Difficult reads

[Charlotte]

Have you read any books that are really tough to get through because of their non-standard
style? I once had to read The Labyrinth by Alain Robbe-Grillet at university. The plot constantly jumps 
back and forth, it's often not clear what is or is'nt real. Perhaps the original French is better, did'nt like it anyway.
Another one is Schooling by Heather Macgowan. This is'nt really a boarding school story despite it's setting,
it's an adult novel written in an odd stream of consciousness way with limited punctuation so rather confusing.
I'd recommend it though, but not easy to get in the UK, just found it in a second hand bookshop.

[Claire]

Really only when I was doing my English lit degree. Those modernist, stream of consciousness novels I find almost inpossible to get to grips with. James Joyce is a prime example. Otherwise if I find a book difficult to read I will not bother to struggle on with it! I do find it a little hard to read books which are writtten in the present tense rather than the past tense. I'm not really sure why authors do that as it doesn't seem to work as well.

[cloud]

Try the last in the Clan of the Cave Bear series - I think the author did a ton of research, tbh a lot of it very interesting but fairly specific, then she put all the research notes into a file and sent them off to the printers by mistake, it's not a book, it's her research notes!! Very hard going to read even if you liked the series as much as I did.
It's called the Land of Painted Caves!