Reading Challenge: The Ten Most Disturbing Books of All Time

[glenda]

Ok, I thought, just jump in and get the worst over with, soooo I downloaded the one I thought would be the hardest for me - The 120 Days of Sodom.
I started out trying to read it, but it just got worse and worse! I resorted to scrolling/scanning at a rapid pace, just to try to get through it... I had to stop, I was just getting too nauseous, and was afraid I'd barf on my computer. I will go back and scroll to the end after a day or so break. Will that be enough to count??? I just can't do more than that. Sick bast**d.

[Char]

Really, that bad?

[Jon Recluse]

Charlene wrote: "Really, that bad?"

The man was insane......

[glenda]

Charlene wrote: "Really, that bad?"

Really. You'll see. Every "day" is worse than the one before, and there are a lot of days...

[Char]

You know....one knows that it has to be baadddd when seasoned horror fans react like this.

[Jon Recluse]

Charlene wrote: "You know....one knows that it has to be baadddd when seasoned horror fans react like this."

The man was insane.....really, really insane.

[11811 (Eleven)]

See how much of the movie you can watch without vomiting. True test of the seasoned horror veteran. I got half way and still haven't fully recovered.

[glenda]

11811 wrote: "See how much of the movie you can watch without vomiting. True test of the seasoned horror veteran. I got half way and still haven't fully recovered."

Oh, man... no thank you. Ugh. There goes my stomach again.

[Chris]

A lot of truly disturbing but good novels listed here, but Poppy Brite's Exquisite Corpse did it for me...almost put the book down.

[Tressa]

Someone I know explained Poppy Z. Brite this way: She's writes really well for a high school student. I didn't like EC much at all. It did have its disgusting parts, but it just wasn't that good.

[Chris]

Well, she's really written some pretty good short stories and her novel Drawing Blood was decent...

[Chris]

I need to read Exquisite Corpse if an Ed Lee fan had to struggle to finish.

[Chris]

The most disturbing part of Night is that it isn't fiction---it is a memoir of a child's journey through Hell.

[Nora aka Diva]

Tressa wrote: "http://www.popcrunch.com/the-10-most-...

What do you think?

10. Blindness
9. Requiem for a Dream
8. Naked Lunch
7. We Need to Talk About Kevin
6. The Road
5. Americ..."

I was going to retry reading we need to talk about kevin but my house ate my copy. Grr, stupid house.

[Tressa]

Maybe your house will find the taste of Kevin unpleasant and burp it back up. We watched the movie last week and enjoyed it, but of course not as much is conveyed about the relationship between the mother and son. My husband was so angry at the people in the neighborhood and at her job about how they punished her for what her son did. Of course in a small town wounds will be raw for a long time, and they can't punish Kevin so they make do with his mother. He also wondered why she didn't move further away where she was less known, but I see it as her punishing herself for what her son did. I tried to explain to him the connection the mother and son have. It's not quite a mutual respect for cutting through the bullshit of society, but it's along those lines. Or that's what I think anyway.

[Char]

I would have to agree with your take on the relationship between them, Tressa.
I couldn't see in my head how the movie would get that part across.

[Char]

Ok, wish me luck. I started with book 1 on this list:
The Girl Next Door.
I'm almost at 20% and nothing horrific so far.
But, I find myself tensing up when reading it because I know the horrific is coming, I just don't know yet from where.

[Tressa]

I'll hold your hand, Charlene.

[Teawench]

Finished We Need to Talk About Kevin. Can't say I was horribly disturbed by it. Bored through most of it, yes. Maybe because I'm not a parent it doesn't do anything for me?

[Tressa]

Probably.

[Char]

Thanks Tressa!
Teawench, really? I guess being a parent probably does play a part in how one reacts to that book, though I hadn't thought of that before.

[Teawench]

Given some of the comments I've heard here and other places, I expected to be blown away by this book. I didn't think it got really interesting until it started talking about what he did and how. I think the ending kind of killed it for me, too. (view spoiler)[I was not thrilled to see another HEA (sort of) ending. I've never done it before, but it made me want to throw the book across the room. I felt it was kind of a cop out ending. (hide spoiler)] <~Part of this is trying it out since I've never done the 'spoiler' thing before.

Yay! It worked!

[Tressa]

What's HEA?

[Teawench]

Happily Ever After

[Char]

HEA in Kevin? Are we talking about the same book?

[Tressa]

Ah. Yeah, what's the HEA ending in WNTTAK?

[Teawench]

Are we allowed to post spoilers without the tag? Seems I read somewhere that if it's a group read it's ok but we're not all necessarily on the same book on this one. (view spoiler)[He feels regret, even if it's because he's freaked out at going to the 'big house', and they reconcile. HEA with a cute little bow. Let me know if I need to edit. (hide spoiler)]

[Tressa]

I don't think (view spoiler)[ Kevin and his mother reconciled. I think the mother's life has been ruined forever, not because she lost her husband and daughter, but because she will have to live as a pariah, and, worse, her life centers around her sociopath of a son now. Will he do it again? What will the years hold for them both? And hold for society with Kevin loose in it? To me this was not a feel good ending. (hide spoiler)]

If you even think something's a spoiler or wouldn't want to know this bit of information if you hadn't read the book, then please put it in spoiler tags. I would go ahead and do that with your last post. Thanks.

[Char]

I agree Tressa, that was my take on it as well.

[Teawench]

(view spoiler)[Living as a pariah is her own choice for not moving further away. She's choosing to have her life center around her sociopath son by visiting him every week. I don't think it's something she needs to forget but she could certainly get on with her life without him. And again, maybe because I don't have kids this is being overly simplistic but it rang HEA to me. Maybe not perfectly but still a pretty upbeat ending given the rest of the book. (hide spoiler)]

[Char]

(view spoiler)[ I took her staying and visiting with her son and possibly taking him back in once he got out, as part of the penance she felt she had to pay. Along with her treatment by the town and her neighbors. All that together with the fact that she had no one else left combined in my mind as her reason for staying. (hide spoiler)]
But I can see where you're coming from as well, at least a little bit. I just don't consider it an HEA ending is all.

[Tressa]

Well said, Charlene, and that's exactly how I feel about the mother's decisions. She is (view spoiler)[ punishing herself. As a mother who hopes she NEVER feels the anguish and guilt that Eva does, I know that I am the type who would choose to punish myself, just to feel something after such a numbing tragedy.

I've read a lot on the Karla Homolka/Paul Bernardo serial murders, and something I will never forget is one of the victim's mother making herself sit in that courtroom and listen to the audio of her daughter being raped and terrorized for the days she was held captive in their home. Why did she do this when the other set of parents left the courtroom during this part of the trial? Because she locked the doors to the house when her daughter missed curfew, and it was this reason that she was outside when Paul Bernardo was in her neighborhood stealing license plates. So, I do not see this as a HEA ending. Kevin is almost autistic in the way that he will NEVER break through and show love for his mother, and she knows this. He admires her ONLY because she saw through his bullshit from the day he was born, unlike his father, sister, and the rest of society. And this is how Eva has prepared to live for the rest of her life. (hide spoiler)]

[Char]

Thanks, Tressa. Sometimes my point doesn't come across as well as I would like. : )
I've read a bit about that case too, probably not as much as you have. I could not even imagine sitting in that coutroom-but the reason she did makes perfect sense to me. Can you imagine the guilt she must've felt? I just...can't.
The thing that pissed me off most about that case is that Karla blamed him for all of it, even though the films show she was a full fledged, willing partner.

[Tressa]

Yeah, Karla pulled the old "I'm a dumbass female zombie with no free will of her own," yet the tapes show her also raping the girls and smiling for the cameras.

Even with small things I feel guilty about concerning my son, I will beat myself up for days or weeks (or longer!) over it.

[Tressa]

Oh, you express yourself just fine, Charlene. I always know what you're talking about, but maybe that doesn't make you feel better?

[Teawench]

I think part of it is that I'm a little surprised that (view spoiler)[she would bother to punish herself at all given her indifference to Kevin. Or is it that she still doesn't care about Kevin but is feeling guilty that she brought him into the world? Since she unleashed this person, she should be punished for it? (hide spoiler)]

[Char]

Tressa, that does help, yes! I'm no writer that's for sure and sometimes I just can't find the right words. Maybe it's why I have such an appreciation for them. : )


I think that is definitely part of it, Teawench, yes.
Maybe one does need to be a parent to fully realize the horror of that situation. (view spoiler)[ It could just be the feeling of responsibility...that you could bring someone (something?) so evil into the world. The thought that perhaps there was something you could have done to prevent it, you know? (hide spoiler)]

[Tressa]

I don't think that she's indifferent to Kevin. I think that she's obsessed with him, with his intelligence and his resolve and his will, even if he uses all these talents to do evil in the world. Remember in The Piano when Ada's husband says something along the lines of "I'm afraid of her will." I think Eva is, too, but she also admires it in a way. This story is amazing to me because it makes us change the way we see Eva as it progresses. I for one couldn't stand her judgmental, elitist, scornful personality at the beginning of the book. The way she looked down on her husband's middle-class-values parents; good people that she mocked several times in the story. I think Eva and Kevin are really complicated people and there's no way to even try to understand their actions and emotions.

And, there is the guilt, too.

[Char]

Well said!
Shortly after I read this I was thinking-there really are no likeable people in this book. Maybe the young daughter, but that's it. I couldn't stand Eva at the beginning, it was only after other people began to see something was wrong that she became at least tolerable for me. By the ending, I was feeling pretty bad for her.

[Tressa]

This is awful, and I know Celia is just a young girl, but why didn't she (view spoiler)[ say what happened to her eye? I can't remember if she agreed it was her fault, and maybe he talked her into pouring the solution into her eye; maybe Kevin did it and she was too worshipful/afraid of him not to explain how it really went down in the bathroom. God, I'm awful, but I didn't think even Celia was that likable. I felt that she was an experiment by Eva to see if she could 1) produce such a genius as Kevin again, or 2) let herself off the nurture hook since it's obviously nature that makes us what we are if her daughter turns out not crazy as batshit. Even Eva and the father considered Eva to be a sweet but limp dishrag of a person. At one point Eva even disparaged her looks. (hide spoiler)] God, I hate these people, lol.

[Teawench]

I'm the total opposite of you, Charlene. I liked Eva more at the beginning and less towards the end. (view spoiler)[I think I can identify with her more at the beginning, though. I didn't see her as being elitist but I did not like her condescending attitude either. It's at the end when I really started disliking her. I agree with you, Tressa, on why Eva had Celia. I totally thought it was a 'Let's see if I can do this right' type of thing. I didn't like Celia. She was too much of a wimp. Why didn't she say what happened with her eye? Especially when it was so obvious that Eva didn't believe the story. I kind of wavered between feeling bad for Celia and wanting to slap her into waking up. (hide spoiler)] I didn't really like anyone in the book, either. But something about it kept me interested enough to finish it.

[Tressa]

That whole (view spoiler)[eye thing is a sore spot for me with this book. It's like something major happened in a character's life—losing her eye!—and they tiptoe around it. It just wasn't clear enough. What did they tell the hospital staff? Eva didn't even confront Kevin, that I remember. They just all had their own opinions about it and went on like no big deal. And thus the husband and daughter became nothing but targets of Kevin...literally. (hide spoiler)]

[Char]

Tressa wrote: "This is awful, and I know Celia is just a young girl, but why didn't she [spoilers removed] God, I hate these people, lol."

Tressa, YES! (view spoiler)[ I think they even referred to Celia as wishy-washy at some point! I couldn't figure out why she didn't rat out Kevin either. Also, a big YES regarding Celia being Eva's experiment. Like she didn't want a child (again) but just had her to compare against Kevin. (hide spoiler)]

[Char]

Teawench wrote: "I'm the total opposite of you, Charlene. I liked Eva more at the beginning and less towards the end. [spoilers removed] I didn't really like anyone in the book, either. But something about it kept ..."

I couldn't understyand why she didn't rat either. What happened towards the end that made you start to dislike Eva? Because my dislike was turning to pity by that point.

[Tressa]

I will have to say this, because I think Teawench is not understanding why a mother would not just move away and not visit her son in prison, no matter how heinous his crime. I am a big victim advocate, and shun most all excuses about why a homicide is committed. If my son ever committed a horrible crime, he would still be my son, and I would be there for him but would never condone what he did or make excuses for him. It's almost like Eva has given up her old life to nurse a dying child. Mothers just do things like this.

[Char]

Again, Tressa-well said.

I will say that this book inspires all kinds of feelings in people and it spawns some very interesting discussions. For that reason alone, I think WNTTAK book belongs on this list.

[Tressa]

I think this thread is longer than the actual WNTTAK thread!

[Char]

I know, right? But I really enjoyed the discussion.
It's the main reason that I like it so much here.
Good recommendations, great discussions...what more could a horror reader ask for?

Regarding The Girl Next Door, I'm at about 70%. It's not quite as bad as I thought it would be. I'm definitely cringing a lot though.

[Tressa]

I always enjoy these long discussions about good books.

Well, maybe Girl doesn't faze you like it does some.

[Char]

I finished. It fazed me.
Oddly enough I think I am more angry than sad. It was very disturbing and I think it definitely belongs on this list.