I really liked this! It was a pleasant surprise, given that I'd just finished "Invisible Monsters" and found it underwhelming. The characters were all interesting and complex, and I can honestly say that many of the twists and turns the plot took surprised me. The ending was satisfying--which I worried about as suspense kept building, as I would not have been shocked if Palahniuk had ended the novel right before the "event" he'd led up to--but while I had a sense of closure, it still left me thinking for quite a while after the finish.

I'd definitely recommend this to someone who would appreciate it. ( )

Very bizarre, like a typical Palahniuk. But the usual strange twist at the end of the book is missing which is very unlike Palahniuk and it leaves me strangely empty and confused. I expected and wanted more from this story about a woman on whose paintings rely the lives and the future of a whole island population.
But still, it's a disturbing, gripping story. Not my favorite by Palahniuk, but still good. ( )

While this novel moves quickly, capturing the reader's attention and refusing to let go, at the end, it's a creepy story that doesn't seem to have enough thought to really move it too far out of the horror/mystery genre. The plot is fabulous and twisting, as you'd expect from the author of Fight Club. However, it's disappointing that Chuck Palahniuk couldn't move away from creepiness for creepinesses sake and further explore some of the psychological and philosophical issues he touches upon.

If Tom Robbins could take this book and do a re-write, he would take the great ideas, such as handwriting analysis, the ideas of what makes an artist great, and perceptions, mix them with a bit of his humour, and have a masterpiece. Palahniuk, on the other hand, seems too fixated on shocking his reader, and his intellectual ideas get lost.

Overall, Diary is still a novel worth reading and spending a few hours with. ( )

I could read this book over and over again and I love it more every time. I absolutely recommend it. ( )

The style, the physical and psychological violence were all very similar to Fight Club. Characters struggling to understand their environment which is not what it seems, bizarre crimes and conspiracies, wanderings between reality and imagination. While the plot was interesting, albeit sometimes very confusing, the denouement creative, and the premise intelligent, there were some elements I found really too far-fetched (namely the use of the diary itself and the fire at the end). I also had trouble believing the main voice was that of a woman - it sounded much more like a man. It was very reminiscent of a David Lynch movie: uncomfortable yet mesmerizing. ( )

Decent read, but not more. My first by the author and I'm not sure there will be more. ( )

Diary is by the same guy that wrote Fight Club. If you're familiar with either the book or the movie or any of his other works, then you probably know that most of what he writes is pretty bizarre. Diary is about a woman, Misty Marie, who meets an odd boy in art college, falls in love and marries him, then moves to his odd little home town on Waytansea Island. By the way, throughout the book I couldn't help but say to myself "Wait and See" Island. I tried to put the emphasis on another syllable to keep that out of my mind because it was kind of distracting but now I'm pretty sure that was intentional. Not the distracting part but that we're supposed to Wait and See. The book opens with Misty writing in her diary to her husband who is in the hospital in a coma after a failed suicide attempt. Misty hasn't painted since she was in college and this becomes a major point in the book. I won't say anymore about the plot because I just can't describe it without giving everything away. This book is seriously bizarre and I kept waiting for the big twist at the end. The weird thing is that there is NO twist. Everything truly is as it seems. ( )

I found this book to be absolutely insane (in a good way). Totally mind-blowing. I loved how everything ended. Palahniuk's words are harsh and his ideas are out-there, but he weaves those two things together to make a beautiful, interesting story. Honestly, I thought the book was pure genius. ( )

This is definitely one of the strangest books I have ever read. ( )

Great art comes from great suffering...I agree. Locked in a box by your family and friends. Madness that I can relate to. It is all here in Misty's coma diary for her mostly departed husband. I say, check it out! ( )

What began as an intriguing and somewhat quirky tale took too many tedious turns for me. Just not my proverbial cup of tea. ( )

This is a truly unique book. I've never read a book with so much truth in it. There were no shortcuts in the descriptions or emotions. Truly unique. I'll read another Palahniuk book. ( )

Tradition, art, carpentry, and coma---all combined in one wild ride--Palahniuk does it again with his "where did that come from" outrageous style. Clever, thought provoking, and unique, Diary is worth a look. ( )

http://12frogs.com/reading/reviews/20... ( )

This was a great story and the first Palahniuk novel I ever read. I was enthralled from the first paragraph of the book. The plot twists and turns as the main character descends a downward spiral to insanity all leading to a climax the like of which I've not seen in a novel in a long time. ( )

Another great novel from Palahniuk. He really knows how to take a simple story of lies and turn it into something of his own. He really is one of the greatest satirists i've read. ( )

In the postmodern horror novel "House of Leaves," one of the narrators tells us that the word "passion" comes from the Greek patior meaning "to suffer." With that one observation, "House of Leaves" tells us something that Palahniuk will spend several paragraphs (perhaps even a couple pages) telling us in this book. And Palahniuk is supposed to be a minimalist.

As frustrating as that may be, I'd say it's a pretty decent read since I'm reviewing it as a Chuck Palahniuk book, so it's only fair to grade on a curve. One should not expect the following in a Palahniuk book: a coherent plot, believable characters or an understanding of how the world works. Palahniuk's novels serve mainly to pedantically deliver the author's social and political observations while providing enough dark humour and outrageous events to keep the reader entertained. By that standard, Diary is quite solid.

As for the storyline, well here it is. Misty Marie Wilmot was born into a lower-class family. She went to school to become an artist, but then she met Peter Wilmot, got married and had a kid. Peter comes from a wealthy family living on Waytansea island, so they go back and lead a comfortable life. Misty raises their daughter. Then the family starts to go broke; Peter has to go work as a contractor, Misty as a waitress. Misty's really bitter about this, though we later find out it's only been happening for 2-3 years. (Meaning she got the better part of a decade to raise her daughter in leisure and wealth.) Well, Peter apparently was pretty fed up with contracting work, because he started to do weird stuff with people's houses and then tried to kill himself. He failed and is now in a coma, so Misty is writing a diary to tell him all the stuff he's missing. (And the diary entries make up the narrative.) In the mean time, she starts to get phone calls from the irate owners of the houses Peter "worked" on. One of them is a man called Angel Delaporte, who helps her investigate the mysterious goings on. (Shall a Wilmot hold the land of a Delaporte?) Also, her in-laws and the other island people start to encourage her to paint again. In fact, they get kind of creepily obsessive about it.

This is all makes for a pretty intriguing mystery. The isolated woman who finds herself caught up in sinister plots is a mainstay of Gothic fiction, from Ann Radcliffe to Rosemary's Baby and beyond. Since it's Gothic, some of the outrageous elements are more forgivable. But since this is a Palahniuk novel, the us of outrageous elements quickly goes from daring to ridiculous.

For example, Misty describes the changes Peter's body undergoes while he's in the coma. At first, it's creepy, then disturbing, then you can't help but crack up. The way Palahniuk describes it, the guy's practically mummified. And he's been in a coma for what, two weeks? A month?

Also, Palahniuk's attempt to graft social satire onto a Gothic horror story doesn't quite work. Misty's bitterness over working in a hotel tends towards the overwrought. Is her bitterness supposed to be Poe-like in its unsoundness or is it meant to be understood as her natural reaction to bourgeois American culture? Perhaps some readers might feel that Misty's exposure to rich people is enough to turn her into Roderick Usher. Personally, I thought it just meant she really shouldn't have stopped taking her meds.

Misty eventually does start painting, which really impresses Angel because she can draw perfect right angles! Without a protractor! I know when I'm looking at a Picasso my first thought is always, "Wait, there's no perfect right angles in this, you big Spanish phony!" Palahniuk also has a lot to say about art. Sadly, a lot of it is stuff like, "Lord so-and-so had a really bad case of crabs when he painted Dogs Playing Poker. Art comes from pain." (Rumours are Diary was inspired by Palahniuk's struggle with influenza or perhaps gridlock.) Sometimes, this is used to good effect, as with the parallel between certain elements in paint and those in Misty's pills. But mostly it's rather tedious.

Anyway, it's pretty entertaining, especially if you can ignore the fact that the novel's plot doesn't make that much sense. (Or at least takes place in an alternative and much less litigious universe.) ( )

wow. Perhaps if I would have stuck with it, I would have learned what is so appealing about this book. It was just too dark, spiteful, hateful,

There is enough darkness in the world that I don't need to bring it into my head voluntarily. ( )

I really cannot understand the praise heaped on this author. Parts of the story were interesting - Misty's notes to her comatose husband, the sealed off rooms ehr husband worked on - but the premise was flimsy and unbelievable, even for me, a master at suspending disbelief. I didn't find it particularly well-written, much like his other books. This is the last opportunity I plan to give this author to bore and annoy me. ( )

"Set foot on the island and you will die..." the words said. "...run as fast as you can from this place. They will kill all of God's children if it means saving there own..."

In where his kitchen should be, it says "...all of you butchered..."

The man in Ocean Park says, "You'd better come see what I found." His voice on the answering machine says, "The handwriting alone is worth the trip."




Misty Marie Wilmont never visited the island before her soon to be husband took her there, but she knew it, all the same. She knew its every house, from the plumbing behind the floor boards to the number of shingles on the roof. She knew it, and she drew it, pouring her immense talent into pictures of a place she thought existed only in the dreams of a lonely trailer trash kid. When Peter takes her there, she thinks it a fairy tale come true, and everything will be beautiful. Of course, she is wrong...and it's just getting worse. Her husband is in a coma, a failed suicide attempt. Her house is no longer her own, the rents going to pay the hospital bills. Her daughter is a stranger. She no longer even thinks of painting, she never has the time. Drinking a little too much (but she never seems drunk) just to get through her rotten days, she spends her time as "The Queen of Slaves," running the staff of the island's only hotel. The island itself is suffering, despite the fact that it's become the newest mecca for the rich. And everywhere she looks, she finds small messages, written by the island's only two famous artists, both long dead. "We are their bait and their trap," one says, "If you've found this, you can still save yourself," another says, and a last one, "Do not paint them their pictures." Which leads to a question...why is Misty so important to these people? Why is everyone so intent that she take up her art again?

The are other messages, from her husband. He was a carpenter, hired to do small handyman jobs on several of the island's rental properties. Now that the rich residents have come back to their homes to enjoy the summer, they have discovered that a room is missing in their home...sometimes as small as a spare linen closet, sometimes a whole kitchen. When they break the drywall down, they find messages scrawled over the walls, the rantings of a mad man. The things he say about her are shattering, as well as the rants about how Waytansea island and its residents are going to butcher them all.

And so she's writing this coma journal for her husband, in case he ever wakes up...the title Diary is literal. Misty tells us-- Peter -- everything, going back into time for short moments to tell us about Peter, coming back to tell us about her life. It is filled with moments of incredible anger, such as when she visits her husband at the hospital. She pulls out a piece of costume jewelry, a broach that he gave her. As she stabs him with it, she says to us, to him:

"Can you feel this?

You dear sweet stupid liar. Your Tabbi sends her daddy hugs and kisses. She turns thirteen in two weeks. A teenager.

Today's weather is partly cloudy with occasional fits of rage.

In case you don't remember, Misty brought you lambskin boots to keep your feet warm. You wear tight orthopedic stockings to force the blood back up into your heart. She's saving your teeth as they fall out.

Just for the record, she still loves you. She wouldn't bother torturing you if she didn't."

And there are moments of terrible sad sweetness, such as when they're packing up their things to leave the house she spent most of her marriage in. Renters are coming any moment, and she's looking at the door, where Peter's family has marked all the different heights of the children and the date.

"Then, when she's alone again, Mrs. Misty Marie Wilmont, when no one's there to see, your wife goes up on her tiptoes and stretches her lips toward the back of the door. Her fingers spread against the years and ancestors. The box of dead paints at her feet, she kisses the dirty place under your name where she remembers your lips would be."

Palahniuk plays with the nature of creativity here...the visceral nature of it, how suffering seems to be the catalyst for great art. He solidifies the metaphor, in such scenes as when we discover that Peter has pinned the broach he's about to give Misty through his sweater and nipple, and in later, darker events when the town finally gets Misty to pick up her brush again. We discuss the nature of artistic value...Misty's paintings would probably be much like Thomas Kincaid's idealistic flowery cottage paintings. She often thinks of this, how much Peter loved these paintings, while everyone around her is doing statement art, such as a fellow student who is filling a teddy bear with dog dung...she compares her own sorry state to the state that she thinks these real artists must be living in. Palahniuk seems to challenge us, to define what art truly is...is it the stuff that comes from the soul, or the stuff that will play to the masses? Is it worth anything if we don't suffer for it?

Another thing that I really enjoyed that he played off of is, oddly enough, a certain fairy tale myth. (If I seem vague, I'm trying to leave spoilers out here...sorry, reader.) There is a part where Peter seems to have been destined for Misty, and he, well to do, living in a beautiful house in the place that she dreamed of so often, sweeps her off to this island, promising her that she will be the best painter that ever lived and that all will be happily ever after. We all love this myth, or at least I with my over romantic imagination do. But it shatters...Palahniuk turns it inside out...the handsome prince doesn't really seem to love her, and leaves poor Misty...who is not as stupid as she might want you to believe...in a terrible situation.

I couldn't put this story down, because it digs it's claws into your heart and mind on so many different levels. The prose is hypnotic, he repeats certain phrases over again, such as in the example above....for the record, and the weather forecast is cleverly employed to underline the feelings and events of the story, and when she says that Peter did something, then breaks the narrative to say "You did it." When she turns to jab the prose, her words, directly at us with the "You," it both reminds us of Peter, a character in the background who is, nevertheless, second in importance only to Misty, and echoes with all the other times she has done this. These repetitions not only give the prose a hypnotic feel, but also bring up thousands of subtle nuances. We also become attached to Misty, her bare, stripped down honesty is incredibly compelling. You feel extremely sad for her, because we all feel trapped the way she does...we all have these creative desires that we can't always accomplish, and when we do, we are well aware of the sacrifices we go through to do it. I also feel terrible for her because, I don't know how you will feel, or have felt, but I sincerely wished for some point where we find out that Peter loved her as much as she loves him...but there is something hanging back there in the context, something that shakes its head sadly and tells us this is not to be.

And of course, the mystery is very involving...why is everyone so determined that she paint, what are the meanings behind these messages, left by women so many years ago, but that seem to speak to her? As everything comes together, it just clicks perfectly.

I guess I don't have to say that I recommend this book...if you've gotten this far (I think this may be my longest review, ever) then you know I do and why...but I especially think this will resonate with anyone with a creative drive...writers, artists...because there is something about this book that really hit me in that aspect of myself. The opening cover pages of this books sums it up nicely, "Where Do You Get Your Inspiration?" ( )

Link to a review on my personal website (might be in Swedish). ( )

First by Palahnuik that I've read. Engaging and a very quick read about a young artist who is caught in this intricate pattern/web of a small town community who believes that she is there to save them. His turn of phrase and the ease, but depth, of reading is amazing. He reminds me of a masculine Jeanette Winterson. ( )

I really liked this book and even though it had a strong emotional effect on me, I had to keep reading. I love the style - very effective. ( )

This is the first Chuck P. book I ever read, and while it was sort of weird, is an amusing book that tells a great story. There are TONS of great quotes in this book, like all of his works. ( )

If you are unfamiliar with this author, he is the person who wrote Fight Club. This book is equally strange. Misty’s husband is in a coma after a failed suicide attempt and she is writing a diary. The plot is so much more bizarre than that; you have to read it to get it. ( )