Disturbing Books

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I'm scared that I didn't find Geek Love disturbing. I thought it was excellent. I loved the group insanity of the droves of people following Artie's "religion". Makes me think of a particular Crazy Evil pop star and his junkies groupies.

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As a kid, I read a book called "The Girl in the Box" or something similar: basically, there is a girl who somehow got locked in a hole in a ground. There's a small supply of food and water, as well as a typewriter. The format is in a sort of diary she writes on the typewriter, as strangely enough, there is also paper (I guess). It's totally black in there, no light, so she can't see, and she knows she'll die when the food/water gives out. Basically, it ends on that note--the reader knows she'll be dying shortly. Talk about creepy. I still can't figure out what the point of that horrible and haunting book was.
Also, "Goodbye Mr. Tom" which for some really odd reason is in the children's section and which details some of the most gratuitous and graphic child abuse I've read about.

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I'm scared that I didn't find Geek Love disturbing. I thought it was excellent. I loved the group insanity of the droves of people following Artie's "religion". Makes me think of a particular Crazy Evil pop star and his junkies groupies.

Don't get me wrong . . . I loved the book but I did find parts of it a bit disturbing. All of the really detailed descriptions about how the brother with no arms & legs sort of slithered around the ground creeped me out big time and the part where the siamese twins were having sex but only one of them wanted it creeped me out. I also remember being really disturbed reading about the dead nasty babies.
I don't mind disturbing if it's done in a creative enough way to be interesting and for the disturbing parts to add something to the point of the novel but if it's just there to creep people out with no real purpose or anything, I hate it.

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ITA with all the Geek Love, uh, love. It created some of the most truly disturbing images I have ever seen in my mind's eye. But it was also a beautiful story of a woman's love for her daughter. Awesome book.

Other disturbing books: The Omen. Not surprising, I guess. I read this book when I was ten (bad idea) and have been friggin' haunted by it for the past eighteen years.

I recently read Tattoo Girl. I don't recommend it. I usually like freaky stuff but this one was just weird and scary and cringe-inducing.

[Ripley]

I tried to read The 120 Days of Sodom by The Marquis de Sade, but it was just too depressing. I quit after 100 pages. I would look askance on anyone who praised the book. It's not the sex that bothered me, it was the fact that the four main characters are absolutely loathesome, de Sade knew it while he was writing it, and I didn't care for what they perpetrated.

[Shanmac]

As a kid, I read a book called "The Girl in the Box"

Aaaah! Sweet mother of God, I had completely blocked the memory of reading this out of my head. It seriously screwed with my 10-year-old psyche after my sister lent me her copy (I still haven't totally forgiven her for that). I just remember it ending, knowing she was going to die, and feeling physically sick. Am I remembering this wrong, or didn't she shatter a big glass jar of water on accident, thereby guaranteeing her own death? It's been so long since I've read it, I can only remember the basic details. Did we ever know who put her in the "box" or why?

I probably didn't need to spoiler that, but oh well.

Also disturbing: Devil in the White City, if only because the killer looks just like my ex (seriously y'all, when I saw the picture I almost fell out of my chair), and the entire "genital reconstruction" storyline in The Godfather. What the fuck was Mario Puzo smoking when he wrote that?

Anyway, re: The Girl in the Box -- shudder. I'm gonna go crawl in bed with Mr. Shanmac, cower under the covers, and think happy thoughts. Eeek.

[dwanollah]

Re: The Girl in the Box, I decided that, since we were reading her journal in order, as she'd said would happen if she escaped alive, that meant she'd escaped. At least, that's what I told myself.

[Shanmac]

I'll go along with that. Thanks!

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Another disturbing kid's book was On My Honor, which was a story of two friends who went swimming in a lake together. One drowned (he didn't know how to swim and they both knew it but the other kid dared him to anyway trying to get him to admit he couldn't) and the other one was too scared to tell anyone, so he just went home and pretended he didn't know what happened, and the parents of his friend came by during dinner to ask if he knew where their son was....Basically, the upshot of the story was that this kid had to live with the fact that he was an indirect cause of his friend's death.
That book definitely make me feel physically ill. I think it was a Newbery Honor book, but no way would I recommend it to a kid.

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On My Honor reminds me of a book I read as a kid about two boys who go picking raspberries in the woods, and one gets stung by a bee. He's allergic and dies, although I can't remember if his friend told his parents or not. There was also a book called (I think) The Stone Boy about a boy who goes out in the monring to pick peas w/ his older brother on the family farm, and the older brother accidentally shoots himself, but the boy goes out into the fiel to pick the peas instead of going to his parents b/c he was told that he had to pick the peas before daybreak or they wouldn't be fresh (or something). I remember the movie better than the film. Dean Cain plays the older brother. (OT, but the movie was directed by Cain's stepfather, Christopher, and also starred Cain's mom, Sharon Thomas, end OT.)