Disturbing Novels

Pet Cemetery by Stephen King. I never read another one of his books after that. It was too scary.

After by Francine Prose

RED DRAGON by Thomas Harris.

Geek Love

Children of the Night by Richard Lortz. It was a horror novel about five children (two Hispanic, one black, on white, one "God knows") living in New York. New York is depicted as a hell on earth for these children; they live in grinding poverty (except for one of the girls, whose mother does well as a prostitute and wants her little girl to go into the same profession), are attacked physically and sexually by adults (including their own family members) and see and hear the most appalling things imaginable. As a form as escape, at night they come together and dissociate not into different personalities but into beasts. They take on the characteristics of a hungry, flesh-eating animals; they lose the power of speech, run around naked on all fours and devour anything that crosses their path. It sounds ludicrous, but the novel makes it seem very real and plausible.

Forty Words For Sorrow by Giles Blunt. Not a horror story, but scary because there are real serial killers who go unnoticed for years. Also has an interesting gay story line.

Less Than Zero was more disturbing to me.

A Shore Thing, by Snooki.

"Gia danced around a little, shaking her peaches for show. She shook it hard. Too hard. In the middle of a shimmy, her stomach cramped. A fart slipped out. A loud one. And stinky."

The Charcoal Burners by Susan Musgave. The person I gave it to read passed it on to someone else and afterwards said that passing it on must have been our way of trying to get rid of the feeling that lingered long after we'd finished reading it.

The White Hotel was more horrific, but it wasn't as disturbing.

Of course this was before things like Saw and Hostel became part of regular culture, so who knows if young readers today would be bothered by them.

The Choirboys by Joseph Wambaugh.

Hands down, THE ROAD by Cormac McCarthy

Yes, The Road.

Strange how I loathe you, OP.

R11 & R12, was that the one that was made into that great movie?

What is The Road about?

The Road is about an ICE FLOE ROSE

"Salems Lot" scared the shit out of me. "A 1000 splendid suns" left me emotionally drained.

The most disturbing is one I read in the early '80s -- Mendal Johnson's "Let's Go Play at the Adams'."

The babysitter is staying for a few weeks while the parents are in Europe. But the children, along with the neighbor children, play a "game," in which they bound and gag her so they can be in charge. It all gets progressively worse until they realize they can't let her go.

Like I said, I initially read it as a teen, and recently found and purchased it on Amazon. I thought a re-read as an adult would temper the horror. Nope. Just as disturbing.

50 Shades of Grey. I was disturbed that someone actually had a whole lot of trees cut down to publish something like that.

Postcards by Annie Proulx. A young man accidentally kills his girlfriend and runs away from his abusive Vermont home. He sends his mother a postcard every year not knowing that life back home has changed as well. Heartbreaking, depressing. Cried buckets at the end.

R17,I agree completely. Both novels haunted me for days. Great reading if you're into being spooked and amazed at humanity. The Kite Runner was disturbing as well, yet the ending was somehow exhilarating.

Last Exit to Brooklyn

The Alice series for girls. It was about a pretentious girls with nothing to do in life except think about friends and boys.

Another vote for Red Dragon.

A Child Called It

The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks

Off Season by Jack Ketchum

Thread closed.

No, seriously. Thread. Closed.

I remember "The Wasp Factory". VERY strange book, especially the ending.

Another vote for The Wasp Factory - although I found it on the funny side of disturbing.

But I think Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo upset/disturbed/unsettled me most.

From yesteray's Guardian, borrowing from DataLounge:

Another vote for Johnny Got His Gun.

A Prayer for Owen Meany is another tough read, as is The Road.

Why? Why? Why?

I agree, American Psycho.

Another vote for King's Pet Sematary

Ann Rule, The Stranger Besides Me

"The End of Alice" by A.M. Homes. Think Lolita re-imagined by Dennis Cooper. Beautifully written like much of her work, but I couldn't stomach it a second time. And I tried.

The Demon by Hubert Selby Jr

john fowles's 'the collector' was creepy and ick somehow.

Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane. The mind is a tricky thing.

Margaret Atwood's Alias Grace disturbed me - either Grace is a murderess or she's not, and Atwood makes her unknowable. It makes you realise how the people we may think we know well, may have secrets we know nothing of.

The Road sent me into a depressive episode, though oddly my friend who is prone to depression wasn't emotionally affected by it.

I find American Psycho not so scary because, well, the narrator Patrick Bateman is obviously extremely UNreliable, and so for me many of the carnage scenes were like his fantasies/mind games and therefore lacked the necessary reality to be truly frightening.

I mean, he lived in this fabulous door-maned building (whose tenants included Tom Cruise!), and none of his neighbors, let alone the guards/concierges, heard or saw anything untowards happening while he carved and sawed victim after victim in his apartment? Highly unlikely, right?

That's why when the feminists mounted a huge protest when the novel was launched, I thought they really missed the boat big time, mistaking make belief for the real thing.

American Psycho was badly written and a bore. BEE is not a good writer.

"House of Leave" didn't seem like it should be scary, but I had nightmares after reading it. I recommended it to some friends, and most of them said it was terrible, but others said they also found it disturbing.

"We need to talk about Kevin."

Agree that Pet Sematary was creepy as hell.

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro. It's beautifully written (like all of Ishiguro's work) but the story is devastating.

Pet Sematary. I was so creeped about by it that I stayed up until sunrise after I read it.

The Amityville Horror... is that novel? Much scarier than the movie.

Torsos by John Peyton Cooke.

r14, it was made into a movie.

r15, The Road is about a man and his young son trying to survive in a post apocalyptic world. It's very moving.

Salem's Lot, The Stand and The Shining by Stephen King.

I read Pet Semetary, what was so disturbing in it? Just a random horror novel.

We Have Always Lived in the Castle

I always considered American Psycho satire, and hilarious.

Death Is My Trade by Robert Merle

"Exquisite Corpse" by Poppy Z. Brite.

It's basically the love story of serial killers Jeffrey Dahmer and Dennis Nillson and the destruction they cause as a couple.

The worst section was when one of the main doomed characters crosses their paths and is slowly tortured and murdered by them. You give up hope pretty quickly that another main character will arrive to save the day. Part of what was most disturbing was the way the author made quick cuts in the scene ....to the victim's thoughts as the killers were doing their gruesome work....

It' only a disturbing novela, "The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag", but you'll never pass a mirror with the same confidence again. In fact, you may be inclined to paint it black. It was written by Robert Heinlein and is a Hugo award winner.

Has anyone ever read Thomas de Quincey's prose poem "Susperia de Profundis"? I found it strange and haunting in a way I can't describe. Wallace Stevens' poem "The Emperor of Ice-Cream" gives me the chills as well.

Glamorama owns this thread.

It's a masterpiece, and the ultimate pre-9/11 novel. If you want to know anything about the zeitgeist of late 90's-early '00 that's the book to read.

For me I would say " The Girl Next Door" by Jack Ketchum.

A lot of V. C. Andrews works deserve honorable mentions. Most people know her for " Flowers in the Attic", but she wrote a slew of novels that victimize females with corrupted purity.

R57 .... "The Girl Next Door" is another good choice. Disturbing fictionalization of the Sylvia Likens murder case.

The final question of whatever became of the rest of those teenage sociopaths that contributed to the murder is disturbing (when added to the fate of the couple that the storyteller was successful in tracking down)

Like Any Normal Day by Mark Kram Jr.

It's about one of Dr. Kevorkian's suicide patients; a man named Albert "Buddy" Miley who broke his neck playing high school football that left him a quadriplegic.

Nos4R2 by Joe Hill

Agreed on THE ROAD and NEVER LET ME GO. Both disturbing as hell and brilliantly written.

Madonna's Sex Book owns this thread

Zombie by Joyce Carol Oates. Based on the life of Jeffrey Dahmer. I can't believe that the little old lady pictured on the back cover wrote such a fucked up, disturbing novel. Ice pick lobotomies, anyone?

The summer after 7th grade I read Bram Stoker's Dracula. I was terrified the rest of the summer. My sophomore year in college I read Helter Skelter. It was a couple of years after the events and was really creepy to me.

A M Homes owns this thread!

Please read Music for Torching and This Book Will Save Your Life.

Both wonderfully disturbing and original.

The Stand by King. The disturbing thing was that after what seemed like a thousand pages THAT WAS IT? I was so disturbed that I ripped it to shreds, set the pile of shredded paper on fire and then stomped/danced on the embers.

What a piece of shit.

The Hollywood novels of Bruce Wagner.

Never Mind by Edward St. Aubyn

At the End of a Dull Day by Massimo Carlotto

'The Stolen Child' by Keith Donohue. Beautifully written story but there's something so horrible and despairing to it. Loved it, but revolted by it at the same time.

A lot of good choices here and I have added some of them to my Kindle wish list.

"The Wasp Factory" by Iain Banks - it's about a child psychopath written in the first person.

"The German" by Lee Thomas - it won the Lambda Literary Award.

I couldn't finish American Psycho because it was so boring.

Peter Straub's Ghost Story

Orwell's 1984

(both read when I was around 12 or 13 , I think. I also used to be a huge King reader up until about the Talisman was released, then stopped. I don't remember being terribly disturbed by anything King ever wrote - well, one thing which was when a child had been magically infested with botflies (or something like botflies) in the Talisman and they were squirming out of his skin (and nose, I think?). ...but then, botflies are disturbing all by themselves.

[quote]I read Pet Semetary, what was so disturbing in it? Just a random horror novel.

While I didn't find it disturbing either, I can't dismiss it as random. I really liked the idea of putting into a horror format a family being unable to cope with death within the family and how it falls apart as a result.

While I can't think of any book that disturbed me, Thomas Tryon's The Other certainly stuck me at the time as being very weird and creepy.

The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood Disturbing in the sense that to me it foreshadowed where this country was/is heading with these nut-job right-wing "Christian" evangelicals.

A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry The conclusion was most disturbing and at least to me, totally out of the blue - but not unbelievable.

I assume the people "disturbed" by Stephen King's novels must be 16 yo. I certainly hope so.

"Pages from Cold Point" and "A Distant Episode" by Paul Bowles

I was a huge Stephen King reader when I was 12. A couple of years ago I read my fist book of his in over 20 years - Under the Dome. And I found it incredibly disturbing, r75. How could such a famous and best-selling author could write something so embarrassingly, childishly bad? And were the novels I'd read in my childhood just as terrible? I haven't gone back to find out

"Salem's Lot" by Stephen King kept me up one summer night in the 1980s, clutching a cross. I was a teenager living in a small Southern town and the characters could have very easily been my neighbors. (FYI-it has nothing to do with Salem or witchcraft.) In the film that followed the book, David Soul was hot and in his prime as Ben Mears and Lance Kerwin was cute as Mark Petrie.

I found Edith Wharton's "Age of Innocence" to be a horror novel! The manipulations of women to "get" men to do what they want. He lost the love of his life because he barely understood the fuckery going on around him. The ending was very sad, but eerie too. True to life.

"Room" by Emma Donogue told from the perspective of a young boy who, with his mother, is being held captive in a small room. Donogue is an amazing writer and her gritty portrayals of real-life situations are heartbreaking. I might also nominate her "Slammerkin" about a prostitute in the 1700s.

Not a book, but a short story called The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas by Ursula K. Le Guin. So fucking depressing and a testament to mans inhumanity to man.

Oh, and Never Let me Go must be one of the greatest snoozefest ever put on paper! I was furious after reading it: ishiguro is usually good, but this novel was a drag, and so fucking twee. I still hate him for killing a very interesting subject in such a godawful fashion

Anything by Candace Bushnell makes my vagina dry.

Atlas shrugged by Ayn Rand. So poorly written and full of inconsistencies. Not to mention the disturbing ideology it promotes.

Gave me nightmares.

The Alienist by Caleb Carr

May we include non-fiction? If so, Jean Hatzfeld wrote a trio of books about the Rwandan genocide - one interviewing survivors, one interviewing perpetrators, and one some time later, looking at the reconciliation process. They are profoundly disturbing books but also enlightening and powerful.

...bumping for more fictional disturbance.

The most disturbance per word (it's a fairly short story) has to go to Shirley Jackson's THE LOTTERY.

Anyone who still thinks The Lottery is disturbing must be 80 years old.

Let's stick to fiction, please.

I've read a lot of disturbing novels. One that comes to mind is "Looking for Mr. Goodbar." Theresa Dunn is one of the most emotionally crippled characters I've ever seen in a novel. It's hard to feel sorry for her; she's chilly and unpleasant and it's excruciating when she tries to be funny or amusing (she has no capacity whatsoever for humor). She's really unable to have a relationship with anyone, even her own family, and of course her encounters with men are terrible. She has casual sex with men, which makes her feel like a liberated woman, but her encounters seem to only emphasize how alone she is. A nice man falls in love with her (there must be something wrong with HIM; her finds the unappealing Theresa "charming and interesting"), but sex with him is awful. Theresa, of course, comes to a very bad end. The novel is very disquieting and unsettling; the tale of "a woman's descent into hell", as one critic called it.

The Robber Bride by Margaret Atwood. If I didn't know so many female sociopaths, perhaps it wouldn't have bothered me so much...

Love The Robber Bride (I must reread it!) but would hardly call it disturbing. Complex female relationships, yes, but nothing weird. Atwood's best novel, IMHO.

Then again, I'm a gay guy so maybe I missed something?

Squirrel seeks chipmunk by David Sedaris. A repugnant book that I had to throw in the trash. Mean spirited and cruel. Horrible stories about animal abuse.

Books have rarely disturbed me as an adult (partly because I don't read that much anymore and let the movies do the scaring) but I do remember couple that really upset me when I was a teen. One was William Peter Blatty's The Exorcist which scared the shit out of me. I watched the film about 10 years after reading the book when it was re-released in the theaters and I was surprised how little effect it had on me since it didn't scare me at all.

The other was Stephen King's Salem's Lot. I read loads of King's books as a kid and sure most had their scary moments but for some reason it was Salem's Lot that pushed me over the edge. I seriously wore a silver cross for weeks after reading the book.

Oh and yes I remember being disturbed by those bloody horrible V. C. Andrews books with family trapped in the attic. I hated them but still managed to read few of them.

The Wasp Factory wins this thread.

Lolita.

Peter Lefcourt's The Dreyfuss Affair disturbed me. In a good way.

Why wasn't it ever turned into a feature film? It's not too late and quite relevant.

Bump.

Where the Red Fern Grows fucked me up when I was 10.

Christ, the 2015 Troll has struck again. They are quiet for awhile and then they strike multiple times in a short period of time. I can’t figure out how they find these threads and how there are any still left. I almost more believe the have the ability to set the dates and construct whole threads from scratch just to then bring them up as if it were five years later.

Adam Rapp’s YA novels are definitely leading contenders in this category. 33 Snowfish has damaged young characters including a boy who escapes from a pedophile after hearing he is going to be killed in a snuff film, a 14 year old female prostitute, and a violent pyromaniac who communicates primarily in pictures and murders his parents and abducts his infant brother they look to sell.

The Sluts by Dennis Cooper. I am a huge fan of Bret Easton Ellis and this was probably one of the most disturbing reads ever - way more graphic than Ellis. I recommend.

Is Adam Rapp the nom de plume of a certain someone?

“Where are you going, where have you been?” Joyce Carol Oates - short story or novella Very disturbing . Oates based this story on an article she happened to read. The bad boy protagonist, also called the pied piper has a strange power over innocent high school age girls he picks up at the local mall.

He murdered several girls, with the assistance of other girls. There’s a youtube with Laura Dern based on the story .

"We Need to Talk About Kevin" by Lionel Shriver and, although it's not fiction, "Helter Skelter" by Vincent Bugliosi.

R101 It’s an interesting thread. Fuck off

R106 - I love "We Need to Talk About Kevin" and Lionel Shriver. Kevin was really good in Audible format. There is a book that was made into a shitty movie with Richard Gear called "The Dinner" by Herman Koch that explores similar themes.

Sophie's Choice. I read this when it first came out, and then again maybe 20 years ago. I found it horrifying then, and over the years, I have grown less and less able to finish a novel that takes place during the Holocaust.

YA dystopian lit.

The Dave Gurney series of detective novels by John Verdon, recommended by someone in a DL "What Are You Reading?" thread (no gay content, though). Dave Gurney gets in such awful circumstances because, even though he retired as a NYC detective, he refuses to stop doing freelance detective work upstate, and he constantly gets his wife, whom he loves very much, and who wishes he would just stop it, into situations where it would be more logical for her to end up as collateral damage than not. The situations in each novel are so dire, the longer the series exists, the less sense it makes that the series exists. Just stop, Dave!

[quote] Richard Gear

Oh, DEAR.

"Perfume: The Story of a Murderer" by Patrick Süskind, 1985. An historical fantasy novel which really made me think on what exactly it is murderers think of. It's especially interesting to anyone with an interest in fragrances or the art of perfumery.

^ or In German "Das Parfum: Die Geschicte eines Mörders". It is one of the very top ten best-selling German novels of the 20th century.

I was just about to mention Perfume. I read it as a 6th grader after reading a review in People Magazine.

R113 Did you enjoy it, or did it leave you feeling a bit disturbed? It was recommended and loaned to me by a German speaking Japanese friend. She had both excellent and odd taste in novels.

J.G. Ballard’s CRASH. Constant descriptions of penis insertion into open wounds, on people of various inappropriate ages and mental abilities.

The Cronenberg movie (with Elias Koteas & James Spader) was a very tame adaptation.

After Claude by Iris Owen

A dumped woman wants to hire a rapist to take care of a woman she feels wronged her. Her rage consumes her until she becomes a submissive.

The book is a comedy.

I remember the commercials for it on daytime TV in the 70s.

[quote] don't remember being terribly disturbed by anything King ever wrote - well, one thing which was when a child had been magically infested with botflies (or something like botflies) in the Talisman and they were squirming out of his skin (and nose, I think?). ...but then, botflies are disturbing all by themselves.

The cultish, Fangoria-style crime-horror film PHENOMENA (1985) aka CREEPERS with Jennifer Connelly has similar disturbing scenes. There’s one with maggots that I don’t even want to describe in detail.

As a whole movie it’s a relatively airy, stately, fantasy giallo meant for moody sensitive teenagers. However, the gratuitous and vile bug-related fuckery along the way counteracts this effect. And I say that as a lover of insects, of noir/Gothic foreign supernatural horror, and of the resplendent Jennifer Connelly.

“Music For Torching” by A.M. Homes.

I see “The End of Alice” has been mentioned, which was also disturbing. “Music For Torching” upset me more, because the setting and characters were so commonplace.

For disturbing content, nobody comes close to Sade.

R119, but it was the sweetest taboo.

The Stranger by Camus.

1984. I remember telling myself toward the end that I was not going to read it again.

R114, it definitely stayed with me. I can't imagine my kid reading it.

[italic] Le Peau de Chagren [/italic] or en Anglais [italic] The Wild Ass's Skin [italic] 1831 Honoré de Balzac

I want to read The End of Alice but am afraid they’ll put me on a watchlist.

R124. I read that for the first time earlier this year. Fascinating and haunting. I’d read some of Balzac’s more “realistic” novels in high school and college (some in French, like Le pere Goriot) and always enjoyed him.

"Turn of the Screw", Henry James (who otherwise bores me witless(

The original "Dracula" by Bram Stoker - it is seriously atmospheric and terrifying

"The Haunting of Hill House" by Shirley Jackson (and that primo 1959 film version, "The Haunting")

And another vote for King's "Salem's Lot".

[quote] I've read a lot of disturbing novels. One that comes to mind is "Looking for Mr. Goodbar." Theresa Dunn is one of the most emotionally crippled characters I've ever seen in a novel.

You know, of course, it was based on a real story: that of the murdered Roseann Quin.

We Need to talk about Kevin was a good one. Very creepy characters.

Tampa was a book about a woman pedophile and it made my skin crawl.

I wish I could save this thread for when my psyche recovers after this goddamn period of covid, trump fuckery, protests, wildfires and one half of the country trying to kill the other half. Once that is all squared away, I think I'll be able to handle fictional insanity.

I've tried to get into Never Let Me Go, but I keep stopping and starting. Maybe I'll give it another shot.

"Prime Time: a Novel", by Joan Collins

It took 130 replies to mention the classic Hogg by Samuel Delany? For me, it's the height of perversion.

Lolita, The End of Alice, & Tampa. Anything by early AM Homes is pretty grim (and great).

In Cold Blood

Devil in the White Castle

I like books that take something gruesome and horrifying and present it in a banal everyday manner.

What is The Charcoal Burners about?

I can't find a review about it online.

R126 J'adore all the French 19th century Realists, but he's probably the best, alongside Zola. I read some in French as well. It's a shame so many consider them rubbish, or "not quite the classics".

In that 19th century territory [italic] The Birth-Mark [/italic] 1843 by Nathaniel Hawthorne is nicely disturbing as well.

The Day of the Locust.

[quote] What is The Charcoal Burners about? I can't find a review about it online.

Young woman in a failing marriage encounters two strange cults in the remote forests of British Columbia. It’s pretty bleak.

The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles--nihilistic

Confessions of a Justified Sinner

Although I don't think it was meant as such, I found A Handful of Dust, by Evelyn Waugh, very disturbing in the end. It's supposed to be black comedy, I understand.

Animal Farm by George Orwell. The Long Walk by Stephen King, The Collection by Bentley Little. Joe Hill's twittering from the circus of the Dead.

Flannery O'Connor's A Good Man Is Hard To Find is a short story but...it still freaks me out every time I read it.

The Japanese novel OUT by Kirino Natsuo. It is also the most honest portrayal of Japan I have ever read.

Can’t believe I’m the first to mention The Secret History by Donna Tartt. Creepy as all hell.

A Clockwork Orange was pretty disturbing too. I read that Anthony Burgess had to drink heavily when writing it to cope with certain parts.

R140 I laughed all the way through A HANDFUL OF DUST. I was a bitter, mean-spirited, lonely teen when I read it, though.

Nathaniel Hawthorne's novella "Young Goodman Brown" about a man's transformative encounter with evil. Hawthorne's ancestors had been judges in the Salem witch trials and the horror and guilt that haunted him over that influenced his writings, including this title.

The Painted Bird by Jerzy Kosinski. Read it nearly 40 years ago in college. It still haunts me.

I had a college class and the reading list was: The Painted Bird, Naked Lunch, Last Exit From Brooklyn, and The Assassination of Marat As Performed By the Inmates of some fucking asylum I forget.

All we freshmen were practically suicidal after those books.

R147, excellent choice. That was a tough read.

Bastard Out of Carolina

I read John Saul as a teen instead of King, and I remember one story where kids we being held in a cave by ghost children and one of them had a dead cat shoved up their ass.

Jack Ketchum has some really disturbing novels. His short stories The Box and the Rifle creeped me out for days. He died not too long ago. We lost a talented horror writer.

Anything written by Ayn Rand or Faulkner. The south lost the civil war, get over it. And I read Rand's "Atlast Shrugged" It was utter fucking dreck.

R148 There's no excuse for foisting that material on young people. I'm so sick of violence porn being lauded as "great literature".

Glamorama was just gross and disgusting. Amityville Horror scared me.

The Hellhound Heart - Clive Brker

R154, Yeah, I agree. But the movie of Naked Lunch was kind of entertaining.

The Witching Hour

R91 Are you sure it isn’t a Madonna biography?

I read “The Exorcist” by William Peter Blatty as a 13 year old (as I was too young to go see the movie). It completely freaked me out.

Torn over whether or not to suggest Chuck Pahlaniuk’s short story compilation HAUNTED.

His writing style is puerile, limited, and broken, and he relies too heavily on schlock and body horror. He’s basically R.L.Stine with better press.

But the fact remains that, on record, over 70 people have publicly fainted or vomited on hearing readings of his short stories, especially the cult favourite ‘Guts’. The latter sure does stick with you and make you freaked out, though I wouldn’t call it good horror or disturbing in a sophisticated way. It’s just disgusting.

Another vote for Kosinski's "The Painted Bird".

And for what it's worth for those looking beyond the 20th century, "King Lear" is extremely disturbing, and so is "Wuthering Heights" given its male protagonist is clearly a sociopathic misogynist. When you read stuff like WH as an adult male rather than a starry eyed teen-aged girl hung up on "Ro-Mance", things are apparent that wouldn't be to the starry-eyed teenaged girl. It's a really horrible story.

It's scary because France is crumbling towards submission already

Faggots

Though I liked Dancer from the Dance more than Faggots, Larry, I found Dancer more disturbing, because it was easier to take it seriously. Faggots was more of a joke extended to 300 pages.

One of the creepest Stephen King short stories I've ever read was Survivor Type. Basically it's about a drug dealer that gets shipwrecked on an island. And slowly starts eating himself to survive. I've always enjoyed his short stories more than his novels. Shirley Jackson's The Summer People is pretty creepy too.

After reading Glamorama by Bret Easton Ellis I never had any desire to read any other BEE novel. So, I guess that spared me of American Psycho. To me Glamorama was disturbing enough with fashion models as murderous agents torturing and killing people. Then the vivid description of the plane blowing up. BEE is one fucked up dude.

R148 What was the name of that class?

R168, I don't remember. Maybe "You're Fucked!" LOL

"A Little Life" by Hanya Yanagihara. An extreme of gratuitous misery-porn. It reminded me of all the criticisms people had about "The Last Temptation of Christ" and how over-the-top that was.

I checked it out from the library ahead of a snowstorm, figuring I'd have extra time on my hands due to weather-related closures, and I felt just as insufferably trapped in the book as I felt in the blizzard. Emotionally exploitative and gross.

We Have Always Lived in The Castle by Shirley Jackson...

I second a lot of these, but especially Tampa. The nauseating sex scenes got all the attention, but the ending haunted me.

SPOLIER The man character, a lady pedophile, moves to a resort town and seduces young teens on vacation. She talks about how once her looks go and no boys will want her, she plans on moving to a big city specifically so she can pay runaways to fuck her. I like sex, but can you imagine building your entire world around it?

Peyton Place

I remember American Psycho mostly because no publishing house would print it. I can remember setting it down a couple of times with what Bateman did to women. When I was done, I got up and threw in the trash.

I remember American Psycho mostly because no publishing house would print it. I can remember setting it down a couple of times with what Bateman did to women. When I was done, I got up and threw in the trash.

I remember reading Rosemary's Baby by Ira Levin. At one point I became so scared that I whipped it under the bed, then couldn't sleep in the bed with it under me. That was when I was 22 or so. I wonder if it would have the same effect.

R175, I've done that a few times--not wanting to pass trash on to others.

BEE’s Imperial Bedrooms has a disturbing part in the end where he hires a male and female escort and rapes, tortures and humiliates them.

Miller’s TROPIC OF CAPRICORN kind of grossed me out with the scene of lice and bedbugs crawling out of a girl’s hair.

And all the rest of it was boring, self-indulgent, incel drivel.

The Mad Man by Delany

Samuel R Delany should be a favourite writer of Erna’s!

Interestingly, R159, Madonna used it as the basis for her video for "Bad Girl".

50 Shades of Grey.

I nominate this book due to the spelling and grammatical errors. The author should be locked away. The editor should vow to never again work in this field. I could not finish the book. The idea that it was published with so many errors is truly disturbing. I read about one quarter of this trashy book and then threw it in the garbage.

Painted Bird by Koskinski

Everything by Hubert Selby

OP, just chiming in to say I stopped seeing someone not long after he declared American Psycho as his favorite novel and proceeded to quote multiple passages at length from memory. I have no answer to your actual question; I just wanted to share my experience.

In Cold Blood by you know who.

The Exorcist. It frightened me off and on for years. I was very young when I read it. The movie was scary as hell for the times, but the book frightened me much more than seeing the movie.

Homeboy by Seth Morgan.

The absolute absence of morals or safety really freaked me out when I read it as a young'un. It was also peculiar that the neighbour who lent me it was a very conservative, middle-aged Iranian Muslim lady. What the hell was she doing with such a depraved book?

Anything by Donna Tart but especially The Goldfinch - I got about halfway through it, hot tears pouring from my eyes at the utter sadness and desolation of the young protagonist.

The Road set me on a depressive episode. Thanks Mum for leaving both the The Goldfinch and The Road at my house. Come to think of it she's left several more of the books mentioned here which I've fortunately not read as I've learned my lesson when it comes to her book choices. Much happier when she leaves trash like Jack Reacher books, they are fun nonsense and its enjoyable to imagine Jack's fabulous physique.

No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy. I'm scared of horror novels though and won't read them.

Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris. Read it prior to the movie coming out.

These dogs are called Lap dogs.

People buy lap dogs because they can't make friends with human beings.

Hubert Selby's The Room -- basically 200 pages+ of sadomasochistic fantasies

His Last Exit to Brooklyn is up there too

R129- I was just looking up some of these on Wikipedia and I thought the same thing. I am not ready yet. Still slowly trying to heal from the apocalyptic trump years.

I'm no longer a student so reading novels is all about enjoyment for me. And so I won't be reading any of these, haha. I used to be all about "deep" reading, but I don't want horrible images in my head anymore. The real world is bad enough.

The Bible

It's lame compared to what has been mentioned here, but when I was a teenager I read La Terre by Emile Zola , and I was distubed because it was the first time I read a novel where the evil won at the end. The main female character was raped by her brother in law while the sister was watching and laughing, and the lover left the village sad and broken. I know Mary! but it was 15 years old.

Oz by Geoff Ryman. The narrator is traveling through Kansas and meets a young girl named Dorothy and her life inspires the man, Baum, to write a story. That’s all I’m going to write about it. The author is very good but the novel is harrowing.

Querelle

^I think I saw the movie of that on TV in the 90s. Or a bit of it anyway. Someone dressed as a sailor getting buttfucked?

The Sluts by Dennis Cooper was pretty disturbing. I read it in a state of shock.

Can anyone recommend a good, non-gory phycological thriller? Non-fiction as well. Tia

"Kiss the girls" was a bit too much for me, but I was probably a little too young to read it at the time.

House of Sand and Fog.

A friend gave it to me to read while I was reeling from a break up. Horrible, frustrating, tragic book about people making stupid mistakes over and over. Highly depressing. I wanted to kill my friend afterward for giving it to me. As someone who was forced to move from my childhood home in the middle of the night because my parents got divorced and my father just let the house, where all his kids lived, go into forecloser. It struck FAR too close to home and I hated it.

Call me precious but I avoid overly disturbing novels nowadays. Too many modern authors are too fixated on pointless degradation. The worst are the authors who create a vulnerable or marginalized character and then just relentlessly abuse them. It's like they are getting off on it. If I see a book where one character is constantly degraded I put it down. There's a half way point between Pollyanna naivety and rancid nastiness.

The Secret History by Donna Tartt

I love so many of the books listed in this thread. I swear I’m not depraved, but I do know I have a high tolerance for disturbing content. I like being challenged when I read.

If you're precious R204, then so am I. Everything you said I identify with. There are some authors who are almost juvenile in their belief that exploring human nastiness make their work of higher value. When I used to belong to writing forums as a teen, there were always other teens who had their characters raped just because they thought it was deep and edgy. So much so that that kind of thing became a trope. If you can back your work up with themes and writing, fine. But most can't, they're just showing off how horrible they can be.

Flowers in the Attic. Those poor kids. What their mother and grandmother did to them was pure evil. I think the mother was the worst. So selfish and greedy just like all those Republican politicians.

Palahniuk’s “Invisible Monsters” was really fucked up but also hilarious.

All of my disturbing novels and short stories have been mentioned. Shout-outs to Day of Locust, Pet Sematary, The Excorcist, 1984 - all disturbing when I read them. But -- The Stranger by Camus?

I reread it recently. All Mersault needed was anti-depressants and vigorous face slapping.

Out by Kirino Natsuo

Don’t forget some blue sky, R210.

'"American Psycho" was so out there that I couldn't take it seriously, so not disturbed by it.

Don't ask about the cheesy film made based on the book.

"Strange Sisters"

Probably "Lord of the Flies". I read at the age of about 12 because my teacher had recommended it to me. He knew I was becoming bored with the selections chosen by my school and thought I was ready for some literature that had a bit more bite. It was the first thing I read that blew me away. It was the first thing I read in which completely horrible things happen. It was the first thing I read that demonstrated how low humans could go. I have never forgotten it.