Choke

Despite the authors opening, I read it and I cannot be more confused about myself as a person for loving this book.
Something about Chuck Palahniuk has me disgusted and enthralled. He's on a cusp of mental horrors covered with a blanket of sarcastic humor.

"We've spent so much time judging what other people created that we've created very, very little of our own."

The story is about Victor, a sex addict only attending sex addicted anonymous groups to scope out partners, trying to pay for the care of his mother with Alzheimer's at a nursing home. His mother has a diary that she claims that she had Victor by Jesus's foreskin, making him a descendent of Jesus. Like many of the authors characters Victor is cynical, pathetic, and nihilistic. show more Even though she wasn't a very good mother, victor often having flashbacks of the abuse, he still wants to make sure she is taken care of. So he comes up with a scheme. He purposefully chokes on food in restaurants waiting for an unfortunate soul to "save his life". These people then feel obligated to send him money, gifts on holidays, or send him things just because. show less

"Picture anybody growing up so stupid he didn’t know that hope is just another phase you’ll grow out of”

Victor Mancini, is a medical-school dropout who has devised an ingenious scam: he pretends to choke on pieces of food while dining in upscale restaurants. He then allows himself to be “saved” by fellow patrons who, feeling responsible for his life, go on to send him cheques to financially support him, these he then uses to pay for his mother's medical bills. When he’s not pulling this stunt, Victor cruises sexual addiction recovery workshops for action, visits his Alzheimer's suffering mother in her secure hospital, and works days at a colonial theme park.

'Choke' is an interesting book from a psychological perspective and show more I am somewhat of a loss as how to rate it. Eventually I settled on 3 stars because I couldn’t decide whether I loved or hated it, probably both. Victor is a sex addict and intentionally chokes on objects in order for others to save him and therefore feel loved. This book contains a lot of graphic sexual descriptions featuring a variety of deviant behaviour and whilst I don't consider myself to be a prude the vivid details from each unrelenting scenario involving Victor often made me cringe.

On the other hand I often found some of the other portions quite amusing. The storyline is actually quite enjoyable and Victor although not particularly likeable isn't a totally bad character either. Despite Victor's insistence that he is not a good or caring person his actions suggest otherwise. The novel explores his childhood and attempts to uncover the reasons why he is the way he is as an adult. I really enjoyed the sections following Victor and his friend Denny at work in a 1700s theme park as they struggle to stick within the rules, they showed a deep level of friendship to each other. I thought that the central theme of choking would be really distasteful but I actually found myself accepting Victor’s justifications and actually sympathizing with him.

The book is written in fairly short episodic chapters that switches from Victor's chaotic childhood to his present and once you get past the first 10% or so of it, which is almost entirely pure sexual description, you find that there is a fairly satisfying story underneath. Although the big revelation at the end of the book came as no surprise to me, Palahniuk displayed an ability to create really vivid images that will stay in my head forever.

I would recommend this book to readers who like dark humour but aren’t easily offended. If you find graphic sex in books offensive, then this is not the book for you. show less

This entire story was a descent into madness. From the opening scene to the climactic (in multiple ways) ending, the characters in this story start out unlikable and steadily worsen. Mental illnesses reign and those are the bright spots. This author seems to find ways in each of his stories I’ve read to continue to churn out characters worse than his previous ones, and impressively, that’s quite a challenge. Sadly, though, the realism of these characters helps to put into perspective the truth that the author writes about as far too often, these scenes play out all around the world each day

I had an inkling of what to expect after seeing Fight Club, but found this much more amusing than I would have expected.

Victor is a man down on his luck, but with a novel way of keeping his head above water. He pretends to choke in restaurants, causing his saviours to both feel good about saving him, and also somehow responsible, thus ensuring his survival. His best friend, Denny, despairs of his behaviour, wanting him to give it up. It's not just money Victor seeks, but also love, having been mistreated by his deranged mother who would come and claim him from foster parents with one crackpot scheme after another. Victor and Denny met at a sex-addicts' meeting, another area in which Victor seeks love, even if it is just for a moment.

I show more know I wasn't supposed to like Victor, he even tells you not to, especially after finding out more information about him. I think it was the style and tone that drew me in, the conversational musings of Victor and, of course, his strange life. I did not feel pity for him, but I did hope he would find some sort of redemption or closure.

Recommended. show less

As a kid, Victor's life was perhaps not that stable. His mum kept ending up in jail, only to come claim him once he was sort of comfortable with his current foster family. She'd quiz him on different codes used for alarms at hotels, grocery shops, hospital. Nurse Flamingo means there's a fire. Perhaps that's why he's so split on wether to pay for that feeding tube his mother needs to stay alive at St. Anthony's or not. After all, her Alzheimer's treatment (plus housing) already costs him about three thousand grand a month. Between working at re-enactment museum where it'll always be 1734 and pretending to choke on his food in restaurants to lure people into saving his life; so he can squeeze as much money as possible out of them – show more it's quite hard to pay for both his home and his mother's treatment.

And then there's the fact that he's a sex addict. But he's trying to work on that- even though his mother's nurse, Dr. Marshall, suggest he can pay for the stomach feeding tube by having sex with her.

But when his mother starts talking about wanting to talk to him about his father, he is more or less set on keeping her alive. He needs to know. According to her, it's all written down in her diary. The only problem is that it's in Italian. The only person he knows who can read Italian is Dr. Marshall... who is trying not to sleep with. And Victor is really starting to have limited options when it comes to restaurants to pretend to die at.

Palahniuk's language is like magic. It kept me trollbound to the story. Despite the fact that he is quite the asshole, I found myself caring for Victor. Perhaps it was all the flashbacks to when he was a kid. It helped explaining why Victor is so messed up as an adult. Because he is messed up; constantly craving attention, love and someone who needs him. It's a red thread throughout the book; Victor wants someone to need him so badly that he tries to wait with his mother's stomach tube for as long as possible and he calls the cops on his best friend Denny.

It's raw and it's sad and it's brilliant. show less

Pahlniuk probably achieved his fame and reputation by writing the book that led to the movie that became the anthem for angry, young, white, middle-class men working in boring office jobs: Fight Club. And that right there probably explains why I didn’t really like Choke.

The main character is, again, an angry, young, white man—not-so-middle class, this time—who works days as living color in colonial “Dunsboro” and has a second job as the guy who almost chokes to death in a restaurant until some well-meaning patron saves him. How does he make money from this? Well, he really does adhere to that adage that if you save someone’s life, you’re responsible for that person for the rest of your life—and he makes his saviors show more adhere to it, too. And he thinks he’s doing some good, by giving these people a great story and a sense of accomplishment that they can carry with them for the rest of their lives.

The reason why this young man is so angry? Because his mom was crazy, and was in jail a lot when he was a kid, and kept kidnapping him from his foster homes the moment she got released from jail only to get put back shortly thereafter for some insane stunt or another. Now, his mom is in a mental institution and won’t eat, and he’s become convinced that she conceived him by using the DNA of Jesus’ foreskin—in other words, he’s the son of Christ. Whether that makes him the Second Coming or the Antichrist I could never figure out.

The reason why I didn’t like this book? It’s so aggressively male, even more so than Fight Club. The main character, besides being angry, is also a sex addict who spends his free time conquering and debasing every woman he comes across.

There are no realistic female characters in this book, not even the woman he ends up worshipping to the point where he can’t get it up with her. There are no sympathetic male characters, either. The whole thing seems designed to make the reader feel slightly sick in the stomach. But Palahniuk must be doing something right, because all my male friends who read this book loved it. Me? I just didn’t get it, I guess. show less

A novel about sex addicts. See also: DUH. See also: Sure Thing. See also: Bestseller. "So fine," we think: this must have been easy. How could you lose? And then you begin reading. Try this: draw a cross in the margin every time Christianity is referenced. Draw a (|) every time Palahniuk references a butt. A "Ha" for every joke; a "Nice" for every brilliantly turned phrase; the character's name every time someone new is introduced; an "F" every time characters F---; and a null symbol every time Palahniuk illuminates Nothing. The margins will be filled. You'll end up with a freakin' flip book movie. Somewhere, Hemingway is smiling. Instead of Hail Marys, the young Victor Mancini must have been assigned recitations of "Our nada which art show more in nada..." The novel's title is your first clue that everything is exactly as it looks and nothing at all as it appears, simultaneously. Everything has so many levels of meaning that half the audience is laughing, half the audience is crying and the other half (yeah, I don't know how he does it) is vomiting in the aisles. Orifices. There are more orifices in this book than you can shake a stick at (and that's in there too). One moment you're recalling the witches from Macbeth: "Fair is foul, and foul is fair." The next, you're humming five different Rolling Stones songs. All the while perusing the warning label on a tube of KY Jelly. There is legend, myth, faith, history, psychology, prophecy and some geology for good measure. If you're one day visited by aliens who want to read one book and understand what it means to be human, smile and hand them "Choke." show less