Damned (original 2011; edition 2011)

This is my first Chuck Palahniuk book. Maybe I just didn't get it but I couldn't get interested in this book. The preview sounded interesting but the execution was not great and I couldn't finish the book.

I loved most of Palahniuk's earlier books (and, more recently, Rant) -- but I just couldn't get off the ground with this (or any of the titles since Rant, for that matter).

To be fair, I only got through 20 pages or so before giving up; maybe there's a hook buried farther in. Maybe not. ( )

On her 13th birthday, Madison Spencer dies unexpectedly, and she finds herself in Hell a few days later. Initially unsure what to do with herself now that she’s damned, Madison soon teams up with some other teens in hell, including a 15-year-old boy with an extensive knowledge of all religions including obscure ancient ones, a high school football player, a beautiful but air-headed girl, and a punk rocker. This ragtag band traipses the disgusting landscape of Hell, fighting off demons and damned villains such as Hitler, eventually making their way to Hell’s headquarters where they pay off their debts to Satan by operating as telemarketers who call living people on Earth right during their dinner hours.

First off, let me acknowledge that this book is the beginning of a proposed trilogy, with the next book due out in fall 2013. That’s worth noting, because I went into this book thinking it would be a cohesive whole only to find out that the story will continue on in another volume. However, I did not enjoy it enough to want to move on to the sequel anyway. Also, buyer beware, this book can be flat-out gross at times, so it’s not for the squeamish or delicate. (While I can’t say I “enjoyed” these sections, they are not necessarily the reason why I’m not such a fan of this book.)

The publisher’s blurbs say of Damned that it’s The Breakfast Club meets Dante's Inferno. I’d add that the book has a healthy dash of Sartre's No Exit with a hint of Judy Blume’s Are you there, God? It’s Me, Margaret. Indeed, every chapter begins with “Are you there, Satan? It’s me, Madison.” and a brief paragraph – almost journal entry – to Satan, whereas the rest of the narrative is targeted to "you" the still living person reading this, although occasionally a line or two in this section is addressed to Satan also.

For the first 50 pages or so, I thought this book was compellingly interesting – funny/snarky, clever, and very quotable. After this, the narrative started to drag a little and the small problems from the beginning became more obvious/glaring, perhaps even more frequent. The narrative kept taking strange turns also, introducing important characters from Madison’s life incredibly late in the game, making 360 changes to Madison’s character with seemingly no explanation, and changing the rules and logic of the Hell presented with no warning. There were times in here though where the narrative would become incredibly compelling once again, delving deep in an interesting character or subplot for instance, but there was no consistency to this.

Meanwhile, I found a lot of problems with the book, as hinted above. Overall, this felt like a really solid second draft that the needed some more fine-tooth editing, but instead the publishers decided another Chuck Palahniuk book would be a bestseller no matter what so they went ahead and published it without such proofing. For instance, the narrative sometimes felt a bit disjointed, with a paragraph seemingly out of order. Likewise, the tense of the narrative would sometimes shift inexplicably. (I’m not referring to the “flashback” moments when Madison would recall her former life, but the “here and now” moments that all should have had the same tense.)

In addition, there were frequently issues of possible and real contradictions coming up, such as the changing rules of Hell as I mentioned earlier. One sharp example is the main character herself. Madison went from a jaded and snarky teenaged character with wisdom beyond her years who made comments such as “Trust me, the being-dead part is much easier than the dying part. If you can watch much television, then being dead will be a cinch. Actually, watching television and surfing the Internet are really excellent practice for being dead.” and “Another detail to remember about Hell ... whenever you ask why anyone is damned for all eternity, she'll tell you ‘jaywalking’ or ‘carrying a black purse with brown shoes’ or some such pretty nonsense. In Hell you'd be foolish to count on people displaying high standards of honesty. The same goes for earth.” to an ever optimistic, hopefully idealistic young girl just wishing to find out answers about life and death. Still later, she becomes a tough leader who breaks into violence at a moment’s notice. Early on, it’s noted that Madison knows everything there is to know about sex and sexuality despite having never engaged in the act herself; later on, it’s acknowledged that she doesn’t understand what constitutes French kissing. Both of these are major plot points at the time, so this isn’t just me nit-picking here. If I were to get nit-picky, there are numerous examples of this as well. For instance, Madison frequently mentions how her wealthy parents would fly about on a private jet, yet Madison makes reference to screaming infants on (clearly not private) airplanes. And so forth.

Some have said that Palahniuk gets the voice of the main character down perfectly. As I’ve already noted, I found that her character seemed to shift too abruptly at times. While there were passages and even full chapters where Palahniuk really beautifully captured the concerns of a girl just on the brink of adolescence and all its attendant issues, most of the time I felt this wasn’t the case. Some of the language did not seem like it would be the word choices of a 13-year-old girl, and there were times when she was too knowledgeable about the adult world or just plain world weary. The dated references (such as The English Patient and River Phoenix) also seemed out of a place for a young teen. Meanwhile, the frequent references, particularly early on, to Madison being overweight got annoying very quickly. Yes, she's a 13-year-old girl so I understand that superficial body issues might be on the top of her mind a lot – when ON EARTH. But she's in Hell now, often with much bigger problems at hand. So enough already. In a similar vein, Madison constantly saying yes, I may be 13 but I understand XYZ (usually a ten-dollar word) became increasingly more annoying as the narrative progressed. Still, as I started here by saying, there were times when the book really did a good job of unfolding a believable coming-of-age story with a character coming to certain realizations about herself.

To sum up, this book had some very odd moments, some very funny moments, and some very touching moments. There were some great passages worth noting for particularly hitting the nail on the head and being quote-worthy, like Palahniuk those wrote in Fight Club. But all in all, the book was too jumpy and characters not smoothly fleshed out enough to be a truly good read. ( )

I am just not in the mood for a big long "tell" I need some "show" right now. Maybe I'll come back to this when I've finished reading the rest of the CP books on my shelves.

have ebook version