Warning – reference to underage sex below.
I have been trying to think of books to read my 12yo son, and Bryce Courtenay’s ‘The Power of One’ popped into my head. I remember enjoying it when I was a kid, 30 years ago.
I decided to revisit it first to make sure it was suitable.
I had no memory of a character called Big Hettie, who is this fleeting maternal figure earlier in the book. She is obese and has an eating disorder, which the author stresses to the point of absurdity, with her whipping out whole roast chickens and gorging on them. Ultimately, after really hammering home yet again how fat and smelly she is, the author has her fall over on a train and get stuck like a beached whale. And then she dies, unable to be freed by the conductors.
It’s such a strange section in the book and seems to add nothing of value, and just feels cruel and disturbing.
This got me thinking of sequences in other books that struck me as not just unnecessary but disturbing and poorly conceived.
The only other one that came to mind was the infamous 11 year olds having group sex in the sewer to restore their supernatural powers/bond scene in Stephen King’s IT. I’ve read literary justifications and analysis and think they’re a bunch of hogwash. It was flat out stupid and should never have been included.
I’m curious if anyone has any other examples?
by MenuSpiritual2990
5 Comments
It
Umm..
You know what I’m talking about..
Flowers in the Attic?
Blindness by Saramago has a rape scene that I didn’t see coming (pun intended).
The subplot in The Godfather about a character getting surgery to narrow her vagina
The IT thing was weird. Someone explained to me it was their entry into manhood and the way they did it each reflected their personalities and I still thought it was really, really disturbing and wrong. Didn’t seem fair to Beverly-she’s not established earlier as someone who would enjoy that sort of thing.
There’s a bit in *Romance of the Three Kingdoms* where someone doesn’t have anything to serve a visiting dignitary for food, so he kills his wife and serves her to him and is rewarded by someone else. Written 500 years ago in a completely different culture and I still found it jarring.
The racism in Lovecraft is occasionally jarring, since most of the time it’s horror about monsters. Though I know it was part of his worldview.