Reviews with content warning for Cancer - Fight club

picked this one up bc i really enjoyed the movie and was curious what the book was like! while overall i still like the movie more bc i feel it trimmed what little fat the book had while also making some of the more abstract plot moments a little more understandable, the book is definitely worth reading too. somehow even gayer than the movie, which makes sense considering what i know about the author but it was still a nice bonus to me lmao

Content Warnings

zoebill96's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark funny tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

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sobake_cih's review against another edition

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dark reflective tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

It’s one of my fav books since my teens, so I’m very biased. But reading it now so many years later gave me so much more to think about. A truly iconic book.

It’s a lot more dark and twisted than the film, and many issues in society and the world in general mentioned and discussed in the book are very present to this day, even though it was published almost 30 years ago.

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mdwsn27's review against another edition

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challenging dark tense fast-paced

Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

Content Warnings

xabbeylongx's review against another edition

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challenging funny slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

Spoilers Ahead:

Another recommendation from my university lecturer, I’ve got to be honest, this is the first time I’ve ever been speechless from a book. We were told to read it whilst we were investigating gothic horror literature, and I can safely say I have never read a book quite like it. We follow the narrator throughout this story, and I’m going to be honest with you, I’m not 100% sure what happens after that. I think, from my understanding, that this guy called Tyler Durden makes up a fight club, which is underground and top secret. One of the rules is that you ‘Never talk about fight club’. Right from the start, we follow this narrator as he joins various support groups, pretending to be ill so he can feel the pain of others. He meets another person who is also faking illnesses, Marla Singer, and they take it in turns for each support group. We follow the narrator as he goes through his life, with all of this bad stuff happening to him. Tyler, his best friend, burns a scar into the back of his hand with lye. They make soap together, and Tyler is apparently sleeping with Marla, but he never sees them in the same room together. Tyler’s soap-making business is booming, but Marla is disgusted to find out they’ve been using her mother’s fat to make the soap, and they hide in the car from her. The narrator photocopies the rules of fight club at his work, and gets told off by his boss, so he threatens to bring a gun in to shoot them all. One of the support groups, TW the testicular cancer support group, has disbanded so most of the members can join fight club, and the only person who remains is Big Bob. The narrator finds a lump on Marla’s breast, but she decided to not have it treated. The narrator recalls the time he had a wart on his penis, and how he tries to get it treated, and he notices the same scar on Marla’s hand that Tyler gave him. Somehow, his condo gets blown up, and he gets questioned by the police. Tyler blackmails the theatres and the narrator blackmails the hotel managers and they get offered paychecks for not working. Tyler creates Project Mayhem when the narrator stops feeling thrilled after fighting in fight club. Project Mayhem is set on destroying the peace and spreading chaos. He has people wait at his door to be admitted for over three days, and he has them buy guns, destroy properties, and even hurt people, to get in. These new recruits are called Space Monkeys. The narrator is taken on a drive with some Space Monkeys, and they are told to confess what they wish they’d done before they die. The narrator tries to crash the car. The narrator holds someone at gunpoint, and says that unless they make their childhood dream of becoming a vet come true, he will shoot him. The narrator goes searching for Tyler, who is now missing. He calls Marla, who tells him that he is Tyler Durden. He finds Tyler in his hotel room, and he explains how he uses the narrator’s body when he’s asleep. He’s scared when he finds out that Tyler has been castrating the enemies of fight club and keeping their testicles. He tries to shut down fight club, but he gets kicked out. He thinks the Space Monkeys are keeping track of his movements, so he gets Marla to give him pills to keep him awake. It’s also to stop Tyler from being able to take over his body. Big Bob is killed by the police. The narrator’s boss has been murdered, and it’s all Tyler’s fault, but the narrator is the last one to leave and so will be blamed. Project Mayhem tries to castrate him for trying to shut down fight club. The narrator considers TW suicide, but doesn’t want to leave Marla. He goes to fight club and is beaten senseless by over fifty men. Tyler forces the narrator onto the roof of a skyscraper, gun in his mouth, and Marla arrives, saying she knows the difference between the narrator and Tyler. He pulls the trigger to kill Tyler. He describes heaven, but he’s actually in a mental health hospital. As I said, there’s a lot going on in this book. Reading it, I couldn’t understand most of it, and the stuff I did, I was like “What the actual f*ck!” It was a very weird read, and it was so weird that I actually quite enjoyed it. The story itself was a bit lacking, in my opinion, and there wasn’t too much plot to enjoy, and the flow was a little messed up and it made it hard to follow along with sometimes, but it was a very entertaining read. Very, very entertaining read. The plot twist of the narrator having split personality disorder is so perfect, and so finding out Tyler isn’t actually a physical, separate person, but, in actual fact, part of the narrator actually scratched an itch on my brain. Unfortunately, the reveal was spoiled to me by my professor, but I think it definitely helped to understand it a little more – I struggled as it was, let alone without knowing that Tyler isn’t an actual physical person. I think that plot twist was so cleverly written and thought out, and, as much as I do like how pretty deranged the whole story is, the plot itself just seemed very jumped, very maniacal, and it wasn’t working for me. I do think it was interesting to see inside the head of someone with split personality disorder though, it was interesting to see how they think. And I also really enjoyed how the narrator remains unnamed, I think that’s quite a neat detail to add in. However, I think the plot needed a bit of tweaking. For example, the book is called fight club, and yet there are all these detours, and not actually much talk about the fight club. I couldn’t really pinpoint one event in the story that was followed the whole way through. Anyway, I am glad I read it, as it was a very entertaining read, but I couldn’t make head nor tail of it at first, and I still can’t to be honest.

Content Warnings

vexant's review against another edition

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dark reflective tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

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my_a's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

Made me think of an American "Trainspotting" - violent and jarring punchy 1990s novel about disenfranchised young men rejecting the system and trying to make their own sense of meaning.

This was SOO much better than I'd expected. Never seen the film so I came in completely blind.

although i did figure out the split personality within the first 1/3rd of the book, but I knew there was some big twist & I'm used to reading literary fiction, analysing and questioning as I read. I wondered for most of the book if Marla was a 3rd personality.

It was incredibly crafted with intentional and deliberate writing and author decisions throughout. It has a lot to say.

The more I think about it since finishing, the better I think it was, the writing and the story. My rating goes up each day that passes. Is it even a 5 * maybe? I think its one of those books that is taken for granted due to its cultural impact. And it got me out of a big reading slump - tried about 4 books I DNF'ed then read this within 24 hours!

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