Well, maybe 'vile' was a little harsh. What was happening was vile, but that's not to say the writing itself was vile. It was the epitome of nightmarish, though. I'm rarely a fan of the hallucinatory. It feels like a short cut to me, like the author has decided to skip the stage where she builds a connection with the reader and leads them deftly into a state of mind, and has decided to simply jab at their buttons instead.

hard for me to see how to prettify this for the reader, let alone why a writer would want to.

For me it's not about 'prettifying,' but about making it more poignant and less crude.