It all started in high school journalism class. Everyone, it seemed, got into Chuck Palahniuk at once, and a flurry of book exchanges and lunchtime discussions soon became a constant interruption to our newspaper goings-on. I suppose it could have just been ‘that age’ where sixteen-year-olds all of a sudden discover that Fight Club (“the coolest movie ever!” thought all of our sixteen-year-old selves) was a book before it ever was a movie. This meant, we soon realized, that there were more stories like it out there, all spawned from the freaked-out, twisted-up mind of its sharp-tongued creator, Palahniuk.
After Fight Club, I read Invisible Monsters, which my friend Nova has called the ‘girl version of Fight Club’. I’m not sure I agree; it is, however, my favorite book by him. Lullaby didn’t really do it for me, and Choke – well, Choke was Choke. I’m generally not one to shy away from a book because it’s too graphic, but… well it was a lot. There were lots of things about it that I liked – but it’s not my favorite.
Lately, I checked out Diary from the library after finding my way to the section in Snell with Palahniuk. It ended up being a choice between that or Rant, which Palahniuk claims as an ‘oral biography’. Whatever it was, it didn’t read very interesting in the first few pages.
Diary, however, did not disappoint when it came to interest-piquing, Palahniuk-characteristic, body-fluid filled fiction. His propensity for the simultaneously fantastically revolting combined with the intense human yearning and drama of his characters, all topped with a flagrant disregard for the conventions of either realism, science-fiction, or fantasy, make for an at once gripping and horrifying story.
The novel is about a woman named Misty – pathetic, used, unloved – whose husband just died, and whose island home of Waytansea Island (when she was brought there by her husband, it was a quaint, picturesque Cape Cod-like community of serenity) has become degraded, poor, and forced to open itself out to the ravages of tourism. When Misty begins to paint again after years of stopping, her paintings have an almost hypnotically-powerful force. When she finds a years old diary of a young woman whose life seems oddly to echo her own, it becomes clear that the island and the townspeople have plans for her that she may be powerless to overcome.
Sometimes funny, sometimes touching, sometimes macabre, pathetic, pessimistic and at times downright nauseating, Diary is a story of the most absolute of failure – betrayal, resentment, deception, murder, evil, weakness – in all its unsavory glory, and the voice of Palahniuk – unflinching and unrelenting – documents it all, with mind firmly in the gutter, and tongue firmly wedged in cheek.
It all started in high school journalism class. Everyone, it seemed, got into Chuck Palahniuk at once, and a flurry of book exchanges and lunchtime discussions soon became a constant interruption to our newspaper goings-on. I suppose it could have just been ‘that age’ where sixteen-year-olds all of a sudden discover that Fight Club (“the coolest movie ever!” thought all of our sixteen-year-old selves) was a book before it ever was a movie. This meant, we soon realized, that there were more stories like it out there, all spawned from the freaked-out, twisted-up mind of its sharp-tongued creator, Palahniuk.
After Fight Club, I read Invisible Monsters, which my friend Nova has called the ‘girl version of Fight Club’. I’m not sure I agree; it is, however, my favorite book by him. Lullaby didn’t really do it for me, and Choke – well, Choke was Choke. I’m generally not one to shy away from a book because it’s too graphic, but… well it was a lot. There were lots of things about it that I liked – but it’s not my favorite.
Lately, I checked out Diary from the library after finding my way to the section in Snell with Palahniuk. It ended up being a choice between that or Rant, which Palahniuk claims as an ‘oral biography’. Whatever it was, it didn’t read very interesting in the first few pages.
Diary, however, did not disappoint when it came to interest-piquing, Palahniuk-characteristic, body-fluid filled fiction. His propensity for the simultaneously fantastically revolting combined with the intense human yearning and drama of his characters, all topped with a flagrant disregard for the conventions of either realism, science-fiction, or fantasy, make for an at once gripping and horrifying story.
The novel is about a woman named Misty – pathetic, used, unloved – whose husband just died, and whose island home of Waytansea Island (when she was brought there by her husband, it was a quaint, picturesque Cape Cod-like community of serenity) has become degraded, poor, and forced to open itself out to the ravages of tourism. When Misty begins to paint again after years of stopping, her paintings have an almost hypnotically-powerful force. When she finds a years old diary of a young woman whose life seems oddly to echo her own, it becomes clear that the island and the townspeople have plans for her that she may be powerless to overcome.
Sometimes funny, sometimes touching, sometimes macabre, pathetic, pessimistic and at times downright nauseating, Diary is a story of the most absolute of failure – betrayal, resentment, deception, murder, evil, weakness – in all its unsavory glory, and the voice of Palahniuk – unflinching and unrelenting – documents it all, with mind firmly in the gutter, and tongue firmly wedged in cheek.