Damned

Dante's Inferno meets the Breakfast Club in this strangely hilarious comedy about 13-year old Maddy Spencer, the offspring of celebrities who enters Hell as a shy and awkward child and emerges a leader of the damned. I won't say any more for fear of giving away all the god parts, but trust, me you'll want to read this one if only to find out how many times you're allowed to fart in a crowded elevator before you get sent to Hades for all eternity.

Over the decades since the publication of Fight Club in 1996 Chuck Palahniuk has mastered the format of the short, self-contained novel, readable in a single longish plane flight. So now, it seems, he's embraced ambitions for multi-volume narrative. He's writing the Fight Club sequel (more to follow the film than the novel, and as a comic book series), and Damned is the first volume of a trilogy, for which only the second (Doomed) has yet followed.

The foregrounded cultural allusions in Damned's po-mo Inferno are to Judy Blume's Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret and to the John Hughes film The Breakfast Club. As is typical of Palahniuk's early novels, the plot turns on an anagorisis regarding the protagonist's personal history, show more although in this case, there have only been thirteen years of such history: Madison Spencer has kicked the bucket in the onset of puberty, and this book is the first volume of the saga of her afterlife.

Anecdotal review and rumor cautioned me that Palahniuk's Hell would be especially disgusting, with a surfeit of revolting details. That wouldn't be inconsistent with his other books, which have often deployed medical details for their gross-out potential. But Madison, who tells the story, is not a fount of clinical knowledge. As a zealous reader of Jane Austen and a self-identified "smart" girl, she does have a robust vocabulary, and in a Palahniuk-style refrain, she recurrently protests any reader's suspicions that it's excessive for her age. But even though Hell's geography contains many features made of accumulated bodily wastes, such concerns didn't seem to dominate the story. Maybe I'm just desensitized.

What did stand out was the bureaucracy of Hell, its candy-based economics, a bit of Cabell-esque metafiction, and Palahniuk's usual satirical disdain for consumer luxuries and celebrity culture. The book's ending is neither a full resolution nor a cliffhanger. Though Damned wasn't nearly my favorite of the author's novels so far (that would be Rant), I suppose I'll go ahead and snag Doomed at some point. Given how quickly these books read, though, prospective readers might be advised to wait for the third to see print, so they can be taken at a single go. show less

How to describe Damned? Take the group from The Breakfast Club, add an extremely world-weary thirteen-year-old narrator, a few demons, some absolutely nauseating landmarks, and mix thoroughly to create a spot-on satire of modern society. Yet, somehow even that description fails to explain Damned fully. Part coming-of-age story and part mystery, Damned crosses genres and manages to mock everything from the religious right to celebrities and everything in between.

Madison is quite the unlikely heroine. At thirteen years of age, she is too young to be as blase as she is. She condemns certain behaviors without ever having experienced them herself and is quick to mock others for their gaucheness. In other words, she is very much a smart-aleck show more kid who thinks she knows everything. Before a reader becomes tired of her, however, she will say something that is a jarring reminder of just how young and naive she truly is, no matter how much she might deny it. The reader cannot help but sympathize with Madison as she narrates her attempts to find acceptance, acknowledgement and happiness in both her previous life and her current dead one.

Audiobooks in which the main character is a young teenager is tough for a narrator. Even worse, Madison is extremely jaded, and the narrator needs to be able to portray this to drive home Palahniuk's message. Thankfully, Tai Simmons is up to this formidable challenge. She does an excellent job capturing Madison's disillusionment. More importantly, her voice is not too old but is the perfect level of youth on the cusp of womanhood. Any other narrator would find it difficult to balance the two, but Ms. Simmons hits the right notes perfectly.

As my first Palahniuk novel, I was not certain what to expect with Damned. What I discovered was an entertaining novel in which nothing is sacred. Palahniuk's skewering of celebrity marriages, religious pretense, telemarketing, haute couture, fame, and evil, among others, highlights the hypocrisy that seems to be on the rise while not-so-gently reminding the reader of the damage such unctuousness can cause. There is a no-holds-barred attitude to the entire novel that is simultaneously uncomfortable, irreverent, and absolutely hilarious to behold. Be warned however; Damned is not for the faint of heart, easily disgusted or offended. There are scenes that will challenge the most indifferent reader. For readers who are willing to take a chance though, Palahniuk's portrayal of Hell is as eye-opening and insightful as it is humorous. show less

"And if I didn't know the meaning of asinine before, I certainly do now. As for for the definition of erroneous, I only have to look around." -- Damned, pg. 170

First of all, let's just call a spade a spade and get this out of the way: if this manuscript had not come with the name CHUCK PALAHNIUK emblazoned upon it, it would not have been published. I mean, I have very little faith left in traditional publishing houses, but I have enough to believe that. There's just no way.

That said, I'm about 85% sure (or maybe I just really, really want to believe) that Damned is experimental literature. And by that, I mean that Ol' Chuckie is treating his fans as guinea pigs and running a test on them. And that test is: Just how much total show more bovine-excrement can I get away with? How many multitudes of awfulness will the Palahniuk™ brand cover? In short -- how stupid are my fans?

And judging by some of the ratings it has received, the answers are: a book-load; many, many multitudes; and very. Because, look, this book is a complete joke beginning with the very SPINE, which has P A L A H N I U K stretched across it in huge letters while the title "Damned" is given an 1"x1/2" bit on the top edge. After that, it's classic Chuck Palahniuk ramped up to levels that should be illegal and without all that stuff like plot and character getting in the way. And I would say approximately 46% of the prose is just recycled repeatedly throughout the book, so, in actuality, this book is only 133 pages long.

From its cover design to its vaguely threatening "to be continued...", this book is a joke -- just one long, smelly poop joke. show less

I rented a copy of Damned by Chuck Palahniuk from the local library and listened to the book in my car through the Overdrive app. I found a beautiful contradiction between the fall foliage visible on the New York Throughway and Palahniuk’s disgusting and hilarious descriptions of Hell.
I feel the need to state that I was biased to like this book because Fight Club really catalyzed a paradigm shift for me as I began the transition into adulthood. It would have been tough for me to end out disliking this book on his merit, but it stood on its own and won my fan-hood fair and square.

Damned is the tale of Madison, judgmental, self-deprecating, child of privilege who died and winds up in Hell. I felt immediately hesitant because I don’t show more get into stories with pessimistic characters. I find myself carrying their baggage back into reality. However, early in she falls into a clique that intentionally Mirrors the five kid dynamic of The Breakfast Club, an incredible coming of age film from the 80s. The interpersonal connections were intriguing and lured me ever onward. Madison also describes the indignity of the experience and some little sadistic part of me wanted to watch her suffer.

I perceived that Madison’s struggle throughout the novel is to “lose hope” as a part of coming to grips with the events of her life and her future in the afterlife.

His descriptions of Hell and the forms of torture awaiting the unsaved had be laughing out loud, and I don’t mean texting “lol” while driving the throughway. As I have often suspected it might be, Plahniuk’s Hell has a few horrors of the mundane living world. I’ve even spent a couple months at a desk performing one of Hell’s jobs. There was a satisfying amount of research and fact dropping regarding Hell’s hierarchy and while not necessary, I was thankful I once read Dante’s Inferno, if only to enjoy several references.

I had an incredible journey in the mind of a thirteen year old girl. There is one scene that threw me straight back to 1993 when I was on a bus coming home from grade school, debating reproduction with our ignorant prepubescents. I felt like he’d created a mental time machine just for me!
I made a few guesses based on well played foreshadowing, some panned out, others went right over my head until I just shook my head and gave Palahniuk a silent nod and a grin. His ends wraps up Maddie’s journey of self-discovery and opens up what I hope is covered in Doomed. I’m looking forward to the next installment. show less

Chuck Palahniuk is known for writing novels that conjure gritty images, develop strong but unreliable narrators, and offer some form of commentary on life. Damned is no exception—in fact, it’s almost an archetypal Palahniuk work. I found the book refreshing if a somewhat muddled.

The very first thing I truly liked about the book was Maddie Spencer. She comes across as a snarky, pre-teen, chubby girl who is the daughter of a movie star and a billionaire. Her voices comes across as snarky and witty, but as time goes on, we find out that she’s quite naïve and stupid, which isn’t really surprising considering the fact that she’s only 13. Her perspective towards life as a quasi-celebrity and a pre-pubescent dead girl is interesting show more to read, and it works great in the picaresque nature of the narrative. Maddie grows over the chapters that take place on both hell and earth. The flashbacks work quite well to compound Maddie lack of interest in life; they complement her philosophy towards hell.

Palahniuk paints a very vivid description of the place, making it truly disgusting and revolting, yet somehow making it sound like not-such-a-bad-place-either. His version of hell somehow makes sense, for I can imagine where telemarketers and sex webcams come from. The place depicted also makes some sense, especially in the Great Ocean of Wasted Sperm, Vast Abyss of Insects, and Shit Lake. Another great thing I liked about hell is just how absurd it is—demons that can be bribed with candies, demons that love getting oral pleasure, etc.

Damned works as an excellent satire, harping on religion and how petty and ridiculous it can be. People are damned in Damned because they say “fuck” too many times, they pee in the swimming pool more than twice, and they honk more than 700 times during their lives. God doesn’t care whether you’ve been nice to people—He will damn you for silly reasons. Also, evolution is fake. Satan planted all those fossils to fool us!

The only problem I felt with Damned was its rather jumbled up narrative. It’s as if Palahniuk couldn’t decide what to do with his work. The narrative switches gear, stops, goes towards a different direction, stops, comes back again, and goes nowhere really. The commentary on fiction and reality also felt rather tacked on towards the end. Also, it ends rather abruptly.

Despite that, I really liked Damned. It’s a great read and works as an excellent audiobook (I did a combination of both). It’s laugh-out-loud funny at times and it showcases the pettiness of humanity and its religions in a new light. show less

Although this still hasn't topped my first Palahniuk - Rant - I definitely felt a sense of the familiar madness descending as I plunged headfirst into this novel. Basically, Damned is the testimony of a thirteen year-old dead girl called Madison, who wakes up in a cell in Hell and proceeds to take Hades by storm, befriending a demon (and a bunch of other teenage inmates), defeating Hitler, finding she has a knack for telemarketing (one of the two career options in Hell - the other being dodgy porn webcam sites) and generally becoming a bit of a celebrity in the Underworld. Meanwhile, we slowly piece together bits of her life and death, while Madison hunts for Satan to try to find out exactly why and how she ended up here. It's all very show more bizarre, a bit gross, vaguely jumbled and occasionally shocking - and I raced through it, as usual. Very tentatively recommended - Palahniuk is definitely not for everyone! show less