What was the most disturbing book you have ever read?

Question

What was so disturbing about it?

For me it was Exquisite Corpse by Poppy Z Brite

A homoerotic love story about two cannibalistic serial killers, it doesn't get much more bizarre than that. Her descriptions of violence are so visceral too. I was completely shocked and appalled after reading it.

Answer 1

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker

A Child Called It by Dave Pelzer. It's a true story about the worst case of child abuse ever documented. How this man ever turned out "normal" is beyond anything I can begin to comprehend. His life was horrifying. Many people blame their faults on their childhood and this man's was SO bad I'm amazed he's not a serial killer. I wouldn't hold it against him if he murdered his mother. She's evil in it's purest form.

Asker's Rating:

Asker's Comment:

I had to do a bit of research (wikipedia) to rate the answers, because I have not read all of the books mentioned. It came down to this or Sybil, because I agreed with the point about true stories being more disturbing than fiction. From the description, this seemed to have the slight edge. Cheers

Answer 2

i would have to say any stephen king book... but the most really disturbing are the ones that are true,,, the anne rule books,,,,

Answer 3

Fiction: Bret Easton Ellis's American Psycho.

Fact: The Politics of Truth, by Joseph Wilson (but it has a lot of runners-up)

Answer 4

The course in miracles.

It showed me that everything that I thought that I knew, was the very set of beliefs that was causing all of the discomfort in my life.

Luckily it also showed me how to change this harmful belief system and find peace.

Love and blessings Don

Answer 5

The Bible. I came accross a negative prophecy that seems to be refering directly to me. It was very discomforting...

Answer 6

I read a homoerotic book about a serial killer who thought he was a vampire, but I don't remember the name. Of books whose names I remember, Stephen King's IT takes the cake. Sure, the monster is frightening. But the bonding pact (basically a gang bang with twelve year olds) and the creepy kid who puts animals in an old fridge and studies their pain put this book beyond other King stories as far as disturbing goes.

Answer 7

Anything about WWI. But it should be required study for everyone. Today we agonize and spends millions of dollars over the life of a convicted killer. In WWI tens of thousands of the best of men would march into sure death. To me that is very disturbing.

Read Love & Death by Dan Simmons

Answer 8

Sybil. Hands down. Especially because it's a true story. While American Pyscho and Exquisite Corpse show how disturbing some human minds can be, a true story like Sybil can never be topped. IMO of course.

Answer 9

I have several that were really disturbing for me. "Angels and Demons" by Dan Brown really shook me in a way that's inexplicable. "1984" by George Orwell also disturbed me (that's actually my favorite book, AND my most unfavorite book.). Yet another is just about any of the Vampire Chronicles by Anne Rice...especially "Memnoch the Devil." I don't know why, but that really got to me.

I've never read Exquisite Corpse, but I'm not a huge fan of homoeroticism so I probably wouldn't read it.

Answer 10

Could you be more difference? Read Committee of 300 Conspiracy by John Cole. Click on the web. Its disturbing how humans b illiminated.

Answer 11

'The Cement Garden' is pretty disturbing. It's about a couple of kids who's parents die and they keep them in the cellar so they won't get reported to social services. A friend lent it to me saying it was her favourite, but when I gave it back, somewhat puzzled, she looked at it and said 'oh, not this one' and ripped it up!

'American Psycho' is also very distressing and disturbing. By the end I hardly wanted to touch the book. However, I'll probably read it again eventually as I've discussed it with a few people and would like to see how they're interpretations work.

Source(s):

I read a lot

Answer 12

Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk. I got 3/4 through and I couldn't finish it because it was giving me graphic nightmares every night..... And although disturbing, he is a very talented writer. I enjoyed his style.

Answer 13

No disrespect to Christians, but I must say that the Bible
has more dire predictions, admonishments and promises
of going to hell, violence and dogmatic rhetoric than anything
I have ever read.

Answer 14

George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four scared me witless when I read it the first time (I was fourteen, it was 1984) because it was so believable.

In terms of disturbing imagery, Val McDermid's The Mermaids Singing is a brilliant and tightly plotted psychological detective story that I loved but am never going to read again.

Answer 15

The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell. It a sci-fi novel about a group of Jesuits that travels to another planet and the story of the chilling experiences they had there.

I found it incredibly disturbing.

Answer 16

A Canticle for Leibowitz... it was just bizarre.

Answer 17

One of the most disturbing was "The Favored Child" by Philippa Gregory, author of "The Other Boleyn Girl".

All goes smoothly for the first two-thirds of the book. Then, the heroine finds out that her late aunt, who died when she was too young to know her, and whom she has admired throughout the book, is not just her aunt - she was ALSO her biological mother. Then her creepy cousin/brother rapes her, kills her adoptive parents and manipulates her fiancé away from her. She winds up having a baby, leaving it with some Gypsies, and then dying.

Ick. What a sick book. It's part of a whole trilogy that's like that... but fortunately, I've never read the other two.

Answer 18

Lost Boys by Orson Scott Card

The ending was disturbing. I won't spoil it.