“There Will Come Soft Rains” – that’s the name of it! I mentioned it before but couldn’t remember the title. Still gives me the creeps…
I hated “The Scarlet Ibis.” I didn’t like it that the older brother forced the younger brother to learn to walk. The message was, “You can do anything if you try hard enough and if you work hard enough.” I have a minor physical disability, and throughout my childhood my classmates and some of my teachers badgered me about how “You could overcome your problems and become a good athlete if you would only try hard enough. You’re just not trying!” I WAS trying as hard as I could! We read this story in my ninth-grade English class, and after that, my classmates’ harassment of me escalated.
The part I hated the most, though, was at the end, when the younger brother bled to death from his nose after going for a long walk with his older brother. What an awful story!
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by elfkin477 *
**What? Am I the only one who read Animal Farm as a young kid and liked it?
- The Scarlet Ibis by James Hurst. I read it in 3rd or 4th grade, and the image of the coffin(gathering dust in the barn)that they built for his brother who’d been expected to die at birth haunts me as much as the end. Such a tragic story for little kids to read!
Great Line, Zsofia
By the way the story that freaked me out is The Last Question by Isaac Asimov. You can read it at this web page. Warning, though, don’t read the last line until you’ve read the story. It’s a massive spoiler.
I was a sensitive child and many books disturbed me. Unfortunately, I am a forgetful (young) adult, and these are the only titles I remember:
After the First Death by Robert Cormier - it’s about a group of young terrorists who hijack a bus full of pre-schoolers and their young teacher. The scene that disturbed me (I must have been about 10 at the time) involved the teacher losing control of her bladder and changing out of her wet jeans while being ogled by one of the terrorists. Icky.
The Red King by Victor Kelleher - a children’s fantasy novel about an acrobat enslaved by a tinker who go on a quest for the cure for the plague. The disturbing thing was the fact that the tinker was alternately mean and kind to the acrobat, he kept her collared and chained to their wagon, and she chose to remain with him after he offered to let her go free at the end. WTF? It was like a Domination/Submission story for kids.
Saturday, the Twelfth of October by Norma Fox Mazer - a fantasy about a girl who goes back in time or something, but the really icky thing was this girl really, really wanted to get her first period. I absolutely did not want to ever experience such a thing, so this grossed me out to the max. (So did Are You There God…, for that matter.) I seem to recall the book being disturbing for other reasons, but I can’t remember the details.
Of Mice and Men disturbed me, too, for obvious reasons.
Norma Fox Mazer has a more recently-published book called When She Was Good (not to be confused with the Philip Roth novel of the same name) that I read while in college. I loved it, but I’m glad I read it at age 20 and not 12. It’s about a girl whose parents die/abandon her and has to live with her abusive older sister, who dies early in the book, and then she struggles with all kinds of mental and physical suffering as she tries to take care of herself. Still disturbing, but now I can read it without wanting to throw the book across the room (which I did to Margaret Atwood’s Bodily Harm - icky!).
Hey! It was Flannery wrote it not no Joyce Carol Oates, and the violence is not senseless. The misfit had them killed A. because per him it’s no pleasure in life but meanness and B. because the grandmother spoke before she thought. None of it would have happened if Bailey had listened to his mamma like a decent man, but he didn’t, so she had to smuggle Pitty Sing into the car in her hatbox, or whatever it was, and that led to all the trouble. If you “go flat emotionally and won’t continue” with that story you’ll likely go flat with all Flannery O’Connor’s stuff because it is all as strong as black coffee. I was mystified until I read her letters, which gave me a better idea what she’s up to in the stories. It helped me quite a bit. Being a late reader myself, I would almost always prefer to gorge on predictable pap than read anything challenging. But it gets to be like so much fast food after a while: sometimes you need to eat something with substance, even if you don’t entirely like it. Flannery has more substance than anybody.
I am not, nor will I ever be, the fifth child. But The Fifth Child freaked me way out. May the 8th grade english teacher who assigned us that rot.
Eek, I had totally forgotten about this story. I’m disturbed all over again remembering it, but since I’m the one who brought up the Scary Story books I shouldn’t complain.
I have a large anthology of short horror stories, titled something along the lines of 100 Horrible Little Horror Stories, that had some pretty disturbing stories in it. The one that stands out for me right now, and whose title I can’t recall, was about a little boy whose mouth was mutilated when he ate Halloween candy with a razor blade in it. To get some kind of revenge, he goes up and down a street slipping razored candy into other peoples’ bowls. Freaky.
I wasn’t very young when I read it-seventeen or eighteen-but We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson has a disturbing, surprising twist ending. I would love to mention it, but I won’t because I recommend the book to anyone who likes twist endings.
1984 & Brave New World - government thought control and genetic engineering / conditioning seem so…NOW.
Go Ask Alice was shocking as well.
NP:Six Feet Under - True Carnage
I see a lot of the books I would offer up for my nominees as a kid - the Lottery, 1984, etc.
As a young man, John Fowles’ The Magus did a number on my brain - I really identified with the main character, only to be shown the need to grow up - it’s kind of like the anti-Catcher in the Rye, in a way…
As an adult, one short story literally knocked me out of my chair: Hemingway’s The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber. If you haven’t read it - do so. True, a lot of Hem’s writing is misogynist and rascist, but some is truly brilliant and I would nominate this story as one of the best ever written. The basic premise is the Macomber is an effete upper-class cad on a hunting safari in Africa with his socially-perfect wife and a British guide who reminds me of Quint from Jaws. Macomber goes spineless when confronted with the opportunity to shoot a lion, but finds a way to find his inner Man - then things get interesting. I can’t recommend it enough.
can’t believe nobody mentioned this book… it was super disturbing and a bestseller too… no, not “Flowers in the Attic”
The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty
I read it in Jr High and couldn’t sleep for a couple nights.
Amazing. I thought of John Christopher immediately, and here all these other people did too. In my case, though it was the last book of his Sword of the Spirits trilogy. I remember finishing it in the car on the way back home from the beach. When I got done, I was so angry and frustrated, and I didn’t know why exactly. A book had never done that to me. The main character ends up screwing up things due to his bad temper, loses his kingdom and his betrothed, and forever alienates everyone who cared about him. And it ends with a terribly depressing sentence. I was miserable for the rest of the ride home.
Carrie by Stephen King - I couldn’t sleep for a week.
Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card - I felt pain for Ender, and by the end of the book I just really wanted for him to be able to live a normal life.
I read the Exorcist in Junior High School, I remember the Librarian made me get special permission from my Mother.
But the one that got me far more than that was Hell House, by Richard Matheson. There’s a scene in there where an old psychiatrist is sitting in the dark, holding hands and talking with his wife next to him- except it’s really just her severed hand, and he’s talking to…the ghost? her ghost? you have to figure it out.
Now I’ll probably have nightmares tonight.
BTW, the childhood media event that had the greates impact on me, with no contenders even close, has got to be the airing of The Birds on TV. I know you were asking for books, but this is the one that got me. I must have been 5 or 6, and my parents sent me to bed when it started. However, the stairs were at one end of the living room, and the TV was at the other. so I went part way up the steps and watched through the bannisters, quiet as a mouse. Until nearly the end, when my parents saw me and sent me to bed more firmly.
But even now, 35 years later, I can’t walk past any large number of birds sitting on power lines, etc., without a severe case of the nerves. Especially gulls. And if they take off, well, I’m ready to duck and run, too. Thanks a lot, Mr. Hitchcock, I hope you’re happy now.
And even the parody scene in High Anxiety didn’t help.
That stuck with me for a [i[long* time as well. I went through a stage in the early 80s when I had a huge fear of nuclear war-not entirely irrational, I suppose. I began reading fiction about nuclear war then. Alas, Babylon didn’t shock me too much, becuase it didn’t have those images. Warday was another nuke novel that got to me. That one stuck with me for a while.
The book that scared me more than anything was The Amityville Horror, that I read when I was in 9th grade. I wouldn’t even leave it in my house after I finished it. Totally creeped me out and scared me beyond words.
I took that book out from the library in sixth grade and I almost returned it when I was halfway through because some parts sickened me so much. I’d never read anything like that before. I did finish it though and I’m glad because it’s a great book.
Anyway, another book that’s been mentioned here already is Where the Red Fern Grows. It was required reading for fourth grade. That part where the ax gets stuck in the kid’s stomach and the dog’s intestines are hanging out… 
I agree. The OP talked about books that “totally blindsided you” when you were young. I have no idea when I read it for the first time (2nd or 3rd grade maybe), but boy oh boy - I still get choked up thinking about Old Dan and Little Ann.
(btw - I hadn’t seen WTRFG mentioned in this thread before your post. I was all fired up to be the first to mention it.)
I didn’t read that book, but I was probably around the same age when I first saw the movie. Scared the living daylights out of me! Especially the nightmare about the cat! shiver
I also remember a Tears for Fears song called “The Big Chair” which used sound clips from the movie and some really eerie sound effects. The song creeped me out. Now I need to find it on Morpheus so I can remember what exactly it was that spooked me.
What about A Dog Called Kitty? Anyone ever read that? That’s probably the earliest memory I have of a book making me cry.
As far as a book scaring the hell out of me, I’d have to put in another vote for The Shining.
Man, someone way earlier mentioned Flowers for Algernon. That story really touched me, although I didn’t cry. I read it one day in 6th grade Englich, b/c I was reading ahead o(ur class never got to it.) I assumed it was just some crap story (albeit a good one) to fill up space in our textbook, and proceeded to later forget the name and I believed I would never find it again. Fortunately a couple of year later someone was talking about it with me, and they knew the name. That’s a very powerful story, esp. the part about “pulling a Charlie”.
rastahomie wrote:
> I’m also reading a disturbing book right now. She Said
> YES: The Unlikely Martyrdom of Cassie Bernall. It’s
> teaching me how wildly out of touch I am with today’s
> teens; and I was a teen just a 15 years ago . Ugh. And
> the youth minister asked me to help out with the youth
> group at our church. Double ugh.
This book is highly inaccurate. See the following:
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/1999/09/30/bernall/index.html