Anyone out there read a book that has unnerved them so much they've been unable to stop thinking about it and have consequently had lurid nightmares?
For me it has to be Margaret Atwood's 'Oryx & Crake', which was so chilling and despairing, and so obscene in parts, that I felt physically nauseous. I don't precisely regret reading the book, as it was incredibly well done and very thought provoking, but at the same time I never want to see it again. And if a film or TV adaptation is proposed I'll run to the hills.
For those who have not read it, Oryx & Crake is set in the not-too-distant future where genetically modified livestock provide the bulk of our food, resulting in hideous nightmare creatures like great big spherical chickens with fifty wings and legs and one beak. (Cue Alan Partridge quotes.) Entertainment has become completely morally debased with more snuff films than you could shake a YouTube at and what passes as a technocratic civilisation increasingly lives in compounds. Enter one boy with a terrifying destiny to do something horrible, beautiful, much needed and totally evil.
It's relentlessly straight-faced, no real hysterics. It's basically the Brave New World of our age. (Another book that shocked me a bit when I first read it.) The writing is so deadly-beautiful that it was utterly compelling, and yet I felt sick to the soul when I finished it, and somewhat sick in body too.
Ugh. As a result, I meticulously avoid Margaret Atwood's work even when assured it is ace-best. Handmaid's Tale, for example. Keeping away from that!
Anyone else got any that make the list of, "Aww man!" novels that reduce you to a gibbering wreck? Children's books and fact-books allowed also.