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A review by holley_cornetto
Adjustment Day by Chuck Palahniuk
2.0
Just because it is satire, doesn’t mean that you get to be lazy about the details.
This book reads like a first draft, not a finished novel. There are too many questions that are never addressed, and too many plots that never go anywhere. Maybe it would have been better if more of the characters actually went through some sort of character development. As it was, the only character that really got an in-depth treatment was Walter.
The problem is that the characters and stories are so underdeveloped that the reader has a really difficult time caring.
Now that I’ve given my reasons for disliking story elements, I want to give a few smaller details that irked me about this book.
- The references to his own work. Yes, we know you wrote Fight Club, and yes, Fight Club was a great book. So, what do you do when the seminal work of your career happened over twenty years ago? You mention it repeatedly in a new book to remind readers that you wrote it, apparently.
- The overuse of the word rape. Repeatedly: “Ear-raping” “Poop-raping” “fork-raping” “rape of the structure.” It was crass. Stop trivializing this word.
I read in an interview (https://nerdist.com/chuck-palahniuk-adjustment-day-interview/) that the publisher and perhaps a dozen editors rejected this book before it was eventually published. I can see why. If this book underwent some heavy editing so that there was more development and story, then I think it could have been quite good, thus two stars instead of one.
This book reads like a first draft, not a finished novel. There are too many questions that are never addressed, and too many plots that never go anywhere. Maybe it would have been better if more of the characters actually went through some sort of character development. As it was, the only character that really got an in-depth treatment was Walter.
Spoiler
The former United States get divided up into three territories – one each for whites, blacks, and homosexuals. He tries to follow an “outsider” to each of these cultures. So, we follow a straight person in Gaysia, a black person in Caucasia, a homosexual in Caucasia, and a white person in Blacktopia.Now that I’ve given my reasons for disliking story elements, I want to give a few smaller details that irked me about this book.
- The references to his own work. Yes, we know you wrote Fight Club, and yes, Fight Club was a great book. So, what do you do when the seminal work of your career happened over twenty years ago? You mention it repeatedly in a new book to remind readers that you wrote it, apparently.
- The overuse of the word rape. Repeatedly: “Ear-raping” “Poop-raping” “fork-raping” “rape of the structure.” It was crass. Stop trivializing this word.
I read in an interview (https://nerdist.com/chuck-palahniuk-adjustment-day-interview/) that the publisher and perhaps a dozen editors rejected this book before it was eventually published. I can see why. If this book underwent some heavy editing so that there was more development and story, then I think it could have been quite good, thus two stars instead of one.