Stories and Novels that Made You Uncomfortable

While on a week-long campout, in a lonely campground, in the bleakness of late February, reading Truman Capote's In Cold Blood almost made me puke. I was able to get a TV signal, just barely, and also discovered two escaped convicts were on the loose somewhere within 20 miles of the campground. No kidding.

I had to close the book and watch something funny in the DVD. Didn't open it again until I got home a week later. Just to know such evil really does exist in the world....geesh, I'm goin' to lunch now and try to think about the beach or something.

Probably not for the same reason as everyone else, House Rules completely upset me. The story is about a teenager with Asperger's who is accused of murder and doesn't understand enough to defend himself. I have a ten year old with Asperger's and that is basically my worst nightmare. It made me ugly cry, and I didn't know if I could finish.

"The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas" (Ursula K. Le Guin) really stuck with me.

"Seed" by Ania Ahlborn is deliciously creepy.

Jaims22 said:

Probably not for the same reason as everyone else, House Rules completely upset me. The story is about a teenager with Asperger's who is accused of murder and doesn't understand enough to defend himself. I have a ten year old with Asperger's and that is basically my worst nightmare. It made me ugly cry, and I didn't know if I could finish.

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Oh I was thinking of reading that, but maybe I shouldn't? :-( My youngest baby is on the spectrum, he's 7 and I'm still.... not always ok about it to be honest.

Tess Gerritsen--- Life Support

Jack Ketchum - The Girl Next Door.

Misery by Stephen King if you haven't read that already.

We Need to Talk About Kevin.

24/7 by Jim Brown

bearilou said:

The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

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I'd forgotten about that one too. Wasp Factory is already on the list and it's always popped into my mind when weird books come up.

I'd also add The Collector by John Fowles, told partly by the POV of a creepy stalker who abducts a young woman and keeps her chained to a bed in his remote house.

American Psycho by B. E. Ellis, for reasons very obvious to anyone who knows anything about the book (5,000 times worse than the movie, BTW). I had to physically remove the book from my bedroom when I finished it at 3 AM one night years ago because I couldn't bear the thought of falling asleep with it on my nighstand.

I second We Need to Talk about Kevin, Wasp Factory (GOD!), and In Cold Blood. Also, one particular scene in Philip Roth's American Pastoral belongs up there IMO.

bearilou said:

The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

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Yes, that is certainly one story I'm never touching again.

I love The Collector, have read it probably a dozen times. It is highly disturbing, of course, but I don't consider it really scary or disgusting. There's some great beauty in that book IMO.

sohalt said:

"In the hills the cities" by Clive Barker

Two tourists witnessing a local custom going horribly wrong.

Auto da Fé, by Elias Canetti.

Probably the most misanthropic book I've ever read. So many despiceable characters. Such a casual, petty cruelty. So hopeless about the possibility of human connection.

(And, just for the sake of comprehensiveness, although I suspect that's not the kind of thing that you're looking for, since it's hardly obscure:

Wuthering Heights.)

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YES! The Clive Barker short story left me feeling very uncomfortable. I had only ever read Mister B. Gone before diving into his short stories, and I was vastly unprepared to handle them.

Geek Love by Katherine Dunn. Very disturbing. I read a big chunk of it by myself in a motel room in the Middle of Nowhere, New Mexico, and creeped myself right out.

When Rabbit Howls is the most disturbing book I've ever read. I don't want to even think of anything more horrible than that.

I second American Psycho, would add Hubert Selby's The Demon (because I realized I was actively wishing for a character to commit suicide). However, AM Homes's The End of Alice is still the most horrific thing I have ever read. I usually tell people NOT to read it. It's brilliantly done, which only makes it hit harder. I think I went into shock at a certain point and snapped out of it days after finishing the book only to sob over cutlery (of all things) in my kitchen for a very long time. Have read and re-read her other books, but you couldn't pay me to go through that (or Appendix A, the companion piece) again.

The Handmaid's Tale disturbed me, but more in a train wreck kind of way. I was so bothered, I couldn't put it down.

The Road by Cormac McCarthy is the one that I put down and never picked back up. The funny thing is, I remember how I felt, but I don't remember what it was that made me feel that way. I just had to walk away and I guess I erased it from my mind.

Is it too obvious to say Lolita? It's beautifully written, but... ick. Same goes for the parts of 120 Days of Sodom I had to read for a philosophy class.

In a less nauseating way, Brief Interviews With Hideous Men made me quite uncomfortable, because I recognized some of the characters in myself and in the people I know. I think that's a good thing though. Fiction's job is to "comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable."

Push and The Kid By Sapphire.

I just cried.I really felt physically and spiritually ill after reading these books.

Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk.

A lot of people stopped reading at the first short story. That one wasn't really that bad in the scheme of them. For me, it was the way the writers thought and acted on their 'writing' retreat. Also the story about the women's meeting. Ugh, it made me feel like puking. That book really focuses on the sick side of humanity. I still haven't finished that book and I bought it over a year ago. I just can't do it, it's too unpleasant to read LOL. I'm close to done though maybe I should just finish it.

That book is seriously effed. It's by no means scary, just effed to the power of ten.

Jess Haines said:

The Bachman Books by Stephen King writing as Richard Bachman. Particularly the first story, Rage, though they're all of pretty dark and disturbing subject matter. Rage is about a kid who has a psychotic break and holds his fellow students hostage after killing the teacher, so it's very trigger-tastic, particularly considering the incidents at Sandy Hook, Columbine, etc.

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God, it was The Long Walk for me. I don't know if it's what the OP is looking for, exactly, but I have never felt so empty as I did the first time I finished that book.

It was like that feeling where you can't help but look at the scene of a horrible crash, but it's also drawing your attention to the fact that you're staring, and that making a spectacle out of these people's misery is horrible, and sneering at you and you STILL can't look away.

Lissibith said:

God, it was The Long Walk for me. I don't know if it's what the OP is looking for, exactly, but I have never felt so empty as I did the first time I finished that book.

It was like that feeling where you can't help but look at the scene of a horrible crash, but it's also drawing your attention to the fact that you're staring, and that making a spectacle out of these people's misery is horrible, and sneering at you and you STILL can't look away.

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The Long Walk is an incredibly good book. Such unrelenting tension. At the end I almost felt like I had done a Long Walk. That book is special IMO because it's one of King's best endings. Sometimes I don't love the way he handles endings but that book did it very well.

Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale still scares me half to death.

Death on Credit, by Louis-Ferdinand Céline.

I third American Psycho, absolutely brutal. Also, whoever mentioned 120 Days of Sodom is right on the money, that has got to be the most twisted and disturbing thing ever written. The words 'sadism/sadistic' were coined because of the author (Marquis De Sade) so that is saying something. Another really gruesome and unflinchingly vile book is Eden, Eden, Eden by Pierre Guyotat. It was banned in a lot of countries.

Nineteen Minutes Jodi Picoult.

All of the books I've read and only 2 have had the dubious honor of disturbing me so much I had to put them down.

The Hot Zone which is pretty famous and in my case, was actually required reading in a high school class. Yeah...no. It's a fairly graphic (nonfiction) account of the Ebola virus. I didn't get very far in before being so sickened I put the book down and never read another word of it. Perhaps I'd be able to do it now, with much higher tolerance for that sort of thing, but the memory of it still horrifies me.

The other book is Best Served Cold by Joe Abercrombie. There was one scene fairly close to the beginning that made me cringe so hard I had to put the book down and do something else. This one I did pick up and finish and there were a few more really graphic scenes, but nothing quite like that first one.

Make no mistake, I am not recommending this book. But it traumatized me so that's why it sticks in my brain.

The Devil's Arithmetic.

The last book to make me really uncomfortable was "One of the Boys" by Daniel Magariel. "Winter Birds" by Jim Grimsley made me EXTREMELY uncomfortable, especially the ending.

"The Wasp Factory" is actually one of my favorite books.