Did you ever read a book so upsetting that you wish you hadn't read it at all?

Cafe Society
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Pretty much anything by Robert Ludlum or Clive Cussler…oh, you mean that the topic matter was upsetting, not the tortured grammar… :wink:

Seriously, Russell Bank’s Affliction was pretty disturbing to me; I read it, and I don’t wish I hadn’t, but it put me in quite a funk. Some of his short story writing is pretty harsh, too, but I haven’t read another of his novels that has had quite the same impact.

Kafka’s The Trial started slowly but became ominous. I’ve never seen Welles’ film adaptation of it but it’s on the list.

Stranger

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You may now count me among those who wish they’d never read this story. I can’t even describe how I felt after reading that.

63

I read “Where the Red Fern Grows” in 8th grade and I have been depressed about it ever since.

I hate that book.

64

Same here, only it was about 4th or 5th grade. I was inconsolable for days.

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Left Behind
I bought into the hype and the story from others and then was extremely pissed that I wasted my time reading such a poorly written book. I still think that the concept and general plot are good material but the actual prose in the book could have been written by a bright 10 year old.

66

I haven’t read the book or seen the movie, but I’ve been thinking for a whole that perhaps I should. I’ve seen a particular clip from that film played on TV many times, and the whole concept of that choice is so disturbing that perhaps reading the full story would set my mind at rest. Or is it worse?

Two stories with such depressing endings that I recommend nobod ever reads them:

‘How to be Good,’ by Nick Hornby. Good book, well-written and based on an unsual plotline, but man what a downer to end on. What a depressing view of life.

‘Gridlock,’ by Ben Elton. It’s not that well-written either. Never before have I read a story where the hero (who really is a hero worthy of respect - great character, and very sympathetic) dies, then his equally-heroic friends die, then the baddies kill some other people and blame their deaths on the goodies, and get away with it, and succeed in a scheme which will doom the entire Earth. And all with the same sort of plot that would lead you to expect exactly the opposite ending.

‘Stone Butch Blues,’ by Leslie Feinberg. Lots of my friends love this. It’s a good book. But I got a third of the way through and couldn’t handle reading about any more rapes.

A book by Susan Sontag, I can’t remember which one, but it was more my professor’s analysis that got to me: the book was about free will, and how it’s not possible. Because for every choice there must be traceable reasons, and there must be reasons for those reasons, and so forth, back until the dawn of time. This basically means that everything is predetermined and free will is impossible. That sent me into quite a deep depression. (My wa out of it now is to say that what we do isn’t as important as how we react, emotionally, to it. I got that from a short story too, ‘The Story of Your Life,’ by Ted Chiang).

Hannibal was a stupid, bad book and it made me wonder about the psyche of the writer.

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FWIW, I’m not a rape survivor and I couldn’t read it either. Maybe it was satire but I found it too vile to even contemplate.

David Foster Wallace’s short story “The Girl with Curious Hair” (from the same titled book) disturbed me immensely and I wish I hadn’t read it.

Joining in on the Stephen King creep, his short story about the family that is going to be beamed to Mars (or somewhere). All the passengers were put under because it would be too horrible to be awake during the matter transport process. But the boy held his breath (tho’ I find this part unbelievable. I mena, in the future, couldn’t they make sure everyone was really unconcious?) and didn’t get put under. When they awake on the new planet, the kids insane having spent eternity a disembodied conciousness. For some reason this story creeped me out way more than even the surgeon eating his own body.

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That WAS creepy! "It’s longer than you think Dad! It’s longer than you think!"What a disturbing thing to contemplate.

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That sounds like Splatterpunks, there’s 2 volumes.

I have no problems with the gore and goop like Guts or *American Psycho. *

Hannibal pissed me off because of what others said about Starling going off character, but I still don’t have minded reading it.

My vote is *Time Enough for Love * by Heinlein. I was never much of a SciFi fan, a friend wore me down until I read it. I was really liking it, Lazarus Long seemed cool. A prolonged life with all the adventures sounded like fun until he got bored and decided to go back in time to fuck his mother. C’mon WTF?

I refused to read another word of his. I really-really liked that book until the last chapter.

70

King’s story about the surgeon eating his own body never creeped me out because the whole idea was just too dumb. Steve, man, what do you think happens when you starve to death? Your body eats itself! Hacking off parts of your body, cooking(?) it, then eating it would be less efficient, because you’re wasting all those calories preparing it, instead of just lying very still and letting your metabolism do all the work for you. Even as a kid, I couldn’t get past that. Pet Sematary, on the other hand…

The first part of The Handmaid’s Tale, when the Gileans take over the country, creeped me out to no end. Made me want to buy a gun, just in case the Domionists ever try something.

I don’t remotely regret reading it, but for years after reading The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, I’d occasionally pinch myself hard, just to make sure I wasn’t developing leprosy.

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The Red Pony by Steinbeck. Sometimes I like to fantasize about what my life would be like if I didn’t have the image of them putting a button into the pony’s trachea lurking in my subconsious somewhere. Better, I think.

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American Psycho

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For me, it was an HP Lovecraft short story. Damn if I can remember the name of it.

There’s a very evil old woman who is enamoured of the dark arts. There is a second character who lives in close proximity and is terrorized by her, and then there is the narrator. After the evil old woman dies — a couple weeks after — the narrator hears a knock at the door and opens it to find

the second character, trapped in the evil old woman’s not-merely-dead but two-weeks-decomposed liquefying body…the evil one has forced the body swap. The victim is unable to speak because the body is too far gone to allow speech.

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I read that at school, fantastic book, but very disturbing.

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I finally got my reserved copy of Extemely Loud and Incredibly Close, and spent about the last third of it sobbing like someone had squashed my kitten. I really resent the author for making me feel that way.

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Another Country by James Baldwin. I was 21, alientated and cynical when I read this and it only served to increase my alienation and cynicism. I took away from it that people are basically instruments to one another and that real love is not possible. After I got through with this book, I wanted to throw it across the room.

Blood and Guts in High School by Kathy Acker. If your idea of a meaningful literary experience is having your teeth kicked down your throat, don’t miss this one. After I got through with this book, I wanted to throw its author across the room.

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The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas by Ursula K. Le Guin

[sniff] That poor little child…

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That was going to be my answer. I just kept getting the sense that the author was damaged. Not just ineptly going for shock value or hard-edged crime drama, but genuinely troubled. I thought the whole thing was just gross and pointless.

79

That’s “The Jaunt” from Skeleton Crew. Creeped me out a little as well.

There was a story I read in a sci-fi anthology when I was about 12. The story was called “The Death Star”, and I picked it up because I assumed it had some kind of Star Wars connection. Nope. It was about a star that goes supernova and eventually makes the surface of the Earth uninhabitable. Just the sort of thing to scare the living shit out of me, and it did.

80

That is a scary one indeed. It’s called “The Thing on the Doorstep.”