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chelsasquatch 's review for:
Haunted
by Chuck Palahniuk
Nobody can make me squirm like Chuck Palahniuk, and I love it.
Prior to reading Haunted, I had only ever finished Fight Club. There's an odd bluntness to Palahniuk's writing that both intrigues me and makes me want to shut his books and shelf them for eternity. Lucky for him, the curiosity wins out almost always and I go back for more.
I read Haunted on a challenge I presented to myself after a friend told me she had known people who couldn't finish this book. I would finish it. After all, the premise is extremely interesting, and, as a fan of survival stories, I was more than happy to confront what lay ahead.
Twenty pages in, I realized why people had a hard time with this book. In fact, if I hadn't sworn to finish it, I probably would have been done with it right there and then. The subject matter mixed with Palahniuk's bluntness is enough to--as the epilogue says--make people literally pass out when they hear it read aloud.
(Now, I'm not 100% convinced that this happens and people would actually faint, I have no trouble thinking that it's possible. I read the story lying down anyway.)
The format of the book is different. There are three separate things happening, and they rotate each chapter. The first is the story portrayed in the summary--a writer's retreat gone wrong. The second is a poem, at least one for each character in the book. The third are the works created and stories told by the authors during their stay at the retreat.
The best part about Haunted is definitely how the writers' refusal to write turns into a pursuit for the best story possible. They constantly compete to be the "star" of the show, and it shows the lengths people will go to for the chance to be remembered.
I felt in order to keep the shock value of the horrors being committed (and there were some strange, horrible things happening), I had to break up the book by reading three chapters at a time. Reading this book in one sitting, if you could manage it, would be a mistake. Even splitting it up, by the end of the book I felt there was nothing the characters could do that would surprise me anymore, but each short story as written by the characters are gems within the story. Any one of them, with a little tweaking, could be published on their own, which is amazing to me.
All in all, this book is an amazing, powerful work of art. I'm not a fan of looking for messages in books I read for pleasure, but you could definitely pry some good ones about humanity out of Haunted if you wanted to. I will probably never come back and read it as a whole again, but I give it two thumbs up and recommend it if you have the stomach to get through it.
Prior to reading Haunted, I had only ever finished Fight Club. There's an odd bluntness to Palahniuk's writing that both intrigues me and makes me want to shut his books and shelf them for eternity. Lucky for him, the curiosity wins out almost always and I go back for more.
I read Haunted on a challenge I presented to myself after a friend told me she had known people who couldn't finish this book. I would finish it. After all, the premise is extremely interesting, and, as a fan of survival stories, I was more than happy to confront what lay ahead.
Twenty pages in, I realized why people had a hard time with this book. In fact, if I hadn't sworn to finish it, I probably would have been done with it right there and then. The subject matter mixed with Palahniuk's bluntness is enough to--as the epilogue says--make people literally pass out when they hear it read aloud.
(Now, I'm not 100% convinced that this happens and people would actually faint, I have no trouble thinking that it's possible. I read the story lying down anyway.)
The format of the book is different. There are three separate things happening, and they rotate each chapter. The first is the story portrayed in the summary--a writer's retreat gone wrong. The second is a poem, at least one for each character in the book. The third are the works created and stories told by the authors during their stay at the retreat.
The best part about Haunted is definitely how the writers' refusal to write turns into a pursuit for the best story possible. They constantly compete to be the "star" of the show, and it shows the lengths people will go to for the chance to be remembered.
I felt in order to keep the shock value of the horrors being committed (and there were some strange, horrible things happening), I had to break up the book by reading three chapters at a time. Reading this book in one sitting, if you could manage it, would be a mistake. Even splitting it up, by the end of the book I felt there was nothing the characters could do that would surprise me anymore, but each short story as written by the characters are gems within the story. Any one of them, with a little tweaking, could be published on their own, which is amazing to me.
All in all, this book is an amazing, powerful work of art. I'm not a fan of looking for messages in books I read for pleasure, but you could definitely pry some good ones about humanity out of Haunted if you wanted to. I will probably never come back and read it as a whole again, but I give it two thumbs up and recommend it if you have the stomach to get through it.