How graphic if too graphic?

[Rancher1]

Should thrillers or horror books get extreamly graphic on murder scenes?

Just curious what is the thought on that.

[Suzanne]

I remember reading, "The Things They Carried", and there was a section where a soldier stepped on a land mine. The writer's discription of this event was actually poetic, sounds wierd, I know. The reader knew what happened to this soldier, but the discription from the stand point of the narrator was in a way beautiful. Again, sounds wierd, but the writer left the gruesome images to the imagination of the readers.

[missyannlala]

I'm not a fan of the hardcore graphic that leaves no room for sympathy, unless of course it's not supposed to be sappy.

I'm a fan of the descriptions that Ann Rice made in Interview With a Vampire.
It's full of beauty and real wonder.

[wilde]

The only book that I couldn't get through because it was just so extremely graphic was "American Psycho."





I think I got to the part with bateman and the two prostitutes. I think; I can't really remember as it was a year or two ago.