# Did you ever read a book so upsetting that you wish you hadn't read it at all? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [July 22, 2005, 12:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-ever-read-a-book-so-upsetting-that-you-wish-you-hadnt-read-it-at-all/313622 "2005-07-22T12:43:36Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 7
**Author:** ![CrankyAsAnOldMan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crankyasanoldman/32/11670_2.png) [@CrankyAsAnOldMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CrankyAsAnOldMan)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2005, 1:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-ever-read-a-book-so-upsetting-that-you-wish-you-hadnt-read-it-at-all/313622/121 "2005-07-24T01:47:07Z")
I think another Doper sent me this book, obfusciatrist, maybe? Anyway, it was called “H: A Novel” by Elizabeth Shepherd. The book is about a little boy who’se been sent away to summer camp. The first half of the book relates correspondence between parents and psychiatrists and camp staffers about his behavior. The picture you get it that he’s a weird, nerdy kid with a few issues. The second half is the story from the kid’s point of view, inside his mind, mostly via letters he’s writing to his friend, the stuffed letter “H” he’s attached to. At which point you learn he’s not a weird nerdy kid with a few issues, there’s a lot more going on. It made me feel terrible. For a long time I could not let go of Jaqueline Mitchard’s “The Deep End of the Ocean.” You get to a point where you know there can be no happy ending for everyone. Two others that were well-done but were so depressing I regret picking them up: “The House of Sand and Fog” and “A Simple Plan.” Like watching a trainwreck in slow motion–you know nothing good is going to happen, but the characters keep marching on. Agonizing. ---
**Author:** ![Dung\_Beetle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dung_beetle/32/7945_2.png) [@Dung\_Beetle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dung_Beetle)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2005, 2:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-ever-read-a-book-so-upsetting-that-you-wish-you-hadnt-read-it-at-all/313622/122 "2005-07-24T02:01:03Z")
I liked A Simple Plan, because it showed how a normal sort of person could wind up completely in the toilet just by taking small, steady steps in the wrong direction. At each point, I could say to myself, “Yeah, I might have done that same thing if I were in his shoes.” And at every point, the hope that things might still turn out well… ---
**Author:** ![Infovore](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/infovore/32/420_2.png) [@Infovore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Infovore)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2005, 2:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-ever-read-a-book-so-upsetting-that-you-wish-you-hadnt-read-it-at-all/313622/123 "2005-07-24T02:15:11Z")
For me there were two, one as a child and one fairly recently. The childhood one was _83 Hours Till Dawn_, a nonfiction account of an heiress who was kidnapped and buried alive in a box with a life-support system while the kidnapper tried to get her family to pay the ransom. It was from her point of view, and scared the bejeebers out of me. And I was a kid who happily read and enjoyed things like _Helter Skelter_ and _The Amityville Horror_. The recent one was Graham Masterton’s _A Terrible Beauty_. I normally love Masterton’s stuff (the gorier the better) but this one was horrible. It was about a deaf woman who was very adept at reading lips and who worked for a police department. The ending left me cold: She was lured by a man she thought cared about her (and who kidnapped her young daughter to do it) into a gang-rape situation. After she was extricated from this situation by another character, the story seemed to be over, but then on the last page she receives a visitor at her door and when she opens the door, the visitor (a man she’d had trouble with earlier in the book) simply pulls out a gun and blows her away. The End. I’d never felt so cheated by a book before as I did by this one. ---
**Author:** ![Motorgirl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e36b37/32.png) [@Motorgirl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Motorgirl)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2005, 2:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-ever-read-a-book-so-upsetting-that-you-wish-you-hadnt-read-it-at-all/313622/124 "2005-07-24T02:34:58Z")
> [@Cub Mistress](#): > > I read another book about twin crazy OB-Gyns (male) who had incestuous relations. I no longer remember the title of that one but it sure was weird. I vaguely remember thinking it was based on a real story. That would be **Twins** by Bari Wood. The movie **Dead Ringers** was based on that book. No clue if it was based on a real story or not. ---
**Author:** ![Gail](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Gail](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gail)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2005, 3:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-ever-read-a-book-so-upsetting-that-you-wish-you-hadnt-read-it-at-all/313622/125 "2005-07-24T03:14:27Z")
Recently I read Thomas Savage’s _The Power of the Dog_ for my book group. It was a hard read, in that it was disturbing and made me wish I wasn’t part of humanity. It’s about two brothers who live on a ranch in the 1920’s . The older one was secretly gay and, to some degree in “love” with his brother…The younger brother marries a woman and the older brother does everything he can to undermine their relationship…Meanwhile the older brother is trying to seduce the woman’s son…The son is onto him and gets revenge…which I will not go into…in case someone wants to read it. As it happens, we never got to discuss it…I was kind of mad because I felt like I really had to work at reading it. I don’t think anybody mentioned the Newbery winner,_The Giver_ . That book was pretty disturbing for a children’s book. ---
**Author:** ![lisacurl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/41988e/32.png) [@lisacurl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lisacurl)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2005, 4:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-ever-read-a-book-so-upsetting-that-you-wish-you-hadnt-read-it-at-all/313622/126 "2005-07-24T04:25:26Z")
> [@missdavis102](#): > > I’ve read a lot of things over the years that were depressing, disturbing, or otherwise outrageous, but only one book came to mind when I opened this thread… > > _The Stepford Wives_ by Ira Levin > > I read it in the airport waiting to vacation with my then-boyfriend, a successful, intellegent man who laughed when I told him how much the book had disturbed me. I couldn’t sleep while he was in the hotel for the whole week. Just thinking about it now makes me feel all creepy and bad. Thank you for admitting this. I had the same reaction, although my hub was just sort of bemused that I’d be upset by the book. I had weird dreams for days after I finished it. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2005, 4:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-ever-read-a-book-so-upsetting-that-you-wish-you-hadnt-read-it-at-all/313622/127 "2005-07-24T04:53:12Z")
> [@Eureka](#): > > I read romance novels- some of them explicit, I have some odd and capricious notions of what is objectionable Mama Plant in her 70’s once mentioned to me that one of her romamce novels “had too much oral sex”. I was quite taken aback. I don’t want to know how much oral sex is too much for Mother. 🙂 To return to the OP, _Leash_ didn’t end very well. ---
**Author:** ![Superdude](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/superdude/32/13450_2.png) [@Superdude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Superdude)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2005, 5:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-ever-read-a-book-so-upsetting-that-you-wish-you-hadnt-read-it-at-all/313622/128 "2005-07-24T05:30:51Z")
Two that have always bothered me: [Double Jeopardy](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0380721929/cbsnewscom-20/103-2682250-8405412) by Bob Hill. A true-crime story of Mel Ignatow, a man who kidnapped, tortured, raped, and killed his girlfriend, Brenda Sue Shaeffer. And got away with it. It happened in my town. And [Death of Innocence: The Killing of Shanda Sharer](http://www.crimelibrary.com/notorious_murders/young/shanda_sharer/1.html). Shanda was a 12-year old girl who was kidnapped, beaten, sodomized with a tire iron, and then - while still alive - set on fire. A friend of mine knew Shanda and Melissa Lovelace, who was the “mastermind” behind the whole thing. And one of the girls on the periphery, Kari Pope, was a girl that, at one time, wanted to go out with me. Maybe they bother me because they happened where I live. ---
**Author:** ![Rubystreak](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e5b9ba/32.png) [@Rubystreak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rubystreak)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2005, 9:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-ever-read-a-book-so-upsetting-that-you-wish-you-hadnt-read-it-at-all/313622/129 "2005-07-24T09:29:52Z")
> [@ouryL](#): > > I’m surprised that no one mentioned any of the Clive Barker books. That’s because they have many redeeming qualities that far outweigh the gross-outs. I’d be surprised if there were scenes so vile a person would regret reading all the rest of it, which usually is at least decent and often amazing. Peter Straub has that \*Blue Rose \* series of novels and numerous related short stories that have some highly disturbing, gut-wrenchingly tragic moments and many details of it that linger in the memory in an unpleasant way that hasn’t left me yet. So you will realize what high praise it is that I say it’s worth the suffering because they are so well-done that it all makes sense in the end and your intense reaction gives the novel an emotional weight. It changed they way I thought about some things. There are a lot more movies out there that leave me with this feeling than books. Books usually have some redeemingo r uplifting endings somewhere in them. ---
**Author:** ![C\_K\_Dexter\_Haven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/b2d939/32.png) [@C\_K\_Dexter\_Haven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/C_K_Dexter_Haven)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2005, 12:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-ever-read-a-book-so-upsetting-that-you-wish-you-hadnt-read-it-at-all/313622/130 "2005-07-24T12:01:11Z")
Moderator’s note: The question of spoilers for classics, or even for older works that have been around a long time, is a fuzzy one. I could easily take either side of that argument. On the one hand, it’s been around a long time and spoilers are everywhere, it’s classic enough to take it for granted that everyone knows, etc. On the other hand, there are always new readers/viewers who, in fact, don’t know. I’m never sure where to draw the line. “Rosebud” is probably the canonical example. But in this case, I think it’s context: **Hitchhikers’ Guide** isn’t really “classic” … and this thread is about books that are upsetting, so I think we should be more attentive to spoilers. This thread may attract people to a book, and therefor we should be thoughtful. ---
**Author:** ![ivylass](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/9de053/32.png) [@ivylass](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ivylass)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2005, 1:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-ever-read-a-book-so-upsetting-that-you-wish-you-hadnt-read-it-at-all/313622/131 "2005-07-24T13:04:29Z")
I read a Book Section in Reader’s Digest once about the abuse of small boy. _The Murder of Robbie Wayne, Age 6_ was pretty graphic, and even more horrid was that the other children in the house were not abused in any way. The scene where he’s standing on a chair, washing the dishes, trying to hold his pants up because he’s lost so much weight through starvation just hurts my heart. His finally dies when his stepfather knocks him down for drinking Coke from the baby’s bottle. ---
**Author:** ![ivylass](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/9de053/32.png) [@ivylass](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ivylass)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2005, 1:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-ever-read-a-book-so-upsetting-that-you-wish-you-hadnt-read-it-at-all/313622/132 "2005-07-24T13:18:51Z")
> [@La Llorona](#): > > Oh my God, “The October Game.” > > ::_shudders delicately_:: Okay, I found it. I read it. I have a question. (Do not click on the spoiler box unless you want to know the big surprise ending. You have been warned.) How the hell did Mich have time to kill Marion and cut her up before he went downstairs? From what I could tell he went down last, then started the story about the witch. ---
**Author:** ![DocCathode](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/doccathode/32/18773_2.png) [@DocCathode](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DocCathode)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2005, 1:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-ever-read-a-book-so-upsetting-that-you-wish-you-hadnt-read-it-at-all/313622/133 "2005-07-24T13:54:19Z")
Re The October Game > [@](#): > > My opinion is that he didn’t kill her. His goal was to make his wife think he has, so that she will behave in a foolish manner and be shamed. Further, Marion’s participation in keeping quiet and terrifying mom would prove that despite the bright blue eyes and blonde hair, she really is dark and cruel and her father’s daughter. Kill Marion? Then the wife receives sympathy and is seen as a saint. Make the wife look like an idiot and show her that Marion is everything she hates in her husband? A good laugh followed by something that will hurt her every moment of the rest of her life. ---
**Author:** ![ivylass](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/9de053/32.png) [@ivylass](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ivylass)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2005, 2:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-ever-read-a-book-so-upsetting-that-you-wish-you-hadnt-read-it-at-all/313622/134 "2005-07-24T14:04:03Z")
October Game discussion continues… Now, that’s not what I thought. I thought he wanted to hurt his wife in the most horrible way possible, to draw out the pain, and what worse way to do that than to kill her daughter, her precious daughter that looks nothing like her husband? Mich admitted he didn’t love his daughter, that he’d wanted a son. I do see your point, “Some idiot turned on the light” perhaps ruins the sadistic game he’s playing, but I took that to mean he wanted to make the panic last longer. The lights are turned on, his wife’s fears are confirmed, game over. ---
**Author:** ![Dung\_Beetle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dung_beetle/32/7945_2.png) [@Dung\_Beetle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dung_Beetle)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2005, 2:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-ever-read-a-book-so-upsetting-that-you-wish-you-hadnt-read-it-at-all/313622/135 "2005-07-24T14:16:20Z")
> [@ivylass](#): > > I read a Book Section in Reader’s Digest once about the abuse of small boy. _The Murder of Robbie Wayne, Age 6_ was pretty graphic, and even more horrid was that the other children in the house were not abused in any way. > > The scene where he’s standing on a chair, washing the dishes, trying to hold his pants up because he’s lost so much weight through starvation just hurts my heart. His finally dies when his stepfather knocks him down for drinking Coke from the baby’s bottle. Oh yeah…prime example of the kind of stuff I avoid. Except when it’s in a spoiler box of course. :smack: ---
**Author:** ![DocCathode](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/doccathode/32/18773_2.png) [@DocCathode](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DocCathode)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2005, 4:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-ever-read-a-book-so-upsetting-that-you-wish-you-hadnt-read-it-at-all/313622/136 "2005-07-24T16:22:56Z")
More October Game > [@](#): > > Killing the daughter would hurt the wife. Turning the daughter to the dark side would hurt worse. When the daughter picks out a skeleton mask, is it foreshadowing her death? Or is it a sign that she has gone from wanting to dress as fairy princesses and delight the other kids, to wanting to dress as something dark and frighten them? I’m also wondering what the maximum age for children’s hair and eye color turning dark is. IIRC I had blue eyes and blonde hair until I was two and a half. OTTOMH, the oldest I’ve heard of is seven years. The girl is eight years old. > Perhaps, after that night as the sun’s visits grow shorter and the heat is sucked out of things and fall gives way to winter, she finally moves from eight years of summer into fall and then to winter like her father. Her roots begin to grow in darker, looking for all the world as though a dye is growing out. Perhaps it was a dye, a protective coloration to keep her safe until she was old enough to leave the nest. The down is coming loose now, and underneath are ink and oil and hearse black feathers of a crow. And all her life, mother shall watch as the child grows more and more unlike her. There shall be no funeral, no ending. Hope is the cruelest of tortures. At times she will hope to have her little girl back. Nevermore! She shall wish, often, that her daughter had died that night. For then, she would have stayed bright and loving forever- a prize rose caught and held at the height of its beauty. But, now even the memories of that time are tainted. She can not remember without knowing that what she tended was no rose at all but nightshade. So much more bitter to have love and lost then never to have loved at all. I haven’t read much Bradbury lately, my attempt at his style is off. The above is a rough draft, cuz I don’t feel like spending a few hours going over his stories and adjusting the vocabulary, structure and imagery just so. ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2005, 8:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-ever-read-a-book-so-upsetting-that-you-wish-you-hadnt-read-it-at-all/313622/137 "2005-07-24T20:11:56Z")
> [@eleanorigby](#): > > **spectre** --I’ll bet money that she chose the Bible, no? > > 😃 She chose for her sister a book on herbs, for the baby a book of old local Indian lore, and for herself–only the index volume of an encyclopedia. Perhaps I should have mentioned that in the earlier part of the book she began reading the entire encyclopedia from A to Z, figuring all that general knowledge might help her out at Harvard. ---
**Author:** ![pinkfreud](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pinkfreud/32/17603_2.png) [@pinkfreud](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pinkfreud)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2005, 8:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-ever-read-a-book-so-upsetting-that-you-wish-you-hadnt-read-it-at-all/313622/138 "2005-07-24T20:58:30Z")
> [@Motorgirl](#): > > That would be **Twins** by Bari Wood. > The movie **Dead Ringers** was based on that book. > > No clue if it was based on a real story or not. The plot was very loosely based on the true story of Drs. Stewart and Cyril Marcus, identical twin gynecologists who were found dead in their NYC apartment in the 1970s. ---
**Author:** ![eleanorigby](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/ee7513/32.png) [@eleanorigby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eleanorigby)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2005, 9:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-ever-read-a-book-so-upsetting-that-you-wish-you-hadnt-read-it-at-all/313622/139 "2005-07-24T21:17:36Z")
> [@Spectre of Pithecanthropus](#): > > She chose for her sister a book on herbs, for the baby a book of old local Indian lore, and for herself–only the index volume of an encyclopedia. Perhaps I should have mentioned that in the earlier part of the book she began reading the entire encyclopedia from A to Z, figuring all that general knowledge might help her out at Harvard. OK, then. And what good would an index do her without the books? never mind, I don’t want to know! **Friar Ted** --I actually don’t remember how the book started out. Looking back over the years (it’s been at least 4 since I read it)–so much that he said was so horribly evil (involving animals) --now I think, eh, not so much. But I could be wrong and I am not about to reread it to see if I am right. Other books that disturbed me: _Sybil_ --and I saw the movie, too and it still is with me at times. I don’t like horror or violence, so I am a wuss when it comes to this kind of stuff… _Bastard Out of Carolina_ was disgusting and rather foul. No more for me by that author. I was intrigued by Atwood’s **The Handmaid’s Tale**. ---
**Author:** ![chorpler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chorpler/32/2888_2.png) [@chorpler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chorpler)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2005, 9:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-ever-read-a-book-so-upsetting-that-you-wish-you-hadnt-read-it-at-all/313622/140 "2005-07-24T21:25:00Z")
> [@DocCathode](#): > > _Guts_ > > ‘This story shall shock and disgust you.’ > > Meh. Bad science. Pointless attempts to gross me out. More bad science. More pointless attempts to gross me out. Worse science. When you say “bad science,” are you referring to the fact that the pool’s pump sucks his large intestine out of his anus instead of his small intestine? I had always thought that if something like that happened it would be your large intestine that would be pulled out, but thanks to [this old Cecil column](http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a5_260.html) and a few other sources I’ve read since, I’ve learned that it’s the small intestine that comes out when things start getting sucked out of your heiny. It was quite startling to hear Chuck make such an error when I was listening to the audiobook version of _Haunted_ the other day. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-ever-read-a-book-so-upsetting-that-you-wish-you-hadnt-read-it-at-all/313622.md?page=6) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-ever-read-a-book-so-upsetting-that-you-wish-you-hadnt-read-it-at-all/313622.md?page=8)