturbing but good", try an amazing memoir by a French guy called Francois Bizot: THE GATE. Bizot is one of very, very few westerners to have ever been kept captive by the Khmer Rouge during the genocide in Cambodia and survive. His memories of his time under their power are terrifying - not so much for the gore (there's really not much) as the psychological tension. Realising that even the children of his captors saw him as a dispensable animal ... not knowing what was happening as one after another of his fellow Cambodian prisoners disappeared ... he didn't know where to, at the time ... and it's that creepy sense of impending doom, and the desperation of being one minute from death by a rock in the head comes through sharply. Also, because Bizot spoke Khmer and understood quite a bit about what the rural Cambodian culture was really like, he is creepily clear about what the Khmer Rouge did or didn't offer.

There was also a recent short story by Martin Amis based on events in Saddam's Iraq called "The Palace of The End" which gave me nightmares for WEEKS. should be available online somewhere - various newspapers and mags published it.

 

[Yetman]

Fucking hell, I've read most of the books on this thread

Cant remember Maribou Stork being that bad? I can remember it wasnt that good in comparison to the rest of IW's books though.

The Diceman isnt that disturbing, good though

 

[rutabowa]

The Beautiful and the Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald stayed on my mind for a long time, it is a bit more subtly diturbing than most of the books mentioned here tho

 

[Kanda]

Atomised - Michel Houellebecq here... but it's one of my fave books for some weird reason.

 

[learydeary]

Kathy Acker's - Blood and Guts in High School now thats a girl who's fucked up

 

[elevendayempire]

Tom Baker's The Boy Who Kicked Pigs is just... wrong.

SG

 

[chooch]

I thought it was very disturbing ... but American Psycho is also one of the funniest books I've read.

I thought it was not very disturbing but very funny.
Guts by Chuck Palahniuk isn't a book but stays with me for sheer physical unpleasantness...

I can remember it wasnt that good in comparison to the rest of IW's books though.

It was his least bad after Trainspotting, as I recall: the odd ok sentence; some formal fucking about that's not painful; a nice cover.

 

[D'wards]

I can heartily recommend House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski if you fancy something not quite horrific but unsettling. It's an intense read- multiple narrations, ergodic text and a written style that you particpate in rather than passively digest. I loves it.

This is an amazing book!! Nay bugger ever seems to have read it though, apart from afew with good taste on here .

Already mentioned here, The Room is amazing and grotesque. All Hubert Selby Jrs stuff is pretty grim, but the room makes American Psycho look like Winnie the Pooh, not for just imaginative violence, but cos of the oppressive blanketing unrelenting misery of it all, wheras American Psycho was quite jolly in its own little way

 

[CaffineKing]

The book of Revelation by Rupert Thomson

and

The Verdict of peace by C. BARNETT.

 

[colbhoy]

Shogun by James Clavell is an outstanding novel.

However, fairly early on in the book there is a slow execution (won't go into more detail so as not to spoil) and the whole sequence was disturbing and stayed with me long after I had finished the book.

 

[AnnO'Neemus]

Perfume, Patrick Suskind.

Because I found it strangely beautiful, overall, and that was disturbing in itself, given the subject matter.

 

[k_s]

Notes from underground by me old chum dostoevsky

 

[Bob]

Non fiction (sadly): We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda

Mainly very depressing - but very interesting.

 

[Lisarocket]

Naked Lunch, although I don't think I'd have the patience for it now I'm not on drugs myself.

I found Naked Lunch a bit hard going when i read it too.

What is it about The Wasp Factory?

I've never read it as Rocketman won't have a copy in the house because everytime he started reading it something really bad happened in his life He's convinced it's jinxed...

 

[spartacus mills]

I would agree with American Psycho, graphic and horribly nasty with absolutely no sense of morality.

It's a satire. I found it laugh-out-loud funny; thanks partly to the deliberate humour but more because I couldn't believe people were taking it so seriously. Most of all because I couldn't believe Ellis had got the damn thing published.

 

[AndrewNumLock]

I found Naked Lunch a bit hard going when i read it too.



Just started reading about William S. Burroughs. What's he like?

 

[haggy]

eden eden eden by pierre guyotat.

 

[rutabowa]

I found Naked Lunch a bit hard going when i read it too.



Just started reading about William S. Burroughs. What's he like?

read Junkie first, it's much easier to get into than the rest.

 

[jms]

Im not Scared
or
The Wasp Factory

 

[Cerisa]

Life of Pi. still makes me shudder.

and the wasp factory was just unpleasant