What is the most unsettling book you ever read?

[Kyriakos]

It might be so due to it presenting something very unexpected, which made a deep impression, something frightening, or anything else you can think of :)

For me it probably was some anonymous in my memory story of Lovecraft which i read when i was 16 one night. I've been trying to capture the same feelings since, but failed, probably because in reality they weren't that pleasant, and i fortified myself against them ;)

[loe]

I think, for me it was "Die Blendung" (Auto-da-Fé) by Elias Canetti.
I was so enormously angry while and after reading it about the unfairness of the world and the people - grrr...

Best regards

[Seasider]

I found some of Hans Andersen's stories deeply unsettling as a child. Especially The Little Mermaid andThe Match Girl.

[RaoulDuke]

Notes From the Underground.

It sounds an awfully trite thing to say but back when I first read the book I found it was just like looking in a mirror. The central character and his first person writings laid out a lot of my own demons in black and white, which was "unsettling" to say the least.

[Rores28]

**SPOILER**

Hands down 1984. The realization that if you were being tortured you would probably give up the one you love, that wrenched me pretty badly. As well as pretty much every other part of the novel.


Notes From the Underground.

It sounds an awfully trite thing to say but back when I first read the book I found it was just like looking in a mirror. The central character and his first person writings laid out a lot of my own demons in black and white, which was "unsettling" to say the least.

My friend and my girlfriend are both having the same problem with this story

[loe]

Notes From the Underground.

It sounds an awfully trite thing to say but back when I first read the book I found it was just like looking in a mirror. The central character and his first person writings laid out a lot of my own demons in black and white, which was "unsettling" to say the least.
I absolutely agree with this.
Are you and me the same then??? :shocked: ;)

[breathtest]

I absolutely agree with this.
Are you and me the same then???

Wait ... i thought i was the only one haha.




Rores28 **SPOILER**

Hands down 1984. The realization that if you were being tortured you would probably give up the one you love, that wrenched me pretty badly. As well as pretty much every other part of the novel.


I have to agree with this. It makes you question yourself as a person as well as the human race in general.
And also since the whole totalitarian thing could actually happen, that's pretty frightening.

[laymonite]

It's not literary, but Jack Ketchum's The Girl Next Door put me in a stupor for several days.

[RaoulDuke]

I absolutely agree with this.
Are you and me the same then??? :shocked: ;)



My friend and my girlfriend are both having the same problem with this story


Wait ... i thought i was the only one haha.

There was me thinking I was somehow special. Bummer. Oh well, let us all revel in our homogeneity!

[The Comedian]

O, probably Lolita.

[Modest Proposal]

Lolita for me too. I thought, 'heck it's 2008 (it was then) I'm almost in grad school, nothing from the 50s can shock me.'
I was wrong. I had a one year old and... the book was very difficult for me to read.

[PrimordialBeast]

The Ice Man by Philip Carlo

read it

[Dark Muse]

For me I would have to say A Clockwork Orange, I a use to violence, and darkness and disturbing themes in a lot of the things that I read and the movies I watch, I love horror, dystopia, etc... but something about that book got me in a way that others had not.

Part of it was the powerful effect of using Alex as the narrator, for there was an irresistible charm about him, that you almost cannot help but to like him at least on some level.

[Kyriakos]

Sorry for being a bit off-topic (hopefully not entirely off-topic) but can you please tell me, Dark Muse, from what story of Poe you got that line in your signature? :)

[Dark Muse]

It is from The Raven

[Kyriakos]

Thank you. I never really looked at his poetry

[stlukesguild]

Jean Bataille- The Story of the Eye.

:puke:

Plato- The Republic

I wanted to beat his a**

[OrphanPip]

Plato- The Republic

I wanted to beat his a**

Haha, I totally get this, the book is infuriating. At least, Plato seems to have been a far better writer than Aristotle (having only experienced translations), even if I agree far more with Aristotle he's a bore to read.

[Jassy Melson]

There are three works that physically affected me as well as had an emotional and spiritual affect on me when reading them: Eugene O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh, Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, and Dostoevsky's Notes From Underground. No other works have affected me near as much when reading them.

[MadcapLaugher]

David Foster Wallace's final collection of short stories Oblivion. Most of the stories are fairly dark and bleak centered around characters growing up and dealing with desperation in their adult lives. It disturbed me because I read it after he killed himself and it feels like it gives a window into what he went through his whole life.

[Mr.lucifer]

None of these pieces of literature are as disturbing as squad broken or cloud mows the lawn. Shinji's Nightmare Cataclysm is something even more distrubing than the story of the eye.

[The Comedian]

Lolita for me too. I thought, 'heck it's 2008 (it was then) I'm almost in grad school, nothing from the 50s can shock me.'
I was wrong. I had a one year old and... the book was very difficult for me to read.

Totally had a similar experience. I was reading Lolita in bed and I have two little girls (6 & 3) --unsettling to say the least.

[mortalterror]

Plato- The Republic

I wanted to beat his a**

If you like Dante's Divine Comedy you should like Plato's Republic. They are practically the same thing. I found the first part frustrating and dry as well, but suddenly things clicked and I realized that each subsequent chapter built on every other chapter and it was the most logical and smooth book I'd ever read. And once I made the connection with the Divine Comedy, I started to enjoy all of the characters, metaphors, and allusions Plato was throwing at me. The Cave, the Sun, and Er are great stories and have a lot of the poetic charm which you find in the Bible.

[Rores28]

David Foster Wallace's final collection of short stories Oblivion. Most of the stories are fairly dark and bleak centered around characters growing up and dealing with desperation in their adult lives. It disturbed me because I read it after he killed himself and it feels like it gives a window into what he went through his whole life.

I actually thought brief interviews was more disturbing than Oblivion, though I haven't finished "The Suffering Channel" yet.

[LuggageFan]

Octave Mirbeau's "Torture Garden", a sadomasochistic book that takes place in Imperial China, and part of the horrifying thing is that it seems like it may have been based on multiple true accounts of how prisoners were actually treated.

[Kyriakos]

I would count Lautreamont's "the chants of Maldoror", but only the foreword is somewhat building the expectation that the book is going to have some strange effect on the reader. That said i gave up after the first 40 pages :)

[Mr.lucifer]

Nightmare Cataclysm , its more disturbing than anything written by de sade

[TJx]

It's not literary, but Jack Ketchum's The Girl Next Door put me in a stupor for several days.

I couldn't finish it. Normally I can watch anything but this movie disturbed me.

[stlukesguild]

If you like Dante's Divine Comedy you should like Plato's Republic. They are practically the same thing. I found the first part frustrating and dry as well, but suddenly things clicked and I realized that each subsequent chapter built on every other chapter and it was the most logical and smooth book I'd ever read.

Don't get me wrong... you cannot fault The Republic as a work of art... Plato's conclusions, however... rooted in his idealism... infuriate me to no end.

[Dodo25]

'Infidel' by Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

[mortalterror]

Don't get me wrong... you cannot fault The Republic as a work of art... Plato's conclusions, however... rooted in his idealism... infuriate me to no end.

Of course, he's going to be idealistic about his plan for an ideal utopian society. His Laws are a bit more practical, though still not as down to earth as Aristotle's work.

[nandakishore]

The Feast of the Goat by Mario Vargas Llosa. The graphic scenes of torture were suffocating.

The Collector by John Fowles. A damsel in distress story where the protagonist is the villain, and the expected rescue never happens.

[Patrick_Bateman]

American Psycho...HELLO!!!!

Dude walks around with a decapitated head on the end of his member with the tongue cut out.

[strumphyy]

Le Raport de Brodeck, Philippe Claudel
Beautifully written. The protagonist, Brodeck, also a beautiful character..And yet the horrors of the Holocaust and the feeling that the author himself encouraged, that there's no hope for humanity, prompted me to abandon an otherwise good book

[DanielBenoit]

The Turner Diaries - The most unsettling piece of **** I ever failed to read past the seventh page. The plot summary is unsettling enough: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Turner_Diaries



Plato- The Republic

I wanted to beat his a**

Lol, I felt the same way. Though, in a sense, I was more insulted above all by the thought that Plato had (in his subsequent works as well) mutilated the free-thinking and ironical Socrates into some kind of ideological paper-boy for himself. (Of course we can never know whom Socrates really was, but we can assume that Plato was more faithful to the real figure in his earlier works.)


Haha, I totally get this, the book is infuriating. At least, Plato seems to have been a far better writer than Aristotle (having only experienced translations), even if I agree far more with Aristotle he's a bore to read.

Oh indeed. Neo-Aristoteleans at times piss me off just as much as neo-Platoists (especially if they're still believing in it in the 20th century *cough*Ayn Rand*cough*), but Aristotle was definitely more sensible than Plato. That said, Aristotle is a bore while (contrary to Nietzsche's opinion) Plato is not. I still think that his works are probably the best written of the Western philosophical tradition (though I personally prefer Kierkegaard and Nietzsche's works) and his earlier and transitional works such as the Symposium, remain for me at the height of ancient Greek thought.

[Mallorie]

Oddly enough the short story The Yellow Wallpaper, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, terrified me as a young woman. I read it only once, I was probably about 13 years old and it left me an emotional wreck. More than that though is how vividly I remember it 11 years later and how much it still has the power to creep me out.

[OrphanPip]

Oh indeed. Neo-Aristoteleans at times piss me off just as much as neo-Platoists (especially if they're still believing in it in the 20th century *cough*Ayn Rand*cough*), but Aristotle was definitely more sensible than Plato. That said, Aristotle is a bore while (contrary to Nietzsche's opinion) Plato is not. I still think that his works are probably the best written of the Western philosophical tradition (though I personally prefer Kierkegaard and Nietzsche's works) and his earlier and transitional works such as the Symposium, remain for me at the height of ancient Greek thought.

I have to say my favourite philosopher, when it comes to their writing, is John Stuart Mill. He is clear, concise, and to the point, the perfect way to write when trying to convince someone of something. Although, in general, I'm partial to Liberalism as a political philosophy.

[nandakishore]

Oddly enough the short story The Yellow Wallpaper, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, terrified me as a young woman. I read it only once, I was probably about 13 years old and it left me an emotional wreck. More than that though is how vividly I remember it 11 years later and how much it still has the power to creep me out.

I read the story now. It's terrifying.

Try The Janissaries of Emillion by Basil Copper, or How Love Came to Professor Guildea by Robert Hichens. You'll get creeped out by them too.

[hazelk]

Without A Map - Meredith Hall

[mortalterror]

Lol, I felt the same way. Though, in a sense, I was more insulted above all by the thought that Plato had (in his subsequent works as well) mutilated the free-thinking and ironical Socrates into some kind of ideological paper-boy for himself. (Of course we can never know whom Socrates really was, but we can assume that Plato was more faithful to the real figure in his earlier works.)

Well, if you don't trust Plato's Socrates, you could always try Xenophon's account of his life.

[Kyriakos]

Flowers for Algernon might be mentioned here as well. I do not recall of any other story prior to that which had someone start as retarded, then become eloquent, and then collapse again. I remember reading it for english class, more than 15 years ago :)

[MANICHAEAN]

"The Master and Margarita" by Mikhail Bulgakov.

It was recommended to me as one his most accomplished writings, but I quite simply had to give it up, being overwhelmed by the relentless progress of evil as portrayed through such dark realistic characters as:Woland (The Devil), the valet Fagotto, the black cat Behemoth & the fanged hit man Azazello.

It was unnerving & upsetting and I failed to get past Part 1 up to the asylum part.

[Mudkip]

Flowers for Algernon might be mentioned here as well. I do not recall of any other story prior to that which had someone start as retarded, then become eloquent, and then collapse again. I remember reading it for english class, more than 15 years ago :)

That book stuck with me, too.

A few days ago, I read Freud's theory of penis envy for a class... It's not an entire book, but it has made me angrier than any books I've read. It's just so wrong and condescending and ugh.

[Scheherazade]

A few days ago, I read Freud's theory of penis envy for a class... It's not an entire book, but it has made me angrier than any books I've read. It's just so wrong and condescending and ugh.Well, they say, "Truth hurts."

:smilewinkgrin:

[Mudkip]

Well, they say, "Truth hurts."

:smilewinkgrin:

Haha.

What really got to me is that he started off by saying "Everything I'm writing could easily be false, because I'm basing it off of only a handful of cases," and not only does he then state it like it's fact, but an entire society adopts it as gospel truth.

[hazelk]

Dark Places - Kate Grenville

[closed.......]

The Black Dahlia - James Ellroy

Helter Skelter - The Charles Manson Story

The Road - Cormac McCarthy

[FROADS]

hey ya'll, 1st post.

"Unsettling" is a bit vague. If u mean dark and psychological, i'd have to go with a couple of books..

The Ice Man: Confessions of a Mafia Contract Killer---Phillip Carlo
Carlo examines the life of notorious hitman Richard Kuklinski, gives an in depth look at the horrific murders Kuklinski commited during his lifetime. Book is a great read and sorta makes the reader aware that psychopathic individuals do live among us.

Heart of Darkness- Joseph Conrad
Theme of the whole story is "unsettling". Classic.

Crime and Punishment-Dostoevsky
Raskalnikov's moral dilemmas remain contemporary to our times

[katelbach]

Heart of Darkness- Joseph Conrad
Theme of the whole story is "unsettling". Classic.

Yup, i'd agree so far (only have 30 pages left to read). In fact the 3 books i've read in the last fortnight (A Bend In The River, Wide Sargasso Sea, Heart of Darkness) followed by the next one on my list (The Bell Jar) should leave me pretty messed up for a month or two. As the days shorten...

[katelbach]

Kafka's The Trial and Shelley's Frankenstein also affected me a great deal.

[Armel P]

I'd say "American Psycho" for the gore. It takes violence to a different level. I love it though.

I'd say "Philosophy in the Bedroom" because you constantly want to jump into the book and argue with the characters but you also realize that unless you do a lot of planning you may actually lose the argument.

I JUST finished "Never Let Me Go" and that book is devastating in how it deals with powerlessness.

[wallflower5]

Justine - Marquis de Sade

[Armel P]

Justine - Marquis de Sade

Did you enjoy it?

[Gilliatt Gurgle]

.

"The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" - William Shirer

.

[OrphanPip]

Did you enjoy it?

Sade puts me to sleep, I don't know how anyone can get through any of his books.

[Armel P]

Sade puts me to sleep, I don't know how anyone can get through any of his books.

I suppose, it's the repetition and predictability.

[Armel P]

Would anyone here recommend the book "Hogg" by Samuel R. Delany? I've been toying with the idea of reading it but I don't want to put myself through a book that "unsettling" if it's not worth it.

[neilgee]

Two books that unsettled me

Under the volcano by Malcolm Lowry, for the casual brutality of it's ending, so shocking after the intensity in the way that the Consul's day is described in such detail, but brilliantly effective.

Also Braided Lives by Marge Piercey achieves a similar effect in the way the protagonist's best friend dies half way through the novel to so little effect and so unnecessarily. It could have happened to most young women in America in the nineteenfifties, and she is just disregarded and dismissed. Piercey brings home the futility of it all to stunning effect in a novel that is otherwise perhaps one of her slower reads.

[hazelk]

A very disturbing book for me - Fall Down On Your Knees - Ann-marie MacDonald.

[IceM]

I 65th Notes from Underground.

As I Lay Dying wasn't terrifying or sickening or anything close to inspiring any sense of horror within me, but I just felt this general emptiness after completing it. I never felt any sort of sickness, just a longing for some sort of emotional resolution.

[Serena03]

Probably the first testament, far too much acrimony in that.:leaving:

[JuniperWoolf]

When I found out that the narrator of Life of Pi was a big fat liar, I couldn't take it. I was feeling really sentimental at the time, and learning the truth about Richard Parker was just too much for me.

[jerryball]

I would say; the analyst by John Katzenbach. It's a terrifyng thriller.

[jajdude]

It's not literary, but Jack Ketchum's The Girl Next Door put me in a stupor for several days.

Saw the movie. Ugh. Don't want to read it.

Two books I couldn't finish: "The Rape of Nanking" and "The Good German of Nanking" --brutal photos too, though I liked reading about Mao and such in other books. "Wild Swans" may be one of the best books i ever read.

Got one now called "Cults" and I'm reluctant to read much more after the first 100 pages.

[oshima]

There is a Japanese novel I read called "Welcome to the N.H.K", about a young man who had an intense fear of being in public. The quiet and pointless desperation of the characters in this novel are almost painful to contemplate.

[Carla42]

The Island of Dr. Moreau, by Wells. The book is one of my favourites but you can't deny it has extremely unsettling elements... I could never look at my clothed teddy bears the same way again! I even undressed some - I prefer them to be just bears.

[kelby_lake]

The Hunchback of Notre Dame. The fact that none of the many films they made of it could bear to keep the novel's ending speaks volumes.

[eldoth]

Probably the first testament, far too much acrimony in that.:leaving:

I'd go one step further and say the whole Bible. Some parts of it are unsettling enough just taken as literature, let alone a suggested basis for a belief system.

[The Atheist]

Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago.


For me I would have to say A Clockwork Orange, I a use to violence, and darkness and disturbing themes in a lot of the things that I read and the movies I watch, I love horror, dystopia, etc... but something about that book got me in a way that others had not.

Part of it was the powerful effect of using Alex as the narrator, for there was an irresistible charm about him, that you almost cannot help but to like him at least on some level.

Like? Hell, I love Alex.


Oddly enough the short story ...

Shirley Jackson's Lottery still sends a chill down my spine.

[Mr. Bungle]

There are lots of books I found unsettling but there's one that sort of stood out for me because it's so far the most messed up and disturbing fiction story I've ever read.

The Room by Hubert Selby Jr.
(Plot: The novel centers on a nameless petty criminal locked in a remand cell, and explores his feelings of impotence, hatred and rage, and fantasies of revenge.)

If you are looking for a light read, a fluff piece, this isn't it. :D

[Dimitra]

3 books for quite different reasons.

Bataille's Story of the Eye-I don't even know how I managed to finish that book.:rolleyes:

Lolita-because midway I caught myself cheering for,excusing and supporting a child molester-a great joke and irony at the expense of the reader by Nabokov.:/

And the most unsettling by far:Celine's Journey to the end of the Night.
Like a poisoned wine..this book is perhaps the best I have ever come across-with incomparable "alive" prose-and yet I haven't found the psychological strength required to endure one more journey to the darkness,despair ,hopelessness and feeling of emptiness and resignation that this book is.

[Jassy Melson]

There are two play scripts I have read that affected me so much and were so unsettling that I had to go out and actually get intoxicated: Eugene O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh and Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolfe

[sixsmith]

Suttree - Cormac McCarthy

[AlfredtheGreat]

American Psycho

[jmanu86]

I would say; the analyst by John Katzenbach. It's a terrifyng thriller.

I'd go with katzenbach too; the analyst was very predictable and had some loose arguments.

[VerdantFields]

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf...all hope is lost in this one.

[Jackson Richardson]

I found reading Erskine Childers' The Riddle of the Sands in the aftermath of 9/11 deeply depressing. It is set just before World War One, and tells of finding out German plans to invade England. O God, we could have another world war.

I found Gravity's Rainbow puerile, sexist and homophobic. It's excuse is that with imminent nuclear destruction, human consideration is no longer worthwhile. The scene where the dominatrix makes the Colonel eat his own faeces made my tummy turn over.

[ashulman]

This has to do with age, as you are most easily unsettled when you're young. So A Catcher in the Rye had the biggest impact on my thinking, followed by 1984, A Clockwork Orange and and 2001: A Space Odyssey. Cliche be damned! And yes, I love Stanley Kubrick.

[TheFifthElement]

The Painted Bird by Jerzy Kozinski which just seemed to be an exercise in increasing depravity and cruelty. An effective anti-war book ( I couldn't finish it). Hunger by Knut Hamsun because the main character made me crazy (but I do love it, even though it causes actual insanity). Ryu Murakami's In the Miso Soup, also depraved.

[LadyLuck]

I would have to say Geek Love by Katherine Dunn. It both enchanted me an appalled me at the same time. I'm not sorry to have read it but I have yet to drum up the courage to read it again.

[Helga]

Story of the Eye by Bataille, but it did cure me from a terrible affliction of not reading books with detail descriptions of sex. Once you read the eye it's very hard to offend you. The only problem was I couldn't eat eggs for a very long time after that.

[tonywalt]

Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace or Pale King by the same author. Both speak of the struggle of day to day existence for some people

I find DFW unsettling and his is, in my opinion, the best writer of the last 40 years.

[bouquin]

Lord of the Flies by William Golding.




___________________
Currently reading: The Hunchback of Notre-Dame (Victor Hugo)

[qimissung]

Let the Right One In by John Ajvide Lindqvist. It would be hard to say how much I despised this book and how revolting I found it. Loved the movie, though, the original one. I haven't seen the American version.

[jayat]

"One thousand and one nights"? an arabian book with many many tales.

[Grit]

I think I have One thousand and one nights. Arabian fables full of magic and gore?

Most unsettling book I've read was Pet Semetary. Unsettling describes it to a tee. Such a good book.

[jayat]

I don't remeber gore in them. Magic, definitely. I think it's a tales book for children. I remember I didn't stop reading them for two weeks or so when I was 10 or so, too.

[Calidore]

I don't remeber gore in them. Magic, definitely. I think it's a tales book for children. I remember I didn't stop reading them for two weeks or so when I was 10 or so, too.

Like many old myths and fairy tales, there are sanitized children's versions of the Nights and then the originals, which are something else again.

[jayat]

Like many old myths and fairy tales, there are sanitized children's versions of the Nights and then the originals, which are something else again.

I can guess...Well, maybe someday I read the version "Satanized", (ja).

[dzomberg]

The most unsettling thing I've read (recently) is Accelerated. It's a novel by Bronwen Hruska.

[Byronic]

I think a version of the Russian fairytale 'Vasilisa the Beautiful' or 'Vasilisa's Doll' read when I was six or seven. I thought then that nothing could be more terrifying than Baba Yaga, with her house than rested on chicken legs and the lighted skulls at her gate.

[FROADS]

The Ice Man, Confessions of a Mafia Contract Killer by Phlip Carlo

Carlo writes some gruesome details of death and violence in the life of real life contract killer Richard Kuklinski. Made me think more in depth about the type of people that inhabit this world and how terrible they can be.

[Bibliophile79]

Good call on Pet Semetary

[ennison]

I don't think I have been unsettled by a book for thirty years or more. Infuriated yes. Bored yes. But unsettled nah.