Now and again we like to do an admin reads slot on FRA and today I’m talking about disturbing reads, the ones that chill you and stay with you for a long time. Disturbing reads isn’t really a genre, but when you ask people to name theirs, they’ll often give you a memoir. My own selection is a mix up of fiction and non-fiction, but I found all of them dark and disturbing to read and each one has stayed with me forever.
I should say right now that I like to be disturbed and I like books that challenge me, so while all these books were disturbing that doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy each and every one of them.
Out of the Shadows – Anne Marie West
UK readers at least will know exactly who the Wests are, and Anne Marie is daughter of husband and wife serial killers, Fred and Rosemary West. While incredibly disturbing in parts, it was the love she retained for her parents I found it most difficult to come to terms with.
A Child Called It – Dave Pelzer
The memoir that launched a whole sub-genre, and easily one of the most disturbing books I have ever read. This memoir documents Dave Pelzer’s childhood under the reign of terror of a sadistic mother and it’s challenging and difficult to read.
We Need to Talk About Kevin – Lionel Shriver
While reading We Need to Talk About Kevin I had to keep constantly reminding myself that the book is fiction. This psychological thriller is simply the best of it’s genre and the horrors of being the mother of a school shooter will stay with you long past the last page.
We Need To Talk About Kevin US
We Need To Talk About Kevin UK
Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
While this is going in the disturbing list it’s also in my top five favourite books of all time. Written like a beautiful love story, the language is beautiful but the subject matter of paedophilia is hard to stomach, even with its classic status.
American Psycho – Bret Easton Ellis
When first released (I’m showing my age here), this was the noir book that parodied the entire ‘me me me’ mentality of the 80s, and when first reading it in 1995 I thought it was the coolest, most radical book I had ever read. Truly graphic and horrible, but not disturbing particularly. I guess at that age I was the target audience, because when I revisited the book a couple of years ago, I found it so disturbing I couldn’t hardly read it. Proof I think that the reader finishes the book, and that rereads are always worth it!
So that’s my list, but as I love reading things that shake me up, I’d love to hear yours too. Tell us in the comments. We also asked a similar question in a previous poll and ended up with 100 books so disturbing you couldn’t finish them.
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I have developed sensory issues with some AI disorders and have learned to not read disturbing books or watch that sub group of movies.
But I am still freaked out about reading
Lord of the Flies in school (30 years ago). I can still picture that pigs head with flies in the stake.
You and me, pal. When I finally finished that fearsome tome, I threw it across the room, and for all I know it’s still there. I took exception to the notion that we so easily revert to quasi animals. I felt very sorry for the poor pig.
Might want to edit the little mistake you made on the American Psycho bit where you called it the best thing you’d ever written haha. Nice article though 😀
Running with Scissors by Augusten Burroughs was pretty disturbing, yet hilarious & heartbreaking at the same time. Strange how books and stories are like that. ?
Right now I’m reading a book called Bastard Out Of Carolina by Dorothy Allison. It’s a book about growing up poor and being abused by your step rather. It’s very detailed and graphic, but at the same time the way it was written makes you feel how the characters felt. It’s a very good read.
i saw the movie it was really good.
Gerald’s Game by Stephen King
⬆ What she said. Gerald’s Game made me paranoid to be home alone.
1. The Bell Jar
2. Green Mile
3. Flowers for Algernon
4. Sophie’s Choice
5. Of Mice and Men
Listen to the Silence
Listen to the Silence by David W. Elliott. It’s a story of a 14 year old boy, living a horrible existance in a mental hospital. I read it when I was in high school and couldn’t get it out of my mind for years.
Donald Ray Pollock : Devil all the Time
My list is incomplete, but, please indulge me? The 5 Most Disturbing Books I Have Ever Read: my word! Those 9 words themselves have such a certain timbre, a resonance at once both sweet and dark, haunting and lovely, noisy and peaceful!
1. Salem’s Lot – Steven King
2. The Colour Out Of Space- Lovecraft
3. The Telltale Heart – Edgar Allan Poe
4. Catcher In The Rye – Salinger
And with that, I shall slip back through my vortex and into the big game room with my lions.
Johnny got his gun…..and the flashes of the movie they made of it….teenage brain breaker for sure,,,,
Ayn Rand Fountainhead
Beloved
Jude the Obscure
The Road
Blindness
A Little Life
Stranger in a Strange Land – Robert Heinlein
Fahrenheit 451 – Ray Bradbury
The Silence of the Lambs – Thomas Harris
In Cold Blood – Truman Capote
Flowers for Algernon – Daniel Keyes
I stuck to fiction. Reality is far more disturbing.
A Handmaid’s Tale by Margret Atwood has left me disturbed since I read it 15 years ago.
Off the Top of my Head…Helter Skelter. Also one of yours, “It.”
Agree with “Gerald’s Game” (would LOVE to see that one made into a movie, but probably too boring to be successful since most of the action occurs in the wife’s head as she’s tied up?) and “Bastard out of Carolina” (that was made into a decent movie). I would add “The Handmaid’s Tale”–truly creepy.
May I add
The Wasp Factory.
Geek Love by Katheryn Dunn… Top of the charts of unbelievable reads.
All of Ann Rules books and Helter Shelter. All are true stories and I think the biggest reason for reading them is I want to know why. My next door neighbor dated the I-5 killer and said, he was a pretty normal guy. Even after he was sent to prison he would write her. Of course, she did not response to them.
Meat by Joseph D’Lacey.