While She Knits--Disturbed Edition

[idiosyncreant.livejournal.com]

I will remember how to post to a community, I will, I will!
 ^_^

The question of the day:
    What books have disturbed or challenged you?

Did the fact that they challenged you make them, in the end, more profound?

In the case of Queen of Attolia, I think the story has a lot more punch than the Thief (much as I hate to admit it; the Thief has my undying loyalty) because of the suffering it puts you through. If, by the end, you finally understand Gen and Irene, the turnaround from the betrayal at the beginning makes a real impact.
    It might be cool to discuss  the smaller parts of the three books that disturbed us, why, and how they affect reading the rest of the story.

Comments

[idiosyncreant.livejournal.com]

For MWT's books, the moment that comes to mind is when Gen describes feeling his life stretched out between him and the withdrawn sword's tip. When I finally caught on to the element of Hamiathes' gift involved there, it was a moment in which I felt what Gen felt when one of the gods moved in the temple under Aracthus.
Chilled with the true-ness of the stories, unexpected.

The Giver is one of my quintessential list of "disturbing for profundity" stories.

I think the appeal of Game of Kings is that (if you press through, which I knew enough from the discussions here to do) when Lymond finally talks, he really is reconciling all the seeming unreconcilable truths. The moment where his brother has to prevent him killing himself, where from that POV there is finally pity and hope for an understanding, is very powerful. Moreso than the actual confession, for me.
This I distinguish from actual impact on the understanding, like Go Ask Alice or Christy, where you experience the consequences of something through a character and have a change of perception.

Books that fall into the latter for me: C.S. Lewis' Space Trilogy & Till We Have Faces, some George MacDonald, Ender's Game & Ender's Shadow, To Kill a Mockingbird, Out of the Dust, Phoenix Rising & Music of Dolphins (Karen Hesse)

[estarria.livejournal.com]

Now, I liked Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow (though I have to admit, Peter in Ender's Game was somewhat disturbing), but the one that killed the whole first series for me was Speaker for the Dead. The aliens in the book had good motivations, but did terrible things...and in the end I really felt like the author was defending their actions.

I read Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier when I was still pretty young, too young to entirely grasp the importance of the themes of love running through the book. At the time, the fates of the main characters seemed so depressing, and the villain definitely creeped me out. Now that I'm older, I understand that the book wasn't as dismal as I thought it was then...but I still have no desire to go back and reread it.

[checkers65477.livejournal.com]

I LOVED the part of Game of Kings you mention. The entire book shifts, slightly, and the new course is a wonder.

Ender's Game is a book I could not stop thinking about.

[philia-fan.livejournal.com]

Elizabeth Wein's post-Arthurian books, starting with The Winter Prince, disturbed me. I like them -- I think she's a fine writer -- but they definitely go to some very dark places. The latest ones have a bit too much child torture for my taste, though.

Another one that disturbed me was The Cup of the World. I haven't read the sequel yet -- not sure if I will. The heroine gets drawn into betraying people and causing lots of bloodshed and horror. I liked the disturbing quality, but ultimately found the book frustrating because I thought it was going for a really fascinating revelation about the religion of the world, and then it...didn't.

[checkers65477.livejournal.com]

Wein's 2nd and 3rd books in the series disturbed me so much I won't read any more.

[netslefj.livejournal.com]

Agree on the Wein series! The trilogy probably was realistic for slavery, though it pushed the limits of what a child is able to survive and how a child is able to function, I thought. Fourth book goes to a level of adult irrationality that is so sick it's contemporary (think Guantanamo and holding camps for illegal immigrants), and I thought the end was a graphic-novel or TV-episode ending now you know my prejudices) and not a literary end point.

Mary Russell's Sparrow books still horrify me. I read them as part of a book discussion group, and some participants clearly were able to abstract the events as literary devices, but I still am not able to stomach the modifications to the priest's hands which are intended as such a high honor to him. And the odd thing is that they were recommended to me by the same person who recommended MWT's work, both series recommended for their power and quality of writing.

There, I feel that I've brought some lingering distress into the daylight. Thanks for the question!

[philia-fan.livejournal.com]

So now I'll address the "challenged" part of the question. Challenged how? Middlemarch and Don Quixote both challenged me by being so long I thought I'd never finish them.

But seriously, I think the first book that challenged me in a good way was Stuart Little. I was -- what? Seven? Eight? -- and it was the first book I ever read that didn't have a happy ending. It wasn't a sad ending, either, it was just open and free and intriguing, like a call to adventure instead of a coming home. Hopeful, but not conclusive: "But the sky was bright, and he somehow felt that he was headed in the right direction." It was a revelation to me that books could do that, could leave so much to the reader's own imagination. I still defend Stuart Little against all detractors because I owe it a great debt.

[idiosyncreant.livejournal.com]

Now there's a profound addition to the discussion.
I have more to ponder about my reading firsts now...

[twtd]

You know, I can't really think of any books that have disturbed me. I'm sure I'm just forgetting about them. Recent disturbing experiences, however, include the toad scene in Pan's Labyrinth, and any scene with Judi Dench in Notes on a Scandal (I'm not sure if that movie is so disturbing to everyone, or if it was just worse because I'm a lesbian. There was just a horrible sense of wrongness about the entire plotline. It's the first time that a movie's ever made me literally squirm.

As for books that gave me an overwhelming sense of accomplishment, I remember finishing A Tale of Two Cities and feeling fantastic because I finally understood what was happening. More recently, I had to read The Nation and Its Fragments by Partha Chatterjee and it felt wonderful to get to class and realize that I understood way more about it than I thought that I did. Unlike some of the other books people have mentioned, I would strongly discourage anyone who doesn't have a reason to read it from even glancing at it. It's... purposefully obstructionist and not a great starting point for talking about nationalism.

I'm about to read The Swimming Pool Library, and I get the feeling that it might have some of those "whoa..." moments. I certainly hope that it does.

[fabricalchemist.livejournal.com]

I have to agree. Pan's Labyrinth was very, very hard for me.

do not. disturbed.

[jazzfish]

I read 1984 in eighth grade. It horrified me and I couldn't explain why.

A couple of years ago I read _We_, by Yevgeny Zamyatin. It's a Russian precursor to 1984 (written in 1921). It hit all the same notes for me that 1984 did, only now I had the critical and personal vocabulary to understand why and how. (Short version: I'm seriously squicked by depictions of powerlessness.)

Some other books have done the same for me in a few scenes: Damon Knight's _A For Anything_, the end of Gene Wolfe's _Fifth Head of Cerberus_, the dungeon scenes (beginning and end) of QoA.

I can't tell whether that's a sign of really good writing or if it just happens to be hitting my triggers.

[cleo]

the most recent thing that I've read that's given me an everwhelming sense of accomplishment, as twtd has put it, was James Joyce's Ulysses. The book is probably the most challenging works of fiction I'd read to that point, and probably one of the most challenging pieces of literature I will ever read or write about (hopefully I will be presenting a paper on one of its chapters in March *crosses fingers*). It is a deeply profound work. I wouldn't say that the fact that it challenged me made it more profound. I find profundity in a lot of things...sometimes the most simple of things. Really, the simple things overwhelm me more in the deepness.

Right now I'm completely taken with Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon. Of all of her works that I've read (Love, Jazz, and Beloved) it has the simplest, clearest prose; yet, it is deeply rich in meaning.

I can't really think of anything I've read that has distrubed me, per se. There are things that have left me deeply affected--Night, Slaughterhouse Five, Beloved, Changes, Nervous Conditions, Lolita, Wide Sargasso Sea, In our Time, Nightwood--to name a few. these are books that have pulled from me feelings of despair, fear, anger, sorrow.

I wasn't really distrubed by anything in the Turner books; rather, I was fascinated. Suffering always allows for interesting character study. I suppose that sounds clinical, but I can't help but look at all of the books as a scholar. They did affect me on a visceral level, of course. There were moments where I was biting my nails, moments where I was in tears...

Really, the only thing that I can think of off-hand is a short story by Katherine Anne Porter (love her work) called "The Grave." It is a coming of age piece...very short, but deeply disturbing it its uses of sensory images and images of animal blood juxtaposed with menstral blood.

[philia-fan.livejournal.com]

I love Song of Solomon.

[(Anonymous)]

I think that the ideas about the gods in KOA have actually strengthened my faith as a Christian.

When Eugenides is talking about the god of thieves and how he is in the god's hands and that he will only fall when his god lets him.

I guess it just helped me remember that God is always with us, and that nothing happens to us without his knowledge of it.

I'm not sure if I explained that right at all. but it was a deep thing when I read KOA and I wish I could put it into words better.

[merliquin.livejournal.com]

the above comment was me... I just forgot to sign in [sheepish grin]

[jade-sabre-301.livejournal.com]

I actually agree. One of the things I love about the books is their treatment of religion and faith. *hearts Gen*

[estarria.livejournal.com]

I agree, I love the way religion is described in these books. And I love it when I find a book that shows me something new about God, or expresses an old idea about Him in a new way.

[willow-41z.livejournal.com]

Night disturbed me by showing how barbaric conditions could force humans to betray the things that kept them human, like family love.

1984 disturbed me because it showed how the government could become completely powerful.

Deerskin disturbed me because I started reading it at much too young of an age-- middle school?-- and it starts with a horrifying event. I was traumatized for weeks. I never finished it.

[willow-41z.livejournal.com]

Oh, and Sphere disturbed me because I read it when I was 6 and the people in it were stuck at the bottom of the ocean floor, surrounded, with nowhere to go for help and the enemy among them... Vital Signs disturbed me because I read it before I was 12, at the latest, and the violence and ubiquitousness of the bad guys... and Hot Zone disturbed me when I started it over the summer (another I could not finish; I started it and was mesmerized by horror but had to put it down after 20 pages) because the scenario painted could so easily happen and then, like in Night, human civilization would be reduced to chaos. I wonder if I fear this because I fear what would happen to me, or I fear what I would become?

Anyway, those are the books I've read that stand out as disturbing. And then there was Sherwood by Parke Godwin, which again I read when I was too young-- yes, this is a theme-- and was disturbed by the violence and brutality.

[keestone.livejournal.com]

Heh. Two of those are ones I was about to mention.

1984 first disturbed me because I was way too young to read it (about eight or so I think -- it may very well have warped me, and it definitely scared the daylights out of me). It disturbed me later because I understood the political implications and saw enough parallels to real life to scare the daylights out of me.

Deerskin is one of those books I found difficult to read but a deep and rewarding experience.

[jade-sabre-301.livejournal.com]

I read Liberating Paris when I was 14/15, and it totally challenged my views on, well, life. Because the characters in it are very normal people--it's a book about people going through their midlife crises, and I read it when I was at the young end of being a teenager and high on Life and Romance and Twu Love and Adventure, and it really stopped me in my tracks. There are a couple of plot twists that made me totally rethink my powers of prediction, and a couple of characters whose stories I initially cheered and later on rejected, based on how my perceptions of the novel changed. It showed me the difference between a love triangle in fantasy (like Arthurian myth) and in real life (which was heartbreaking and icky), and I guess it helped me differentiate between...I dunno. I mean, I didn't live in a world where I thought magic and fairies were real and stuff, but I didn't...understand what life was actually like sometimes. How the trials and tribulations were smaller, perhaps, than Potential World Destruction, but that didn't diminish their poignancy.

So yes, the fact that the book went against my previous perceptions of how romance in literature worked made it much more profound for me than I think it would've been, had I understood those things better.

Nothing in the trilogy really disturbed me the first time through? Though I guess about a year and a half ago or so, on my biannual reread, I fully understood for the first time the fact that Gen is going through a real and serious depression in QoA, and somehow it struck me much more strongly--I think it's how he only makes himself do one thing a day, because he has to force himself to do something to try and get out of the rut.

oh, and The Fall by Camus disturbed/challenged me to no end. I sat down and read it while listening to classical music in the background (XD), and it was intense. It took me a couple of tries but once I fully understood what was going on in the end--how his final argument works--I was seriously disturbed. I rebelled against his arguments and his premises, and that made me go--well, wait, what do I think, then? That, combined with a few discussions with a friend (who said wow, I agree with everything he's saying here, which also disturbed me--I'm still good friends with her, but I never quite saw her in the same light again) really made me start to define my own personal philosophy. Which was fun.

[willow-41z.livejournal.com]

And who is the man in this icon of yours? With shorter hair, he would resemble Lieford, one of my main characters.

[idiosyncreant.livejournal.com]

You talking to me?

That's THE Magus. Alan Rickman, Dahling. He's fabulous, and he's MINE.
As Magus, that is.

[peggy-2.livejournal.com]

The White Mercedes by Philip Pullman. It pretty much horrified me, on several levels.

I found the Attolia books very gripping, to the point I couldn't stop reading them even on a second go-round, but not upsetting. The hand scene was treated so matter of factly I didn't find it upsetting. It had a profound impact, but not a distressful one.

Actually, the scene I found most haunting in the books was in QoA, and revisited in KoA, where Gen was left lying on the damp dungeon floor after having his hand cut off, feverish, in pain, and seriously ill from a myriad of wounds, with no one to care for him. And, as it turns out, having been tortured by Relius while in that condition.

[jade-sabre-301.livejournal.com]

Yes! That one! I was 12! I was emotionally scarred! It might be why I don't like Philip Pullman!

And there was another book I read too early, but can't, at the moment, remember what it was...

wait, Relius tortured him while he was down? *doesn't remember that, but still isn't completely comfortable in her encyclopedic knowledge of KoA*

[rosaleeluann.livejournal.com]

The Lovely Bones.
I was babysitting for a neighbor a few summers ago, and the kids were entertaining themselves, and it was one of the very few books on the shelf. I took it down. The very first chapter told of the rape and murder of the main character. It went back on the shelf and I'm not planning on ever finishing it.

[jade-sabre-301.livejournal.com]

OH GOD.

my roommate has that book. this past weekend, she was gone.

"oh look," I said. "a book."

I read the back cover. Jade, said the tiny voice of Reason and You Know How You Get When You Fill In The Blank, I really don't think you need to read this.

I opened the front page. Jade, this is a really bad idea...

I read the first chapter and was thoroughly freaked out. And kept reading. The little voice in my head tsked in the corner.

I got about, hm, twenty-odd pages in, maybe more (I'm a bad judge of these things), and got the section where she was watching her father grieve for her. I shut the book because I couldn't read it 'cause I was crying so hard, and put it away, and will never pick it back up. The little voice in my head went See, I told you so and then handed me a Kleenex and told me to reread a comfort book or two to make myself feel better.

But yes. It's a disturbing book. (But I'm sure it's very, very good, if the first few chapters were any indication. I just couldn't handle it at all.)