Amazon.com
Some say that the apocalypse swiftly approacheth, but that simply ain't so according to Chuck Palahniuk. Oh no. It's already here, living in the head of the guy who just crossed the street in front of you, or maybe even closer than that. We saw these possibilities get played out in the author's bloodsporting-anarchist-yuppie shocker of a first novel, Fight Club.Now, in Survivor, his second and newest, the concern is more for the origin of the malaise. Starting at chapter 47 and screaming toward ground zero, Palahniuk hurls the reader back to the beginning in a breathless search for where it all went wrong. This time out, the author's protagonist is self-made, self-ruined mogul-messiah Tender Branson, the sole passenger of a jet moments away from slamming first into the Australian outback and then into oblivion. All that will be left, Branson assures us with a tone bordering on relief, is his life story, from its Amish-on-acid cult beginnings to its televangelist-huckster end. All of this courtesy of the plane's flight recorder.

Speaking of little black boxes, Skinnerians would have a field day with the presenting behavior of the folks who make up Palahniuk's world. They pretend they're suicide hotline operators for fun. They eat lobster before it's quite... done. They dance in morgues. The Cleavers they are not. Scary as they might be, these characters are ultimately more scared of themselves than you are, and that's what makes them so fascinating. In the wee hours and on lonely highways, they exist in a perpetual twilight, caught between the horror of the present and the dread of the unknown. With only two novels under his belt, Chuck Palahniuk is well on his way to becoming an expert at shining a light on these shadowy creatures. --Bob MichaelsBook Description
From the author of the cult sensation Fight Club (now a major motion picture starring Brad Pitt, Edward Norton, and Helena Bonham Carter) comes Survivor.

"A turbo-charged, deliciously manic satire of contemporary American life." --Newsday

"The only difference between suicide and martyrdom is press coverage," according to the "been there, done that" wisdom of Tender Branson, last surviving member of the Creedish Death Cult. At the opening of Chuck Palahniuk's hilariously unnerving second novel, Tender is cruising on autopilot, 39,000 feet up, dictating the whole of his life story into Flight 2039's "black box" in the final moments before crashing into the vast Australian outback.

Not since Kurt Vonnegut's Mother Night has there been as dark and telling a satire on the wages of fame and the bedrock lunacy of the modern world. Wickedly incisive and mesmerizing, Survivor is Chuck Palahniuk at his deadpan peak. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (367)

Loved the first half, second half pretty good
Tender Branson is the last surviving member of the Creedish cult, but not for long as he has hijacked a plane which he intends to crash after he finishes telling his life story into the flight recorder.

The book starts and ends with Tender Branson in the hijacked plane where he has nicely served everyone their last meal, landed the plane somewhere so everyone could disembark except the pilot who jumps out with a parachute later on so that Tender can die on the plane himself. He has been telling his life story into a flight recorder the entire book because that is what Fertility, a girl he is fascinated with that can see the future, told him to do. She hates her gift, but tells him about the future so that he can use it in his messiah gig, which he becomes sick of himself and eventually leads to the hijacking.

The writing style is very similar to Palahniuk's other books that I have read. There is a lot of repetition to make a point or to add humor, especially when Tender was made into messiah from agents and other media types. Throughout the story, there are injections of the best-selling prayer books that have his name on them, yet he never wrote. Prayers such as The Prayer to Delay Orgasm, The Prayer to Prevent Hair Loss, The Prayer to Silence Car Alarms. He has been turned into a messiah once all the other members of the Creedish cult have killed themselves in response to an apocalypse. The members they have sent out into society to make money to send back to the cult are supposed to kill themselves as soon as they hear the news of the deaths. It takes a while for them to all do it, but they finally do until Tender is the last one standing. The media hounds on this and make him famous.

That is the second half of the book, which was amusing, but not my favorite part of the book. I loved the first part where we learn how the Creedish kids try to assimilate into regular culture, but not very well since they seem to be some kind of Amish knock offs. They are experts at cleaning and organizing things. Tender is a maid, cook, butler, gardner and general servant to a rich couple that he has never met in person. They leave him a journal of daily tasks he needs to complete and only communicate through the journal and speaker phone while at work or dinner parties. He knows how to prepare any kind of food and clean anything. The repetition technique was at work during that part of the book with the various cleaning tips, which I found to be hilarious and useful. Maybe someday, I'll run into the need to get blood or some other stain out of various clothing and upholstery, and now I know how!

The first part also has the side story about how a suicide help line phone number was misprinted in a newspaper story and gave his phone number instead. When people called, he didn't tell them they had the wrong phone number, but would give them awful advice, like killing themselves. It is this dark, twisted humor that makes me like Chuck Palahniuk. It is also this section of the book where he mentions "suicide girls," which apparently is where the website feature old school '40s and '50s pin-up-style photos of goth, punk and indie girls. He only mentions it in one sentence of the type of people who call the help line, but how it is a super popular phrase. Crazy.

Strangely twisted & morbidly funny
This is a fascinating, outrageously satirical novel that will appeal to anyone who finds humor in morbid places.Often I'll read a novel and then later have a hard time remembering what it was about.Not so with Survivor.The novel, if nothing else, is memorable.

Chuck Palahniuk may not appeal to everyone but I have to say that I was fascinated by Survivor's strangely twisted plot and morbid humor.True, Palahniuk is treading on familiar ground here (the `unlikely media messiah' bit has been done more than a few times before) but the author manages to put his own spin on things.The novel is uneven at times and I couldn't help but feel that it started to fall off the rails a little near the end, but all in all, it is an entertaining read(riotously funny at times) and definitely makes an impression on the reader.

My primary criticism of this novel is that I found the characters behavior inconsistent and I never fully accepted them, even as satire.Admittedly in satire, the author can take liberties and exaggerate character traits to the point of absurdity but the reader still needs to feel that their actions, even if it's hyperbole, is `true' to the character. Through most of the novel Tender is unable to think for himself, a perpetual follower who does what the church tells him, what his case worker tells him, what his agent tells him, what Fertility and his brother tell him.In contrast, he treats his employers with disdain, ignoring them at times.He is shoplifts, takes the initiative to set up a fake suicide hotline and decides which of his callers should live or die.Maybe it's just me, but I had trouble reconciling the two very different Tender Bransons.

My other beef is similar.In satire, the plot can be (should be) absurd.But even so, things have to make sense within the context of the novel.I know things like this shouldn't irritate me, but I couldn't help thinking that if the agent choreographed the wedding at the Super Bowl and pre-recorded the entire ceremony in advance, that he would never have permitted Tender to make his prediction unrehearsed and without knowing what it would be.And why would the agent have wedding rice dropped on an empty parking lot?The grand gesture would be entirely lost because there is no one there to see it.The obvious answer is that the plot required it. I realize the novel is a parody and isn't suppose to be realistic and I'm not complaining about the plausibility of things like the small book of prayers (which is hilarious) or the fact that an actress is hired to fill in for Tender's future wife during the wedding ceremony (also hilarious).These kinds of things are consistent with the tone of the novel and make sense in their satirical way.The plot developments that seemed to serve no purpose except to move the plot in one direction or another bothered me.

As for the ending (and I'm not giving anything away here because the novel ends at the beginning) it would appear that the narrator dies in a fiery plane crash.The ending though is actually a little ambiguous.My personal opinion is that Palahniuk doesn't kill Tender (there are a few clues to suggest this).My personal preference (not that it matters) is that Tender die.His survival (if he did survive) would feel like a 'cop out' to me.

You'll have to decide for yourself how you think the novel ends.

Nice!
Wow. I really enjoyed the book. I feel that people who did not enjoy it were too simple-minded. I enjoyed the layout and the story. It was a privalage following Tender through his incredible journey. I feel this is a "must read."

a must read
I own all the Palahniuk books, and by far this one is my favorite. I recommend this novel as a good starter point for anyone who is interested inCP's work to get your feet wet. After reading Survivor I turned back to the first page and read it again. Great book, will make a great movie if the right director is attached to it.

Kind of a disappointment
A member of a former religious cult becomes an evangelist hero and with the help of a precognitive woman finally learns the truth about himself and his world.Palahniuk has some interesting observations about late 20th Century society in "Survivor," but ultimately this novel is much more unsubtle and bitterly sarcastic than "Fight Club," his previous effort.In the end, I couldn't really see the point of this book, although it is well-written and entertaining in parts. ... Read more

Book Description
Misty Wilmot has had it. Once a promising young artist, she’s now stuck on an island ruined by tourism, drinking too much and working as a waitress in a hotel. Her husband, a contractor, is in a coma after a suicide attempt, but that doesn’t stop his clients from threatening Misty with lawsuits over a series of vile messages they’ve found on the walls of houses he remodeled.

Suddenly, though, Misty finds her artistic talent returning as she begins a period of compulsive painting. Inspired but confused by this burst of creativity, she soon finds herself a pawn in a larger conspiracy that threatens to cost hundreds of lives. What unfolds is a dark, hilarious story from America’s most inventive nihilist, and Palahniuk’s most impressive work to date.Download Description

Chuck Palahniuk, the bestselling author of Fight Club, Choke, and Lullaby continues his twenty-first-century reinvention of the horror novel in this scary and profound look at our quest for some sort of immortality.

Diary takes the form of a "coma diary" kept by one Misty Tracy Wilmot as her husband lies senseless in a hospital after a suicide attempt. Once she was an art student dreaming of creativity and freedom; now, after marrying Peter at school and being brought back to once quaint, now tourist-overrun Waytansea Island, she's been reduced to the condition of a resort hotel maid.

Peter, it turns out, has been hiding rooms in houses he's remodeled and scrawling vile messages all over the walls -- an old habit of builders but dramatically overdone in Peter's case. Angry homeowners are suing left and right, and Misty's dreams of artistic greatness are in ashes. But then, as if possessed by the spirit of Maura Kinkaid, a fabled Waytansea artist of the nineteenth century, Misty begins painting again, compulsively. But can her newly discovered talent be part of a larger, darker plan? Of course it can...

Diary is a dark, hilarious, and poignant act of storytelling from America's favorite, most inventive nihilist. It is Chuck Palahniuk's finest novel yet.

"Just for the record, Diary is as hypnotic as a poised cobra. Chuck Palahniuk demonstrates that the most chilling special effects come not from Industrial Light and Magic but from the words of a gifted writer."
   IRA LEVIN, AUTHOR OF ROSEMARY'S BABY

Customer Reviews (188)

The Weather Today is Unspectacular with a Bit of Page Turning
I kind of suspected that Palahniuk suffered from what I will call M. Night Shyamalan syndrome.Most people know MKS from the collective gasp we emitted at the end of The Sixth Sense and were subsequently disappointed by Unbreakable, Signs and especially The Village because they were not similarly shocked; despite the superiority of the later films (particularly The Village) in many ways.Likewise I wondered if Palahniuk's mediocre reviews were just disappointment that these books weren't Fight Club.So I picked up The Diary and while engaged found it an unspectacular diversion.

I found the protagonist and her comatosed husband to be complex multidimensional characters that were interesting and mildly horrifying.Particularly disturbing was the protagonist's daughter who defies the convention that children are supposed to present an innocent counterpoint.Also, there are some familiar Palahniuk themes in The Diary that help it occasionally rise above the status of mediocre thriller.One of the main characters is in a coma which is not so subtly compared to the stupor that the conscious choose throughout the book.Palahniuk also has a lot to say about art, beauty and the loss of wonder through comprehensive understanding.This is, by far the most interesting theme.

But, I did not vest in any of the characters.And while the pages turned in my eagerness to see how all of the parts would come together, it was essentially in vein as the payoff was unsatisfying and many of the loose ends were left loose.Palahniuk has the ability to transcend a mediocre ending with stirring prose and sharply insightful observations (see Fight Club).He just didn't do it here.

Beach Reading
Although replete with all the shuddering visual images you'd expect from a Palahniuk novel, this story strayed too far into the formulaic, lazily concluding with an over-used literary device. Easy to read and more entertaining than many, this may be a better book to read on the beach in an alcohol-induced haze than as a compelling, original work of literature.

I did not want this book to end....
I love this book.I had the hardest time putting it down. I've read a couple of his books ( Lullaby, Invisible Monsters & Survivor,working on Haunted as we speak) and I have to say I think this is his best book I've read yet. I could easly read this over and over. I love the darkness of this book.

Diary about Crap
Most of Up-Chuck's books are crap except Survivor and Fight Club.Diary is forced - raped in an alleyway and nobody cares.The book is forced for two reasons: 1) the reader is forced through pathos to have pity for the main character, but it's too sentimental to be pittied; it's forced.2) the other characters are literrally trying to make the subject's life hard so she'll have emotional pain because the book wants to express that pain equals artistic skill.This idea of pain equals artistic skill is forced down our throats for too many pages.Up-Chuck really needs to find out what substance means.

Tortured Artist and Missing Rooms
This is my first Chuck Palahniuk book, and I didn't know what to expect or which title to choose, but I am pretty happy with the results. The author was suggested to me, and I feel like I have found a great new writer. This story is, as titled, in the form of a diary. It opens with a distraught wife (whose husband just attempted suicide) who receives a call about a missing room. Ok, I know it sounds like it doesn't make any sense, but it works so beautifully.

Rooms all over the resort island appear to be disappearing, until Misty and a graphologist figure out that her husband Peter has been filling these rooms with secret messages when remodeling them, then walling them off. Misty, an artist, continues to find messages in books on local artists and other strange places. She is suffering for her art, literally, but her family continue to press her to create more art (to save the island).

As strange as this plot sounds, it's easy to get carried away with the story, waiting to see where it will take you (and the main character) next. There are a few things I would have edited out, but overall it's a pretty great book. I especially loved all the stuff Palahniuk included about art, paints, and the creative process. This book is not like anything you've encountered before (unless you already are familiar with the work of Chuck Palahniuk); for those who haven't read any of his work, I highly recommend this author and book. ... Read more

Book Description
The provocative and mind-bending new novel from the bestselling author of Fight Club and Haunted.

Rant takes the form of a (fictional) oral history of Buster “Rant” Casey, in which an assortment of friends, enemies, admirers, detractors, and relations have their say on this evil character, who may or may not be the most efficient serial killer of our time.

Buster Casey was every small kid born in a small town, searching for real thrills in a world of video games and action/adventure movies. The high school rebel who always wins – and a childhood murderer? – Rant Casey escapes from his hometown of Middleton into the big city and becomes the leader of an urban demolition derby called Party Crashing, where, on designated nights, the participants recognize each other by dressing their cars with tin-can tails, “Just Married” toothpaste graffiti, and other refuse, then look for special markings in order to stalk and crash into each other. It’s in this violent, late-night hunting game that Casey makes three friends. And after his spectacular death, these friends gather the testimony needed to build an oral history of his short life. Their collected anecdotes explore the charges that his saliva infected hundreds and caused a silent, urban plague of rabies . . .

Expect hilarity and horror, and blazing insight into the desperate and surreal contemporary human condition as only Chuck Palahniuk can deliver it. He’s the postmillennial Jonathan Swift, the man to watch to learn what’s – uh-oh – coming next.

Excerpt from RANT:

Wallace Boyer (Car Salesman):Like most people, I didn’t meet and talk to Rant Casey until after he was dead. That’s how it works for most celebrities, after they croak their circle of close friends just explodes. A dead celebrity can’t walk down the street without meeting a million best buddies they never met in real life.

Dying was the best career move Jeff Dahmer and John Wayne Gacy ever made. . . .

The way Rant Casey used to say it:Folks build a reputation by attacking you while you’re alive–or praising you after you ain’t.


From the Hardcover edition. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (95)

Sheer Tedium
The testimonial style of the novel made for an absolutely tedius experience, leaving me with no interest. If you cannot tolerate disjointed storytelling then this book is not for you.

My favorite Palahniuk book-next to Survivor
I loved this book... I read it in less than a day. It's out there...complicated, and a total page turner. It's ridiculously brilliant.

Hit and Miss
Rant is the latest novel by Chuck Palahniuk, the author best known for writing Fight Club.The novel is subtitledAn Oral History of Buster Casey.
Buster Casey is born and raised in the small town of Middleton, where he becomes something of a legend. In one story from his childhood, Casey helps to stage the town's haunted house. He substitutes for the peeled grapes and spaghetti usually used to simulate the feel of eyeballs and brains. Instead, he uses real eyeballs, brains, intestines, and bloody cow hearts. The sound of the children vomiting earns him the nickname "Rant".
Rant's hobbies include collecting bites from poisonous spiders and rabid animals, and examining the trash that blows into the town's wire fencing; trash that includes used condoms and maxi pads.
After arranging to finish high school early, Rant leaves town to try and start a new life. He enters a world where the population is split into Daytimers and Nighttimers, each subject to a curfew that keeps them off of the streets outside of their assigned time of day.
There is also something called "Party Crashing", where bored Nighttimers arrange a sort of game of tag played with cars; and "boosting", where different experiences can be recorded and played directly into a person's head. That person then experiences not only the visual recording of that experience but all of the other senses as well.
Palahniuk just throws these new developments at us without a proper introduction or explanation. We are left to figure it all out for ourselves as we read along.
Palahniuk writes his story in what he calls an oral history style. The story is being told by witnesses who saw what happened, and by experts who add related information from their fields of study.
Each chapter follows what several sources are saying at the same time. For example, on one page there are quotes from a homicide detective, a "Party Crasher", a "Historian", and a journalist. This makes for a chopped up, hard to follow read on a story that doesn't have a clear narrative to begin with.
The chapters are given titles like, "Dogs," and, "The Tooth Fairy." They are grouped by subject, not by chronological order. In fact, the oral history form that Palahniuk uses doesn't really lend itself well to coherent storytelling. There is not a clear plot to follow.
When we do finally see where the story is heading towards the end it is far too bizarre and out of left field to make the difficulty reading the book's oral history style worth the trouble. There are some entertaining passages that highlight Palahniuk's love for the bizarre and the gross, but it is mostly hit and miss and doesn't work as an overall story.

A Mediocre Tale
Three words: What a disappointment! Choke is one of my favorite books, and Fight Club wasn't bad either. But Rant is bad. It's written as an "oral biography," and boy, does the gimmick get old in a hurry. The characters are cardboard as can be, so two-dimensional that if you turn them ninety degrees, I suspect they'd disappear. Even Rant is a wimpy character. Why would you want to write a book about the guy? His life story may have been salvageable in a traditional format and (as much as it pains me to say it) in the hands of a better writer. If you're in 6 - 10th grade, and haven't read any other Palahniuk stories, give Rant a shot. You might enjoy it, and even have a thought or two provoked. Then run to the library and read Choke. However, for everybody else: This is strictly a "been there, done that" affair. You will find nothing in here to challenge you, except for some weak appeals to ignorance involving the possibility of time travel, and some equally unconvincing "well, people used to think the earth was flat!" reasoning. I thought I was going to enjoy this book, but I didn't. For anyone who was less than enamored with Palahniuk's other work, stay away. This one isn't going to change your mind. For rabid Palahniuk fans...you've probably already read the book. If not, you may enjoy Rant...just expect the same Palahniuk angst, but with less conviction.

Pretty good
The book was pretty good, but there were a lot of weak and confusing areas.Overall, not one of Chuck's best books, but definitely worth the time it takes to read it. ... Read more

Book Description

From the master of literary mayhem and provocation, a full-frontal Triple X novel that goes where no American work of fiction has gone before

Cassie Wright, porn priestess, intends to cap her legendary career by breaking the world record for serial fornication. On camera. With six hundred men. Snuff unfolds from the perspectives of Mr. 72, Mr. 137, and Mr. 600, who await their turn on camera in a very crowded green room. This wild, lethally funny, and thoroughly researched novel brings the huge yet underacknowledged presence of pornography in contemporary life into the realm of literary fiction at last. Who else but Chuck Palahniuk would dare do such a thing? Who else could do it so well, so unflinchingly, and with such an incendiary (you might say) climax?

Book Description
Chuck Palahniuk’s world has always been, well, different from yours and mine. In his first collection of nonfiction, Chuck Palahniuk brings us into this world, and gives us a glimpse of what inspires his fiction.

At the Rock Creek Lodge Testicle Festival in Missoula, Montana, average people perform public sex acts on an outdoor stage. In a mansion once occupied by The Rolling Stones, Marilyn Manson reads his own Tarot cards and talks sweetly to his beautiful actress girlfriend. Across the country, men build their own full-size castles and rocketships that will send them into space. Palahniuk himself experiments with steroids, works on an assembly line by day and as a hospice volunteer by night, and experiences the brutal murder of his father by a white supremacist. With this new direction, Chuck Palahniuk has proven he can do anything. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (24)

Enjoyable read
Interesting true stories told well. One story offering some insight into the man? A departure for Palahniuk but one of my favorites of his.

Stranger than Chuck...
Chuck Palahniuk out-does his own fiction writing, (which can be strange at times) with this collection of "True" stories.
Any fan of Chuck will appreciate this book.It lives up to it's title, and delivers it's helping of strange and obscure topics.
One of these topics is masturbation.And, he has much to say about this, including the reactions of the listeners when he read this story at bookstores around the world.And, let's not exclude the "Testicle Festival," the yearly event near Massoula Montana, that includes public nakedness, sex, and debauchery of all sorts.And, of course, the consumption of fried bull testicles. (dipped in ranch dressing)
So, get on...hold on tight.You may wish you hadn't, but, then again, if you are already familiar with Chuck's work, you probably would expect no less.

1 1/2 stars for attempt
I was attracted to this book after reading fight club, choke, haunted and lullaby. So, of course, i had high hopes. I picked it up, and it was not any where near as good as I thought it would be. There are like 2 good stories but the rest are just bland. While i was reading, i kept thinking, "And why am i reading this?" try reading other palahniuk books such as choke. This, for me, was a dissapointment.

Some stories are slow, but overall worth it.
Many other reviewers have noted that some of the stories in this book are slow and dry.The drawn out descriptions of the castle builders immediately comes to mind, as does the personal story of Juliette Lewis.But overall this is a worthwhile look into the mind and life of one of the best authors of our time.I feel like I know Chuck Palahniuk on a more personal level now, and that's what I was hoping for.I find him a fascinating man, someone I would love to sit down for coffee with.With that desire in mind, I am very happy I waded through this book.

chuck feeling lazy
this is by far the worst book he has written, and i'm actually glad that he apologized for its lack of creativity and thrown-togetherness in the actual book. ... Read more

Amazon.com
When the plot of yourfirst novel partially hinges on anarchist overthrows funded by soap sales, and the narrative hook of your second work is the black box recorder of a jet moments away from slamming into the Australian outback, it stands to reason that your audience is going to be ready for anything. Which, to an author like Chuck Palahniuk, must sound like a challenge. Palahniuk's third identity crisis (that's "novel" to you), Invisible Monsters, more than ably responds to this call to arms. Set once again in an all-too-familiar modern wasteland where social disease and self-hatred can do more damage than any potboiler-fiction bad guy, the tale focuses particularly on a group of drag queens and fashion models trekking cross-country to find themselves, looking everywhere from the bottom of a vial of Demerol to the end of a shotgun barrel. It's a sort of Drugstore Cowboy-meets-Yentl affair, or a Hope-Crosby road movie with a skin graft and hormone-pill obsession, if you know what I mean.

Um, yeah. Anyway, the Hollywood vibe doesn't stop these comparisons. As with Fight Club and Survivor, the book is invested with a cinematic sweep, from the opening set piece, which takes off like a house afire (literally), to a host of filmic tics sprayed throughout the text: "Flash," "Jump back," "Jump way ahead," "Flash," "Flash," "Flash." You get the idea. It's as if Palahniuk didn't write the thing but yanked it directly out of the Cineplex of his mind's eye. Does it succeed? Mostly. Still working on measuring out the proper dosages of his many writerly talents (equal parts potent imagery, nihilistic coolspeak, and doped-out craziness), Palahniuk every now and then loosens his grip on the story line, which at points becomes as hard to decipher as your local pill addict's medicine cabinet. However Invisible Monsters works best on a roller-coaster level. You don't stop and count each slot on the track as you're going down the big hill. You throw up your hands and yell, "Whee!" --Bob MichaelsBook Description
She's a fashion model who has everything: a boyfriend, a career, a loyal best friend. But when a sudden freeway "accident" leaves her disfigured and incapable of speech, she is transformed from the beautiful center of attention to an invisible monster, so hideous that no one will acknowledge she exists. Enter Brandy Alexander, Queen Supreme, one operation away from becoming a real woman, who will teach her that reinventing yourself means erasing your past and making up something better. And that salvation hides in the last places you'll ever want to look. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (274)

Invisible Monsters
Purchased as gift. Trying to get this book for a while in Aus. Arrived quite quickly. Great condition. No problems!

"Invisible Monsters" is a completely visible classic!
This book is Chuck at his very best! Everything about this book is so well done I cannot even begin to touch on them all... Get this book and you will not regret it! Brilliant read! A solid 5-star!!!

Putting the "fun" in dysfunctional
Chuck Palahniuk is the hugely popular author of modern, edgy books like Fight Club (also a movie with Brad Pitt--go ahead, act surprised) and Choke. For this reason I did not expect to like Invisible Monsters, originally published in 1999.

The story is told by a nameless narrator: a young woman who used to be beautiful. After a series of bizarre, haunting events involving a freeway, birds and a few other things those days are gone forever. Her face disfigured, her voice gone, the narrator is invisible. And a monster in the eyes of most. Desperate for someone to save her, the narrator meets Brandy Alexander at just the right time. Brandy embodies the life that the narrator used to have--except for an important operation that Brandy still needs to have.

Riding off with Brandy, the narrator starts fresh. Life is a story. If you don't like the story you have, make up a new one. As the lives Brandy offers up as truth continue to change and the lies threaten to fall apart, it becomes clear that no matter where you run eventually you have to face the facts and really decide what story you want to tell.

That's the story. But it's really not even half the story.

Stylistically, this novel has a lot going on. It's written in the first person, present tense setting up a tone that is both conspiratorial and conversational. Despite that, the narrator remains aloof, unreliable. Talking to the reader like an old friend, the narrator reveals the smallest details of her past while leaving key plot points to herself until the right moment. There are few male novelists who can write as convincingly in the voice of a woman as Palahniuk. The narration is amazingly authentic even when the story becomes more and more over-the-top.

Palahniuk also brings a high level of complexity to the narrative, writing the story in a non-linear format. The novel opens with the final scene as the narrator tries to explain how she got to that point. Along the way flashbacks are interwoven with "the present" and other points in the time line of character's lives.

This is the kind of book that requires a lot of attention. Like the modeling world that the narrator comes from, nothing in this novel is exactly what it seems. Characters lie, information given as fact turns out to be false. Palahniuk manages all of these elements impressively well, making it all work despite the bizarreness and absurdity inherent to certain parts of the plot.

More than anything, though, this book is really a character study. Palahniuk creates a lot of unique characters whose lives intertwine unexpectedly. As might be expected from the plot description given above, many ofthe relationships between characters inInvisible Monsters are dysfunctional. But it is the dysfunction that allows Palahniuk to look at how people interact and what it really means to love someone. So, while it is utterly strange, this novel definitely puts the "fun" in dysfunctional.

A Positive Review
Invisible Monsters written by Chuck Palahniuk, is a book about a model that mysteriously gets shot in the face while driving her car. When she wakes up from surgery she realizes that her once beautiful face is now completely disfigured and ugly. She also comes out of surgery to find her boyfriend cheating on her with her best friend. Along with her new found best friend a fellow patient at the hospital and her hostage ex-boyfriend, she goes across the country stealing from rich houses. Throughout her adventure she finds out more and more about her parents, her "dead" brother and her new found friends. Invisible Monsters is an interesting twist on body image, and materialism. It helps emphasize our society's constant unsatisfaction with our own self image and happiness.I would recomend this book to anyone who loves a crazy story and a twist of fait!

A twisting plot
This was the first Palahniuk book I read and is still my favorite. His clean, crisp style betrays his background as a newspaper reporter -- but it makes this and his other books quick, easy reads.

Most telling about "Invisible Monsters" is the way Palahniuk weaves together a myriad of details to form a cogent story that leads you guessing all the way to the end. The story starts in chaos, but slowly builds to order with plot twists that you'll never see coming (but in retrospect, you should have). ... Read more

Book Description
Haunted is a novel made up of twenty-three horrifying, hilarious, and stomach-churning stories. They’re told by people who have answered an ad for a writer’s retreat and unwittingly joined a “Survivor”-like scenario where the host withholds heat, power, and food. As the storytellers grow more desperate, their tales become more extreme, and they ruthlessly plot to make themselves the hero of the reality show that will surely be made from their plight. This is one of the most disturbing and outrageous books you’ll ever read, one that could only come from the mind of Chuck Palahniuk. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (82)

Reality Run Amok, Really Amok
If you like your reality amok, try The Game, Dead Famous, and Rabid: A Novel, in addition to Chuck's Amok Deep-Fried Ducks.

Chuck loves his blood, gore, and piss, and these all dump like scalding coffee out of an upended catering vat through this book. The stories of each of the writers locked up in Big Brother lockdown is gruesome.

Damn, but this book is fine.

The Bookeater!

not bad, if you are ready for it
I typically enjoy reading short stories, and this is a pretty good,
if somewhat uneven collection.The goal of some of them (particularly
the frame story) seems to be little more than to shock.And while
this is accomplished relatively well,there is something more to
a number of the stories.

One does have to admire Palahniuk's craft.The structure of most
stories and the narration is masterful.The first story stands out
in this regard.After all these are just words on paper, and not that
many words at that.And yet, the story is as disquieting as anything
I have seen on television or film.

While none of the other stories achieve this intensity, they are all
disturbing in their own way.And that is probably the main shortcoming
of the book - one does ask whether Palahniuk really used his prodigious talents
only to show that he can disgust us in 25 different ways?

Grotesque, but satisfying...
Definitely a 5-star.This story made me retch.Gag.Love.Hate.Feel contempt.Feel Compassion...WOW.I loved the twists and turns, and plan on re-reading this one.It was too tough to put down!

Not his best. But good.
Chuck Palahniuk is a brilliant writer. This was not his best book, but it is very good. It's still worth the read. Some of the stories in it could be some of his best, but the book in itself is not.
GUTS is amazing, and my favorite is probably The Nightmare Box.

Haunted = sweet
This book isn't Palahniuk's best, but it is still a great book as far as book standard's go. It is like reading a horror movie. Since it is composed of short stories, it is hard to have the attachment with the characters like in the other books by Chuck, but this book is still a good book. It is not for the faint of heart, as some pretty horrible stuff goes down, but it is still tight if you have a stomach for the situation they are in. Anyways, read it.It is a good book. ... Read more

Amazon.com
The consequences of media saturation are the basis for an urban nightmare in Lullaby, Chuck Palahniuk's darkly comic and often dazzling thriller.Assigned to write a series of feature articles investigating SIDS, troubled newspaper reporter Carl Streator begins to notice a pattern among the cases he encounters: each child was read the same poem prior to his or her death.His research and a tip from a necrophilic paramedic lead him to Helen Hoover Boyle, a real estate agent who sells "distressed" (demonized) homes, assured of their instant turnover.Boyle and Streator have both lost children to "crib death," and she confirms Streator's suspicions: the poem is an ancient lullaby or "culling song" that is lethal if spoken--or even thought--in a victim's direction.The misanthropic Streator, now armed with a deadly and uncontrollably catchy tune, goes on a minor killing spree until he recognizes his crimes and the song's devastating potential.Lullaby then turns into something of a road trip narrative, with Streator, Boyle, her empty-headed Wiccan secretary Mona, and Mona's vigilante boyfriend Oyster setting out across the U.S. to track down and destroy all copies of the poem.

In his previous works, including the cult favorite Fight Club, Palahniuk has demonstrated a fondness for making statements about the condition of humanity, and he uses Lullaby like a blunt object to repeatedly overstate his generally dim view.Such dogmatic venom undermines the persuasiveness of his thesis about mass communication and free will, but thankfully, Palahniuk offers some respite here by allowing for sympathy and love, as well as through his razor-sharp humor, such as his mock listings for Helen's possessed properties: "six bedrooms, four baths, pine-paneled entryway, and blood running down the kitchen walls...."At such moments, Lullaby casts a powerful spell. --Ross Doll Book Description
From the author of the New York Times bestseller Choke and the cult classic Fight Club, a cunningly plotted novel about the ultimate verbal weapon, one that reinvents the apocalyptic thriller for our times.

Carl Streator is a solitary widower and a fortyish newspaper reporter who is assigned to do a series of articles on Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. In the course of this investigation he discovers an ominous thread: the presence at the death scenes of the anthology Poems and Rhymes Around the World, all opened to the page where there appears an African chant, or “culling song.” This song turns out to be lethal when spoken or even thought in anyone's direction–and once it lodges in Streator's brain he finds himself becoming an involuntary serial killer. So he teams up with a real estate broker, one Helen Hoover Boyle–who specializes in selling haunted (or “distressed”) houses (wonderfully high turnover), and who lost a child to the culling song years before–for a cross-country odyssey to remove all copies of the book from libraries, lest this deadly verbal virus spread and wipe out human life. Accompanying them on this road trip are Helen's assistant, Mona Sabbat, an exquisitely earnest Wiccan, and her sardonic ecoterrorist boyfriend Oyster, who is running a scam involving fake liability claims and business blackmail. Welcome to the new nuclear family.

On one level, Lullaby is a chillingly pertinent parable about the dangers of psychic infection and control in an era of wildly overproliferated information: “Imagine a plague you catch through your ears . . . imagine an idea that occupies your mind like a city.” But it is also a tightly wound thriller with an intriguing premise and a suspenseful plot full of surprising twists and turns. Finally, because it is a Chuck Palahniuk novel, it is a blackly comic tour de force that reinforces his stature as our funniest nihilist and a contemporary seer.Download Description
From the author of the New York Times bestseller Choke and the cult classic Fight Club, a cunningly plotted novel about the ultimate verbal weapon, one that reinvents the apocalyptic thriller for our times.

Carl Streator is a solitary widower and a fortyish newspaper reporter who is assigned to do a series of articles on Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. In the course of this investigation he discovers an ominous thread: the presence at the death scenes of the anthology Poems and Rhymes Around the World, all opened to the page where there appears an African chant, or "culling song." This song turns out to be lethal when spoken or even thought in anyone's direction -Ã,Â- and once it lodges in Streator's brain he finds himself becoming an involuntary serial killer. So he teams up with a real estate broker, one Helen Hoover Boyle -- who specializes in selling haunted (or "distressed") houses (wonderfully high turnover), and who lost a child to the culling song years before -- for a cross-country odyssey to remove all copies of the book from libraries, lest this deadly verbal virus spread and wipe out human life. Accompanying them on this road trip are Helen's assistant, Mona Sabbat, an exquisitely earnest Wiccan, and her sardonic ecoterrorist boyfriend Oyster, who is running a scam involving fake liability claims and business blackmail. Welcome to the new nuclear family.

On one level, Lullaby is a chillingly pertinent parable about the dangers of psychic infection and control in an era of wildly overproliferated information: "Imagine a plague you catch through your ears... imagine an idea that occupies your mind like a city." But it is also a tightly wound thriller with an intriguing premise and a suspenseful plot full of surprising twists and turns. Finally, because it is a Chuck Palahniuk novel, it is a blackly comic tour de force that reinforces his stature as our funniest nihilist and a contemporary seer. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (253)

Palahniuk's First Foray into Horror
"Lullaby" is Palahniuk's first foray into writing horror fiction, and earned him a Bram Stoker Award nomination. Like all of his novels, "Lullaby" is densely packed with ideas and concepts with varying degrees of success. The first-person narration and flash-forward/flashback structure are uncommon in horror fiction, where plot usually rules the day. For general fiction readers, though, the necrophilia and SIDS (sudden infant death syndrome) topics may be too intense. Halfway through the book, the narrator and company go on a road trip that calls to mind "Invisible Monsters," Palahniuk's first novel. The themes shift from serial killers to veganism to noise pollution to witchcraft to the aforementioned necrophilia and SIDS and back again. It's a fun ride that will stay with readers long after the book is closed--if readers are willing to follow its twists and turns.

for superstitious freaks
Had a tough time with this one.Not UN-enjoyable... Not UN-interesting... But at the same time not exactly grab-you-by-the-scrotum interesting in the same way that Choke or Diary or (heaven forbid) Fight Club was.

"Lullaby" is a great read!
Loved this book! Pick it up, flop back the cover and get lost on a world of ghosts, scams, witches, love-affairs, murder and redemption. A very detailed, well told story just crazy enough to remind you it was written by the psycho we all know and love; Chuck Palahniuk.

What Can I Say - It's Chuck!
I tore through this book. Of course, true to fashion, Chuck delivered prose in an unusal and eccentric style and gave me quite a few things to think about. I would highly recommend.

Not what i expected
After reading Fight Club, Choke, Invisible Monsters, and Survivor, Lullaby caught me off guard, it didn't strike me as something Chuck would write about;
it was out there, like most of his work that i've read is,
but best of all, it was an exellent read and definitely up to par with the rest of his works;
i can't wait to see the day that he's required reading in schools,
his work is far more interesting and makes me think independantly alot more than anything i've ever read before.
brilliant ... Read more

Amazon.com
It's rare to find a travel guide and a memoir joined neatly together in a single, highly readable 176-page volume. But Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club, Choke, Lullaby) is a writer of rare talent and his home of Portland, Oregon, is a city of rare wonders. In Strangers and Refugees: A Walk in Portland, Oregon, Palahniuk goes beyond the AAA handbooks to reveal the places, people, and legends of Portland that have long been known only to locals. The reader learns the location of the legendary Self Cleaning House, where to find the restless ghost of the founder of Powell's Books, and why feral cats are such an important part of Portland baseball. Portland, it seems, is also a highly sexual city and Palahniuk dutifully dissects the specialties of each strip joint as well as discussing Mochika, a zoo penguin with a real fetish for black boots. Along the way, he includes "postcards" from his life in the Rose City dating back to 1981 when, as a 19-year-old, he dropped acid and accidentally ate part of a woman's fur coat during a laser show of Pink Floyd's The Wall. As Palahniuk matures, the postcards reveal the author becoming increasingly a part of the city's scene, culminating with a wild and wooly Millennium Eve celebration at the Bagdad Theater that featured a screening of the film version of Fight Club. Fugitives and Refugees is a must for anyone who may, in their lives, go to Portland. But its appeal should reach beyond Oregonians. Palahniuk's love of the city is so great, and his stories so weirdly wonderful, it makes one want to get out of the house, get in the car, and drive to Portland right away. Just remember to pack the book. --John MoeBook Description
Want to know where Chuck Palahniuk’s tonsils currently reside?

Been looking for a naked mannequin to hide in your kitchen cabinets?

Curious about Chuck’s debut in an MTV musicvideo?

What goes on at the Scum Center?

How do you get to the Apocalypse Café?

In the closest thing he may ever write to an autobiography, Chuck Palahniuk provides answers to all these questions and more as he takes you through the streets, sewers, and local haunts of Portland, Oregon. According to Katherine Dunn, author of the cult classic Geek Love, Portland is the home of America’s “fugitives and refugees.” Get to know these folks, the “most cracked of the crackpots,” as Palahniuk calls them, and come along with him on an adventure through the parts of Portland you might not otherwise believe actually exist. No other travel guide will give you this kind of access to “a little history, a little legend, and a lot of friendly, sincere, fascinating people who maybe should’ve kept their mouths shut.”

Here are strange personal museums, weird annual events, and ghost stories. Tour the tunnels under downtown Portland. Visit swingers’ sex clubs, gay and straight. See Frances Gabe’s famous 1940s Self-Cleaning House. Look into strange local customs like the I-Tit-a-Rod Race and the Santa Rampage. Learn how to talk like a local in a quick vocabulary lesson. Get to know, I mean really get to know, the animals at the Portland zoo.

Oh, the list goes on and on. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (33)

An interesting look at Portland
I was given this book as a gift and did not know what to expect.Though it was not a novel like other Palahniuk books I have read, I found that the quirky and humorous writing style made this voyeuristic romp through underground Portland highly entertaining.Though some of the highlighted attractions have closed their doors or are not open to the public, this is an interesting view into a side of the city that you will not find in the Frommer's guide.

Oregonian loving this book
I live in Eugene, OR... and LOVE this book!We take "trips" to our fave town all the time and love the people and places...Chuck does a great job of describing them like a native Oregonian (even though he technically isn't).

Interesting, offbeat
This collection is an idiosyncratic and appealing mix of off-the-beaten-path sights for the visitor to Portland, personal anecdotes of the author, and brief essays about the history of Portland and its defining vibes. Entertaining and enjoyable.

a puking bore
As he writes in his epilogue, "This is not Portland, Oregon." Just scads of non-site-specific deegradation written in clipped New Yorker prose. Elliptical descriptions of perversion after perversion, spilling over the pages to become one big bore. And on top of all this, there's no index to the places he touches on, so even if you wanted to go there, you'd be hardput. Self-indulgent yet simultaneously unrevealing, as uninteresting a discovery of spirit of place as one can get.

good
I couldn't put it down. It's an important book for people who live in and around portland. ... Read more

Book Description

Customer Reviews (30)

Insert Clown Pun Here
Crazy is as crazy does, and Nita is about 2 bananas short of a bunch.Sniffles has just miscarried her and her worthless boyfriend's baby and it sends her down into a manic/depressive spiral that makes Britney Spears look like a model citizen.Convinced that she has a heart condition, Sniffles starts popping whatever pills she can get her hands on.Desperate to get money, she joins up with two other clowns and does some less than good and wholesome clown activities.The action feels very slapsticky, which was the goal, I think, which I thought was funny, but I could see others not quite being into it.The rubber chicken, the "Balloon Tying for Christ," the prop gun and pendulous breasts all play into that same vibe that she's a bit of a klutz at life and this stuff just happens.While this isn't as dark as Pahlaniuk's normal fair (for example, no one dies or is eaten), it's still pretty dark humor and very enjoyable.

Impressive debut from a born stylist
After reading just a few pages of Clown Girl, I could tell I was in the hands of a natural stylist whose writing shows a level of confidence most first-time novelists would envy.While I can't say the narrative held my attention with uniform intensity from start to finish, I remained sufficiently interested to keep turning the pages.The balance of dark humor and pathos is well maintained throughout, and by the end of the book Nita had grown into a compelling and empathetic figure.I will certainly keep an eye out for future works from Monica Drake.Along with Clown Girl, the strongest new novel I've read recently is Crimson Orgy by Austin Williams, which also manages to blend comedic and extremely dark material into a highly original story.Money Shot by Christa Faust is a hoot as well.Discerning readers need more adventurous new writers like these to keep the never-ending deluge of mainstream pablum at bay.

I love Clown Girl...
...the book, yeah.But I'm talking about the character.She's sick and cute and unsure of herself and I fell in love with her.She's like a sick little lost puppy you just want to take home and nurse back to health.This book is so endearing without being at all sentimental.Awesome read from a great new voice in literature.

Playing The Fool
Monica Drake is a decent writer.She plays with the language the way clowns play with pratfalls and cream-filled pastries.There's no doubting that among the pages of "Clown Girl" is hiding an author with enough charm and wit to pen a book brimming with both humor and heart.

This, however, is not that book.

The story follows young Nita (you can call her Sniffles) who is struggling to make ends meet.Working the circuit in her home land of Baloneytown, Nita twists balloons into vague religious shapes, tries to find her lost rubber chicken and her drug-addicted dog, and deals with the absence of her beloved, a man named Rex Galore (he's away at Clown College, paid for by guess who?).The only thing is, Nita's got a heart problem (uh, ahem, an actual, physical heart problem), and so she's working fewer hours, earning less money, and her ex-boyfriend/landlord is threatening to kick her out of house and home.Add to the mix a cinnamon-scented copper with a stalkerish streak, and you've got more problems than a clown should have to deal with.

Drake shows us Nita's struggles through her daisy-shaped sunglasses, so those difficulties are all tinted with a painted smirk and lots of punny rejoinders.It's a silly-serious mood that works quite well at first, but which begins to grate more and more as the novel devolves into soap opera theatrics.By the final pages, what is meant to be funny is as eye-rolling as any knock-knock joke, and what is meant to be serious is just plain laughable.

Nita's/Sniffle's coworkers try to get her to do more high paying gigs (let's call it Clown Cuddling for Cash), to pander to the creepy-grins of the coulrophilic (read: Clown fettishists), but she (mostly) turns away from that path and chooses the road of commitment and dedication.This means she does a lot (A LOT) of pining for Rex, and she spends a good deal of time working on a mime-ish interpretation of Kafka's The Metamorphosis.These are lofty goals for a clown; good for her.

Unfortunately, for a woman with (sometimes shifting) standards and such ambitious intellectual pursuits, Nita is infuriatingly dumb.You can quite easily guess the conclusion of this book after reading twenty pages of it, as long as you're not too creative about it.And in the meantime, you must watch as Nita pushes back against obstacle after obstacle, most of which she has erected herself.Her heart, dog, chicken, relationship, and money problems all come across as the products of someone who is either too dumb to think for themselves, or simply can't be bothered to do anything but be sad and beleaguered.There's nothing quite as irritating as a central character who manufactures her own problems and then wonders for pages and pages, "What's to be done?"

To be fair, Ms. Drake is the real manufacturer here, and her literary intentions are clear: she wants you to sympathize with and care for Nita.Unfortunately, it is not a character's hardships that make them worthy of love or compassion, it is their hearts and souls.Nita may very well have one of those, but she's so busy mugging, jesting, and hiding under face paint (even to the last pages), that she is less a girl than she is a clown.

That would actually be a good premise for a short story, a small sidewalk show, a five-minute social treatise on what we are and what we make ourselves into, but that is not what Ms. Drake is going for here.At least, not solely.The love story.The heart problems.The prostitution, money, stealing, running, and constant fumbles and falls.Well-written, well-painted, and cleverly phrased it may be, this three-ring circus still has two rings too many.

Clown Girl
I always laugh a little when I read reviews on the backside of books that say "riveting" or"extrodinarily extrodinary". But in this case I guess those industry words are really true. This book is life changing. Monica Drake's writing style is untouched. It's unbelievable that this is her first novel. If you don't buy this, don't bother reading another book for the rest of your life because you've let the most amazing book get away. ... Read more

Book Description

Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk is a novel made up of stories: Twenty-three of them, to be precise. Twenty-three of the most horrifying, hilarious, mind-blowing, stomach-churning tales you’ll ever encounter—sometimes all at once. They are told by people who have answered an ad headlined “Writers’ Retreat: Abandon Your Life for Three Months,” and who are led to believe that here they will leave behind all the distractions of “real life” that are keeping them from creating the masterpiece that is in them. But “here” turns out to be a cavernous and ornate old theater where they are utterly isolated from the outside world—and where heat and power and, most important, food are in increasingly short supply. And the more desperate the circumstances become, the more extreme the stories they tell—and the more devious their machinations become to make themselves the hero of the inevitable play/movie/nonfiction blockbuster that will surely be made from their plight.

Haunted is on one level a satire of reality television—The Real World meets Alive. It draws from a great literary tradition—The Canterbury Tales, The Decameron, the English storytellers in the Villa Diodati who produced, among other works, Frankenstein—to tell an utterly contemporary tale of people desperate that their story be told at any cost. Appallingly entertaining, Haunted is Chuck Palahniuk at his finest—which means his most extreme and his most provocative.

Customer Reviews (181)

Fantastic book...
Haunted is an amazing book. It hooked me from the start, I just had to know how the book was going to end. This book is disturbing, shocking and appalling. But the fact that this book is so deranged is exactly what makes it enjoyable. Chuck Palahniuk has some serious talent for writing, I love reading his work to find out what is going on in his mind. Haunted is not for everyone, light headed/weak stomach people need to keep away from Haunted. If you enjoy reading novels outside of the 'norm,' then this is the book for you. Overall, Haunted gets an A+ grade from me.

YUCK!
I am typically prepared to be somewhat horrified and grossed out by the grotesques in his world, but this was way too much.No one in the story had any redeeming qualities, I hated them all to the bitter end.I finished it because I kept thinking that something would happen at the end to make reading all the horrible things worth it, but no...bad book, bad ending.

Desperately Grand... Until the End
This book is undoubtedly a tough read for anyone who thinks that a writer is validated solely by the fact that a feature film was made of his work. I know, I know, Fight Club was great, but let's move on for a bit.

The overlying story of this book isn't the best. However, the main function of the book is to be a compendium of short stories, and it delivers those in spades. The short stories are engrossing, compelling, disturbing, shocking, desperately clever, and they will absolutely not leave your head. Nightmare Box, Guts, and the story (the name eludes me) of the "invisible" killer of random victims are all absolutely fantastic.

The problems with the book lie within the main story, which is wholly unbelievable. The characters were wonderfully created, but their actions seem incredibly rash and unrealistic. In addition, the ending was entirely too predictable. You can see it coming from a quarter into the book. It comes on rushed and poorly executed. To have a character who thought of absolutely everything on the planet being foiled by a knife in the lock seemed absurd. Walking ahead of his captive seemed absurd. Leaving anything to chance at all seemed absurd. And what that final short story was all about, I have no clue. Stay away from the sci fi, Chuck.

Still, with the short stories as brilliant as they are, you forgive the other transgressions and enjoy them for all that they are. A thoroughly enjoyable read.

Chuck's entertaining and exploratory adventure into horror
Overall, Palahniuk did a marvelous job of cobbling disparate stories into the framework of a writer's retreat.

The story 'Guts' is nearly the most awful thing you'll read, personally I thought the worse thing i read was the story of the police rape doll story.It changed my life: yet I cannot say for the better.I cannot eat southern biscuits and that white gravy anymore,for example.

Some have compared Haunted to Stephen King, and I disagree.SK is-in my view- not so clever, he's like mass production horror.I read it, i get it.Haunted is more Kurt Vonnegut, and less twilight zone, more shock-value.Gross-out in bite-size chunks.IF you like this, the book is for you.Otherwise, leave it alone.

Some say the book's cannabalism theme is a metaphor in that 'all artists are thieves'.Powerful!So from a metawriting perspective, who is Chuck intimating he stole these stories from?Could be from all the fascinating weirdies in Portland.Since after all, Portland is quite weird.After reading stranger than fiction, the lines between the two are pretty well blurred by his colorful and envious experience touched up here and there.

you must have not actually read the book
i was actually quite upset to read some reviews on this book. It seemed like people either didn't understand it or skipped through pages. First of all, of course the story may seem unbelievable.. ITS FICTION!!!! it doesn't have to take place in a reality scenario. Second, if you actually paid attention to the story, people weren't chopping off their fingers because they were hungry; they wanted to look tortured. Sure, the idea may have been far fetched but thats what made it so interesting. and whose to complain about this story if you've read "lullaby". in my opinion, "lullaby" was more 'unbelievable'.

Overall, i believe this was one of Chucks best novels. I couldn't put the book down because all of the characters storys were so incredibly interesting. I even found the overall story (the writers being in the old movie theater) mind grabbing.

I would also recommend "Choke" ... Read more

Book Description

From the bestselling author of Fight Club and Diary, a collection of essays and journalistic pieces that prove that real life has imagination beaten cold in the strangeness and wonder departments

Chuck Palahniuk’s world has always been, well, different from yours and mine.The pieces that comprise Stranger Than Fiction, his first nonfiction collection, prove just how different, in ways both highly entertaining and deeply unsettling.Encounters with alternative culture heroes Marilyn Manson and Juliette Lewis; the peculiar wages of fame attendant on the big budget film production of the movie Fight Club; life as an assembly-line drive train installer by day, hospice volunteer driver by night; the really peculiar lives of submariners; the really violent world (and mangled ears) of college wrestlers; the underground world of iron-pumping anabolic steroid gobblers; the immensely upsetting circumstances of his father’s murder and the trial of his killer—each essay or vignette offers a unique facet of existence as lived in and/or observed by one of our most flagrantly daring and original literary talents.

Customer Reviews (25)

Intriguing stories, brought to you by the slightly warped mind of Chuck Palahniuk
This is a collection of non-fictional short stories about average people doing strange things. I can hear you whispering in my ear, "what kind of strange things"? Well, let me tell you that first, you need a breath mint and secondly you spit a little when you whisper. Despite the wet ear and lingering smell of spinach, I'm talking about the kind of odd things that friends tell you about over and over again after a few beers or half a bottle of wine because it is there best and possibly only story worth telling that they have.

These short stories are about modern men who build castles in Oregon and Idaho, stories about drunken rednecks crashing two story wheat threshers into each other in a demolition derby in Lind Washington, stories about public nudity and sex in Bozeman Montana, stories about working in a hospice and being there when people die, stories about shrunken testicles and the pump of steroids, stories about working on an assembly line and trying to be an author, stories that are essentially as American as apple pie but without the sugar and ice cream.

So, if you're interested in a few intriguing stories, brought to you by the slightly warped mind of Chuck Palahniuk author of "Fight Club", take a look at "Stranger Than Fiction".

A medley of stories, some hit the mark better than the rest
When Palahniuk goes on book tours, he often tells a smattering of true-life stories that he heard from his fans, all items that are indeed stranger than fiction.From a man who writes fiction that is often beyond belief, it is interesting to see the true-life tales that pass the Palahniuk strangeness test.

The book starts out with a bang, an opening chapter that provides the reader a voyeuristic field trip into a sex festival.From there, however, Palahniuk doesn't always maintain the momentum.Sometimes it appears as if he's just a bored reporter scribbling down facts, not trying to weave a compelling tale.Several of the stories didn't keep my interest at all, but there is enough good material in here to make the book a worthwhile read.

Palahniuk fans should give it a shot, but don't expect to be blown away.

Another unique piece of work
Plot: N/A
Writing Excellent
Pace:Fast
It's a bunch of short stories about real people and events in his life.Some are sad, some are funny, and some are bizarre.The best stories are about the author, his family, and his two weight lifting buddies.The slowest and longest are the combine derby and castle building.Cut those two stories out and the book would be even better.It's worth reading if you want a change of pace from your typical fiction.Grab a little non-fiction that won't bore you.

Fascinating
I had never read Palahniuk and "Fight Club" definitely isn't my thing. Yet I was lured by true anecdotes--who can resist a really strange story? This collection introduced me to a an intriguing man and brilliant writer.

The best thing about this collection is that it takes the reader into odd situations and intimate settings that he/she would probably never experience otherwise. Palahniuk takes us with him as he witnesses odd things such as The Rock Creek Lodge Testicle Festival, hangs out with Marilyn Manson, and reveals his "life as a dog." The book also dives into the personal world of Palahniuk--his past, friendships, thought processes, and life before, during, and after the movie "Fight Club." If you enjoyed the movie or any of other Palahniuk's works, "Stranger Than Fiction" is nearly essential to getting to know the man behind it all. He is apparently a curious person with a keen sociological and psychological insight...and he has a distinct sense of humor!

I recommend this book to every writer...actual or aspiring. A running theme in these stories is the practice of writing. How stories come about, take shape, and draw on other stories. It expresses the connection between writing and life, life and fiction, and how these play off eachother.If you write, you will be enthralled by the introduction to the collection alone...and it only gets better from there.

As others have said in their reviews, this collection does contain a few duds. But it's the many fabulous pieces that make your time more than worthwhile. I learned alot of very interesting things and this book contains stories for varied interests. This book made me gasp, smirk, nearly cry, and laugh out loud. The stories stay with you. I am telling everyone about this book: you owe it to yourself to atleast thumb through it.

Better Than I Expected!
These stories reveal a more personal side of Palahniuk that you may not have even realized was there. They're hopeful, inspirational, and as always, completely outrageous. These are not the typical quasi-horror stories Chuck has written in the past. But they are excellent stories, and I applaud Chuck for trying something new. I think he did an amazing job with it, and if you like Palahniuk at all, I think you will be pleasantly surprised. Along with The Losers' Club (Complete Restored Edition) by Richard Perez, Stranger Than Fiction: True Stories is my favorite Amazon purchase so far this year! ... Read more

Amazon.com
Victor Mancini is a ruthless con artist. Victor Mancini is a med-school dropout who's taken a job playing an Irish indentured servant in a colonial-era theme park in order to help care for his Alzheimer's-afflicted mother. Victor Mancini is a sex addict. Victor Mancini is a direct descendant of Jesus Christ. All of these statements about the protagonist of Choke are more or less true. Welcome, once again, to the world of Chuck Palahniuk.

"Art never comes from happiness." So says Mancini's mother only a few pages into the novel. Given her own dicey and melodramatic style of parenting, you would think that her son's life would be chock-full of nothing but art. Alas, that's not the case. In the fine tradition of Oedipus, Stephen Dedalus, and Anthony Soprano, Victor hasn't quite reconciled his issues with his mother. Instead, he's trawling sexual-addiction recovery meetings for dates and purposely choking in restaurants for a few moments of attention. Longing for a hug, in other words, he's settling for the Heimlich.

Thematically, this is pretty familiar Palahniuk territory. It would be a pity to disclose the surprises of the plot, but suffice it to say that what we have here is a little bit of Tom Robbins's Another Roadside Attraction, a little bit of Don DeLillo's The Day Room, and, well, a little bit of Fight Club. Just as with Fight Club and the other two novels under Palahniuk's belt, we get a smattering of gloriously unflinching sound bites, including this skeptical bit on prayer chains: "A spiritual pyramid scheme. As if you can gang up on God. Bully him around."

Whether this is the novel that will break Palahniuk into the mainstream is hard to say. For a fourth book, in fact, the ratio of iffy, "dude"-intensive dialogue to interesting and insightful passages is a little higher than we might wish. In the end, though, the author's nerve and daring pull the whole thing off--just barely. And what's next for Victor Mancini's creator? Leave the last word to him, declaring as he does in the final pages: "Maybe it's our job to invent something better.... What it's going to be, I don't know."--Bob MichaelsBook Description
Victor Mancini, a medical-school dropout, is an antihero for our deranged times. Needing to pay elder care for his mother, Victor has devised an ingenious scam: he pretends to choke on pieces of food while dining in upscale restaurants. He then allows himself to be “saved” by fellow patrons who, feeling responsible for Victor’s life, go on to send checks to support him. When he’s not pulling this stunt, Victor cruises sexual addiction recovery workshops for action, visits his addled mom, and spends his days working at a colonial theme park. His creator, Chuck Palahniuk, is the visionary we need and the satirist we deserve.Download Description
From the author of Fight Club comes a powerful and hilarious novel about love and strife between mothers and sons, the addictive power of sex, the terrors of aging, the ugly truth about historical theme parks, and much else. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (441)

Not for everyone
I found the writing style irritating, and the characters dull and boring. The story seemed to drag on and on without actually going anywhere. It might have been decent, but the big plot twist turns out not to make any sense. Not for everyone.

Great - easy - edgy read
If you're looking for a funny edgy easy read - this is a great book.It's not very deep and the things you do learn... not sure if you'd want to use or not!But it's a GREAT book.You'll have fun w/it.

Choke
Choke by Chuck Palahnuik ****

A pehonomal story of self finding. Palahnuik's style doesn't work as well in Choke as with say Fight Club, but the story of a sex-addicted medical school drop out who trys to pay for his psychotic mothers stay and a care center by faking as if he is choking on his food in up-scale restuarants around town and having them foot the bill for