Darkest book you've ever read

[Quinny]

It might not be the actual darkest book I've ever read but Use of Weapons by Iain M Banks was the first book that came to mind. I find the whole Chairmaker thing and the central conceit about how weapons are made and used to be extremely dark.

[YellowDogJen]

I guess, like so many others have said, 1984. So bleak and hopeless - although I suppose Orwell meant it to be cautionary.

I watched The Road, and it was so depressing I had no desire to read it.

[sologdin]

reconsider your value

has the bidding started in the Sell Another Boarder thread, then?

[Myshkin]

has the bidding started in the Sell Another Boarder thread, then?

There's a Sell Another Boarder thread? What am I going for?

[Unlady B]

I don't remember the name of the book because it was my mother who told me about the whole thing. My class got a book about a mining conflict in the Andean zone of Peru, which I never actually finished because it wasn't my kind of thing back then (it's a good book, but I was too young to understand it).

And yes, it was a catholic school but don't let them fool you. They were very open minded and pro-free thinking.

Yeah, it's a stereotype.

Of course it's not exclusive. I always went to laic schools, but in primary school, my Language teacher asked me to rewrite a composition that included gay characters. She wanted a more "traditional" essay. Obviously I didn't rewrite it, and even my mom had to go to the school to tell her she agreed with me that it was an unfunded censorship. They had to let it go, and today I still keep that composition.

Talking about Peru, when I was 15 I got to read and make an exposition to the class about La ciudad y los perros, of Mario Vargas Llosa. I wouldn't consider it dark (maybe because it's written in a funny and entertaining way), but it dealt on serious bullying. It's not a happy ending book, but I quite enjoyed it.

[Zorral]

Richard Wright's Native Son has very little light and is without a tunnel for those like Bigger, born into the racial poverty of Jim Crow. It's a terrible book, in that other sense of terrible.

[aceluby]

Kind of hard to find a book that goes darker into the terribleness of the human psyche than "American Psycho".

The movie is puppies and kittens comparatively.

EDIT: One that's dark that I enjoyed a bit more was "The Hollow Man" by Dan Simmons. Excellent, but bleak.

[RenlysRainbowGuard]

I'll second all the McCarthy suggestions (I personally consider The Road to be devastating, while BM made me want to vomit), and a second for Atwood. I actually read The Handmaid's Tale in a class on satire, which was a bit weird. One book I haven't seen mentioned is Lolita. In terms of difficult to read material, I'm not sure you can beat it. So, so disturbing, especially if you have a daughter.

[James Arryn]

Cancer Ward, by, Alexandr Solzhenitsyn. The darkness of Russia

My mother had me reading Solzhenitsyn when i was 9. Gulag Archipalego, First Circle, A Day in the Life of Ivan Danysovich (?) and Cancer Ward. Tolstoy and other Russians too...she was on a kick.

My soul is suitably scarred.

Anyways, top of my head, when I found out about James Elroy's life, his work took on entirely new shades.

[James Arryn]

Richard Wright's Native Son has very little light and is without a tunnel for those like Bigger, born into the racial poverty of Jim Crow. It's a terrible book, in that other sense of terrible.

I found it bleak...my Dad had me read that when I was about 10. Actually, in retrospect, my parents have a lot to fucking answer for.

[Happy Ent]

I'm not sure you can beat it.

Haha.

[peterbound]

I found it bleak...my Dad had me read that when I was about 10. Actually, in retrospect, my parents have a lot to fucking answer for.

That (and what i'm sure is the truth), or your lying out of your ass to sound impressive.

You're not, so stop.

[Mark Lawrence]

Night, by Elie Wiesel

[James Arryn]

That (and what i'm sure is the truth), or your lying out of your ass to sound impressive.

You're not, so stop.

Wtf?

[ByTor]

1984 and Animal Farm by George Orwell. Animal Farm affected me more at the time, but 1984 scares me more now because of how prophetic it has proven to be.

Lovecraft was also good at this with stories like The Shadow Over Innsmouth, The Coulour Out of Space, and some of his "revisions" like The Loved Dead and 'Til A the Seas, and one of his prose poems whose name escapes me.

[DraculaAD1972]

Hawksmoor (Peter Ackroyd)

The Hellbound Heart (Clive Barker) gets 2nd place

[AverageGuy]

I watched The Road, and it was so depressing I had no desire to read it.

I didn't consider The Road to be especially dark or depressing. The setting is bleak, but the relationship between father and son is overall a positive one, and the ending is if not happy at least optimistic.

[Brandon Stark]

Neuropath was a pretty harsh read. All the things that make SA palatable to me in a fantasy setting brought into the modern world made for a rough go, and the basic problems with the book didn't do much to keep a few of its images from sticking with me.

[dread pirate davos]

I thought of another one. The Bloody Chamber. It's fairy tales and general public domain stories like beauty and the beast, red riding hood etc but dark and often needlessly so. The Snow Child in particular was quite bad, it involved a man ( her kind of sort of father )raping a child's corpse after her kind of sort of mother tricked her into.killing herself. strangely enough it was part of our reading list for A-level literature.

[A Highborn Maid]

Grotesque by Natsuo Kirino - Investigates the murder of a prostitute through the bitter, self-loathing lens of the victim's sister. Hopeless portrayal of a woman's role in Japan. Incidentally, one of my favorite books ever!

The Easter Parade by Richard Yates. Lacks any glint of hope whatsoever.

Play It As It Lays by Joan Didion - Lacks any glint of hope whatsoever.

The Idiot by Dostoevsky - Lacks any glint of hope whatsoever.

Season of Migration to the North - Lacks hope.

Coin Locker Babies by Ryu Murakami - See title of book. Nuff' said.