I was really disappointed with this book. While Chuck Palahniuk usually seems to throw in random bits of information to add in to his story it felt like he wrote this book around the random bits of information. In comparison to his other books, it felt immature, as if this was the first book he ever wrote as opposed to his eleventh ( )

The more I read Chuck Palahniuk, the sadder I get. Like most, I was blown away by his earlier work and wanted desperately to believe he hadn't fallen into any kind of predictable pattern. Nevertheless, Snuff is so formulaically Palahniuk that it's a bit frustrating--the kind of book that's a quick, painful read but one that feels like it could have been so much more.

At the center of the tale is an aging porn star named Cassie Wright, who is attempting to break the world gang-bang record by having sex with 600 men in one go. For most of the novel, she hides away in an obscure upstairs film studio while the action settles around three men--Mr. 72, Mr. 137, and Mr. 600--waiting in the crowded green room. Each man has his own reason for being there, and as the novel progresses, we learn that each is far more connected to the others than any of them could have imagined (a truth that makes itself graphically clear in the novel's appalling climax).

Part of the Palahniuk formula has always been explicit, random detail, and Snuff delivers in spades. Unlike many of his novels, though, it feels as if the impact of the tidbits falls short because pornography is such a ubiquitous industry that the shock value of talking about sex in a book like this wears off pretty quickly. At the same time, though there are a number of distinct narrators, each feels disengaged from the task at hand. And while that disengagement helps us to see the many secrets each is hiding, it doesn't help the audience feel terribly invested in the proceedings.

Not to mention that the plot itself also falls into the predictability category. Much of the first third of the novel is devoted to a plot twist so obviously telegraphed that a) it's easy to determine, and b) it's even easier to see through. Once you figure out that it's a red herring, other pieces of the puzzle start to fall into place pretty quickly as well, and it doesn't help the "mystery" aspect of the book that the cast of characters is so surprisingly small. The function of each character within the plot becomes clear faster than I suspect Palahniuk wanted, which leaves us with a last-second twist that feels more forced than plausible. It's not so much a cheap shot as an afterthought, which may be worse.

Ultimately, though it's a really short book, Snuff comes off feeling like a short story that's grossly outstayed its welcome. One feels that Palahniuk probably had a great deal he wanted to say with the book, but it didn't all make its way on the page. In books like Haunted, which are pretty powerfully invested in their technique and shocking content, he was making powerful statements as well. In Snuff, he seems more content in making us look away from the page than he is in having us look between the lines.

Easy to read book, each chapter told by a different character about a has-been porn actress who plans to make a final snuff movie to provide for her child that she adopted away. The film involves her having sex with 600 men but it doesn't happen quite as she plans.

This book has intrigued me for months. However the actual experience of reading it fell short of my expectations. It felt as though the book lacked something. In my opinion, it seems to just bumble along and then suddenly stop. Although, being a Palahniuk it is still a great read, if slightly short of some of his others such as Rant and Choke. But good. ( )

This is one of those read that I am not sure if I should be appalled or entertained. It seemed like a cross between Oedipus Rex and Debbie Does Dallas. I have read a few of Palahniuk's books, but this one is the strangest thus far. ( )