Hello kindertrauma,
I was wondering if I could get some help finding a the title of a book my older sister owned.
She had this big collection of horror/ mystery/ slasher books mostly by Stephen King in her room and when I was a kid I would sneak into her room and skim them. This book wasn't written by Stephen King though. It was entirely different and it kinda freaked me out.
The book itself was about two kids. A boy and a girl I believe. They were living with their grandmother in what I think was a village in Eastern Europe.
I say that only because the grandmother is described as kind of a babushka lady. I'm not exactly sure when it took place but by the description of the grandmother maybe early 20th century because the children remark that she still dressed in old fashioned long skirts. The grandmother is described as disgusting by the boy because she goes to the restroom wherever she stands, but thinks it's okay because she's wearing the long dress.
The other character I remember is called the hair lip girl. She's really mean to the kids but also is really their only friend in the village. She feels that she'll never find love because of the way she looks and has sex with all the boys in the village to fulfill her desire for love and acceptance. I think I remember her admitting this to the kids when they stumble upon her and a village boy going at it behind some bushes.
At this point I skipped to the end because I was really confused about what I was reading.
At the end of the book, soldiers invade their village. The children's grandmother is killed and they go in search of shelter or survivors. When they search for the hairlip girl they find her dead on her bed with a morbid smile on her deformed face. I think the kids gather that she was raped to death by the soldiers.
After that I couldn't read anymore and I high-tailed it out of there! I was probably about 11 or 12 at the time and I'm kind of ashamed to ask my sister what the name of the book was, so I was wondering if anyone out here could give me a hand.
Thanks!
Marcie G.
Thanks Marcie G!
I wish I could help with this. I don't know the title but I feel your pain. I remember reading my brother's copy of Richard Laymon's The Cellar as a young teen and being completely horrified by it. Your NTT also brought to my mind "The Painted Bird" by Jerzy Kosinski. I guess because of the setting you described. That book also blew my mind. Good Luck! I hope this will get solved for you!
Maybe _The Notebook_ (1986) by Agota Kristof? I haven't read it or seen the recent film based on the book, but it sounds (unhappily) like your sister's book….
It has to be The Notebook. The main characters are twins and both male, but otherwise everything fits. One of the creepiest novels ever.
Unk, I had the same experience with THE CELLAR! The father of my next-door playmate owned it, and I flipped through it when I was about nine. Utterly freaky. I couldn't even remember what the book was for years and years, and only just tracked it down about four years ago.