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Loading... Chokeby Chuck Palahniuk
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. Loved it, pure chuck. Choke reminded me of why I like chuck palahniuk. (  ) mjai | Sep 11, 2009 |  Choke is not for everyone. It is FULL of vulgar, disgusting, graphic, icky sex. Really-- I am not a prude at all, but this was way over the top. At first I was really put off by this, as it seemed gratuitous, but as the story progressed it turned out that everything that had been written had a purpose. The story did have a point, a heart, and some depth. It was also darned funny in parts. So if you need a break from "literature" and a good laugh Choke might be for you. (  ) technodiabla | Aug 26, 2009 | My fifth Palahniuk novel, and I was still completely thrown by the plot twists. Choke is a brilliant and maniacal roller coaster. I loved the structure and tone. As for the characters, likeable isn't the right word, but it's the one that comes to mind. Palahniuk never stops coming up with startling new situations. I will definitely be reading more! (  ) azarene | Aug 10, 2009 | I was really unimpressed. I'd heard so many good things about Palahniuk that I was excited to read him, but I really wasn't as impressed or amused as apparently I should have been. The story was boring, the characters were shallow and the humor was. Um. Well, what humor? It just seemed like a lot of "trying too hard". (  ) vombatiformes | Aug 5, 2009 | How can an author connect issues with food and sex addiction to his relationship with his mother and still not be too outlandish? I loved it ( ) boodgie | Aug 2, 2009 | 
 Choke seizes the dirty truth disguised beneath our modern glamours and screams it loudly into your ear. You may find yourself feeling unusually militant after reading Choke – consider this a warning.  In Chuck Palahniuk's 1996 cult novel ''Fight Club,'' a young man escapes the emasculating boredom of modern life by indulging his violent, antisocial impulses. Victor Mancini, the narrator of Palahniuk's energetic, exasperating new book, also keeps in close touch with his inner bad boy, though what it is he's trying to escape is less clear. His operating principle is ''What would Jesus NOT do?'' ''If you're going to read this, don't bother.'' So Chuck Palahniuk introduces the reader to Choke, showcasing the punkish style of his fourth novel from line one. The narrator, Victor Mancini, continues: ''After a couple pages, you won't want to be here,'' he warns. ''Save yourself.'' The hero's warning is the author's awkward wink, and there, in the third paragraph, you have the story's over-worked theme: salvation.  So ''Choke'' is an uneven but still raw and vital book, punctuated with outrageous, off-the-wall moments that work as often as not.
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"Art never comes from happiness." So says Mancini's mother only a few pages into the novel. Given her own dicey and melodramatic style of parenting, you would think that her son's life would be chock-full of nothing but art. Alas, that's not the case. In the fine tradition of Oedipus, Stephen Dedalus, and Anthony Soprano, Victor hasn't quite reconciled his issues with his mother. Instead, he's trawling sexual-addiction recovery meetings for dates and purposely choking in restaurants for a few moments of attention. Longing for a hug, in other words, he's settling for the Heimlich.
Thematically, this is pretty familiar Palahniuk territory. It would be a pity to disclose the surprises of the plot, but suffice it to say that what we have here is a little bit of Tom Robbins's Another Roadside Attraction, a little bit of Don DeLillo's The Day Room, and, well, a little bit of Fight Club. Just as with Fight Club and the other two novels under Palahniuk's belt, we get a smattering of gloriously unflinching sound bites, including this skeptical bit on prayer chains: "A spiritual pyramid scheme. As if you can gang up on God. Bully him around."
Whether this is the novel that will break Palahniuk into the mainstream is hard to say. For a fourth book, in fact, the ratio of iffy, "dude"-intensive dialogue to interesting and insightful passages is a little higher than we might wish. In the end, though, the author's nerve and daring pull the whole thing off--just barely. And what's next for Victor Mancini's creator? Leave the last word to him, declaring as he does in the final pages: "Maybe it's our job to invent something better.... What it's going to be, I don't know." --Bob Michaels
(retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:57:56 -0400)
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