Scenes in books that made you sick

[MoreauVasz]

The Slick Trick with the Donkey Dick.

One bit from an Ellroy novel that has stayed with me is a scene from the Big Nowhere in which the sexuslly confused detective visits a dog trainer who makes the dogs more vicious by teasing their erect cocks. Dude gets turned on because they're cocks and he's attracted to men. Weirdly homophobic or just fucked up?

I've only read one West. It's the first of his ghost hunter novels and I couldn't read any further as there's a scene in which one of the ghost hunter's colleagues is, having an affair with a married man and it's all rumpled stockings in a motel and people pouring themselves very grown up glasses of scotch. I couldn't stop thinking about George Costanza freaking out at the prospect of an affair because that exact aesthetic gave him the fear. It was a book about ghosts and I couldn't cope with people drinking scotch in a motel as I couldn't imagine real people hooking up in that way.

[chveik]

rape scene in Sanctuary. the somewhat euphemistic langage makes the whole thing even more sickening

[lebowskibukowski]

LOL, that probably explains it.

It's a horrible place, but I would love to spend a little time in the world of James Ellroy, though I'd try to give the racist pigs and mobsters a wide berth. I have not achieved many of the things I set out to do in life, but one thing nobody can take away from me is that he greeted me with "Hey, Daddy-O!" at a book signing. I wouldn't have minded if he didn't bother signing my book after that (and it disappointingly wasn't as barking as some of his inscriptions I've seen, but he was distracted by telling me he felt David Peace lacked courage).

He signed my copy with "Donkey Dan" at a promotional thing he did in Brighton. I'm choosing to believe that it is not an insult.

[Egyptian Feast]

I'd say that was a huge compliment in Ellroyworld.

[Black Ship]

Another one from "Trainspotting" - the revenge photographs

Spoiler alert

(mercifully they turn out to be fake).

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[Mister Six]

That section in a Chuck Palahniuk book with the self-inflicted prolapse in a swimming pool.  Not a pleasant read.

That's the one I was going to mention, from

Spoiler alert

Haunted

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. Read it in Waterstones in Leeds, after the press about people fainting during public readings, and did indeed feel a bit lightheaded. Had to go thumb through some Punisher comics to calm down.

[Fambo Number Mive]

I remember Guardian magazine featured that story as well.

[Phoenix Lazarus]

Quite a few scenes in various Pan Books of Horror Stories.

[badaids]

Another vote for some of the scenes in American Psycho (the rat scene - though it's only physically disgusting, it's made worse by the fact he does it to such a gentle and trusting woman), and Glamorama (the bit at then end when one of the main characters has been poisoned).

I know it's a graphic novel but the bit in The Walking Dead when

Spoiler alert

(Carl is shot in the face)

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.  The reveal and the artwork is just masterful.  I had to close the book and recover after that.

Pet Semetary - the bit where

Spoiler alert

the young boy wanders into the road, run over and is turned into a bloody smear on the tarmac

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.  The sense of dread in the build up and horror as it happens I don't think I could ever read again.

Then there's the book 'Cows' by Matthew Stokoe.  I read this book as a dare.  It's complete shit but it does contain the most batshit sickening scenes of sexual and physical abuse I've ever read.

Non-fiction.  In the Motley Crue biog 'The Dirt' much of it is horrible, but the bit where Nikki Sixx - in casual fashion - basically admits dragging a girl into a closet and raping her.  Juxtapose that with Vince Neill recounting the death his infant daughter dying of cancer, and - I think I'm remembering this correctly - him beating the shit out of the 6 1/2 tumour that they remove from her.

You can add to that the hundreds of testimonies in Svetlana Alexovich's Chernobyl Prayer - the single most affecting book I have ever read.  An utterly desolate diary of grief and pain, but at the same time completely gripping.

[holyzombiejesus]

I read a horror novel about some scouts on an island with some parasitic worm thing that made them evil (or something like that) and there was a bit where one of them tortured a turtle, which was horrible. Actually, quite a few bits I it made me feel queasy.

[madhair60]

I read a horror novel about some scouts on an island with some parasitic worm thing that made them evil (or something like that) and there was a bit where one of them tortured a turtle, which was horrible. Actually, quite a few bits I it made me feel queasy.

The Troop?

[An tSaoi]

I read Trainspotting on the train commuting to work when it first came out and I had to regularly put it aside and do some deep breathing to avoid fainting/being sick at the drug stuff.

Another one from "Trainspotting" - the revenge photographs

Spoiler alert

(mercifully they turn out to be fake).

[close]

Renton shags a pregnant woman. "Sex and a blowjob at the same time." Urgh.

[Dirty Boy]

Hubert Selby's The Room has entire chapters that are almost unreadably grim and sick inducing (the endless rape scene and the stuff about torturing dogs).

I never finished it and i've still got one of his other books (The Demon) that i've never even started, although it's not supposed to be as bad.

Then there's the book 'Cows' by Matthew Stokoe.  I read this book as a dare.  It's complete shit but it does contain the most batshit sickening scenes of sexual and physical abuse I've ever read.

Wow, someone else has read that! I think it was reviewed in Bizarre magazine about 20 years ago and the review mentioned de Sade and other stuff that was no doubt appealing to a twatty teenage edgelord. I remember it indeed being very poorly written and only realised later how much the main characters home situation was obviously nicked from Bad Boy Bubby.

Don't remember much if it now, apart from how intentionally repellent it was. The girl upstairs dissecting rats and finally herself and the murder of 'The Hagbeast' (mother) were probably the worst bits.

[holyzombiejesus]

The Troop?

Yep, that's the one.

[Shaky]

I went through a brief period daring myself to read "edgy" stuff by the likes of Wrath James White. This one sticks out:

https://www.fantasticfiction.com/w/wrath-james-white/his-pain.htm

Certainly ultra-hardcore, eye popping stuff (top scene:

Spoiler alert

the tormented protagonist fisting his own mother to death in graphic detail

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), but the writing is laughably shit with absolutely no pretense of having anything deeper to say (perhaps unexpectedly for an ex-Martial Arts trainer, distance runner, performance artist and former street brawler).

[Kankurette]

The bit from Last Exit to Brooklyn that Germaine Greer quoted in The Female Eunuch about Tralala being gang raped. Put me right the fuck off that book. On the subject of rape, I love Ed McBain but there was one of his books, Nocturne, that I couldn't finish because it had a scene where a group of choirboys are gang raping a woman...while also suffocating her to death with a plastic bag. Ugh. The bit in Ice where a drug dealer's girlfriend gets her nose and nipples cut off was also pretty grim.

[jamiefairlie]

You have to question the mental health of authors who write scenes like that.

[Kankurette]

I can stomach some fairly gruesome scenes, like certain bits in The Wheel of Time, but there are two huge squicks: bodily fluids (I've dry heaved watching stuff like 2 Girls 1 Cup and those fucking zit popping videos) and rape. I always find rape scenes hard to read/watch. It's one reason why I could never get into Game of Thrones/ASOIAF.

[JaDanketies]

Hubert Selby's The Room has entire chapters that are almost unreadably grim and sick inducing (the endless rape scene and the stuff about torturing dogs)

Yeah I was gonna say The Room.

The bit in the Dr Benway chapter in Naked Lunch where the inmates escape and run amok. One fella delivers a monologue while having it off with someone's eye socket, including the observation 'this brain atrophy already and dry as a grandmother's cunt'. Yuk.

And Naked Lunch.

William Burroughs and Hubert Selby Jnr are great for this stuff. The Chuck Palanuik - Guts one about the swimming pool is a good short story but the rest of the book (that I didn't finish) doesn't continue in the same vein. 

You have to question the mental health of authors who write scenes like that.

I used to write stuff like that. Not as well as William Burroughs or Hubert Selby Jnr alas. I shall take my place writing web content.

[Lisa Jesusandmarychain]

The prolonged rape scene in Irvine Welsh's " Marabou Stork Nightmares" is grim as all get out. I don't think I've read anything quite as grim as that.

[Lisa Jesusandmarychain]

You have to question the mental health of authors who write scenes like that.

Janet Ellis walks next to yer man, saying " yes, I agree, jamiefairlie"
( Sorry, I just got taken back to that time when the Blue Peter garden got vandalised, and Percy Thrower and Janet Ellis were walking around, surveying the wreckage, and an unimpressed Percy Thrower cast aspersions on the mental health of the total legends heartless vandals what had laid waste to the beloved garden. Boys and Girls of CaB of a certain age will remember this as a scene of painfully suppressed laughter due to parents also being present while viewing on a par with those filmed bits of top George W. Bush lookalike Joey Deacon. Actually, I * do* agree with jamiefairlie, although I'm not Janet Ellis, despite what people say.)

[Dr Rock]

The bit from Last Exit to Brooklyn that Germaine Greer quoted in The Female Eunuch about Tralala being gang raped. Put me right the fuck off that book.

Yeah that was tough, but I love Last Exit To Brooklyn. What happened to Georgette was rough also. I read it thirty years ago so I can't remember much now.

I had to skip sections of 120 Days of Sodom by Marquis de Sade. ffs.

[jamiefairlie]

Janet Ellis walks next to yer man, saying " yes, I agree, jamiefairlie"
( Sorry, I just got taken back to that time when the Blue Peter garden got vandalised, and Percy Thrower and Janet Ellis were walking around, surveying the wreckage, and an unimpressed Percy Thrower cast aspersions on the mental health of the total legends heartless vandals what had laid waste to the beloved garden. Boys and Girls of CaB of a certain age will remember this as a scene of painfully suppressed laughter due to parents also being present while viewing on a par with those filmed bits of top George W. Bush lookalike Joey Deacon. Actually, I * do* agree with jamiefairlie, although I'm not Janet Ellis, despite what people say.)

Mmmmmm, Janet Ellis....

[Rizla]

In the Quo joint autobiography, Francis Rossi's description of picking his nose in the shower and his septum falling out still gives me the boak.

Tralala in Last Exit too. Bloody horrible, that.

[El Unicornio, mang]

A Year in Treblinka - it's a true first person account of an extermination camp, but even so I wasn't prepared for this part:

Spoiler alert

Time and time again children were snatched from their mothers' arms and tossed into the flames alive, while their tormentors laughed, urging the mothers to be brave and jump into the fire after their children and mocking the women for being cowards.

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[touchingcloth]

There are some descriptions of child abuse in Oryx and Crake which had me wondering if there's a way to clear the history on a Kindle.

[Kankurette]

Yeah, those bits were gruesome.

On the subject of WW2, I have a book about Russian women who served in it called The Unwomanly Face of War, and it's fascinating but grim. Revenge rapes of German women. A load of partisans being massacred and having their feet cut off. A woman leaving her backpack for half an hour, only to find that rats had eaten it. The absolute worst was the descriptions of the Siege of Leningrad.

Spoiler alert

We're talking people eating leather, frozen cow shit and their own children.

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