Haunted
£3.71
short stories brilliant! - I have to be honest, the short stories are superb, however the content between the shorts gave me the impression of some bad B movie, all sat round...one with a tape recorder...one with a video camera...but them it gets deeply...deeply twisted and I loved it!!!
Not his best effort - I ve read most of CP s books to date, and enjoyed most. This is not one of his good ones. There are some gems, some images and short stories that stay with you but the frame story sucks, the characters all have the same voices and the overall plot does not deliver. It would have been a better book in the short story format instead of this half baked idea to collect them together.If you re a fan, you ll read it anyway, if you re not try one of his other books.
Sticks with you - Palahniuk goes a long way to drive home a simple point. The point being that we don t need fictional monsters to scare us, Frankenstein, Dracula, Bloody Mary... they all pale in comparison to what you and I are capable of. This is the premise he sets early on, and then he proceeds to drive home his point with one disturbing story after another.And while most of the stories were well executed, I couldn t help feeling manipulated. Like Palahniuk was so intent on making his point that he abandoned all sense of finesse in favor of blunt force trauma. Gone was the tightly controlled, sophisticated rage of his past work, and in its place was a kind of unleashed, unfocused fury.That said, I d still recommend this offering to those with a strong constitution. It s personally not my favorite work of his but, as with any Chuck Palahniuk books, it leaves a lasting impression. And trust me, like it or not, this one sticks with you.
What went wrong? - While I still recommend Fight Club to my friends for an excellent, stylized read, I was extremely disappointed by Haunted As a fan of Chuck s writing style and over all quirky content, I expected great things from Haunted having read and enjoyed everything else he has ever written. I could not have been more wrong! Chuck appears to have sold out to shock tactics, producing a thoroughly gorey and plotless novel! I forced myself to finish it, hoping it would get better but I was sadly wrong! Snuff will have to be back to the old Chuck to get me back on board. Something tells me it won t be!
Fight Club on Steriods - Chuck Palahniuk is most known as the author of Fight Club, the book that became the movie with Brad Pitt and Ed Norton, and overnight Palahniuk had a cult following. Erie, scary, and terrifying, if I had to use three words to describe this book, that would be it. Robert A. Heinlien the classic Science Fiction author once quipped One man s theology is another man s belly laugh. Of this book I would state, One man s perversion is another man s pleasure. This book will hit both, depending on who you are and your sensibilities.This book is a collection of short stories, written by characters who are on a writer s retreat. They all responded to an ad to give up three months of your life and create the masterpiece you have always said you would. Each of the 18 respondents had an idea of where they would be going - to a large country estate, a camp in the woods, yet the reality is they get locked into an old ornate theatre house. They have food, shelter, and facilities, yet all doors are locked, all windows bricked over and no way out.From there the book becomes a cross between Fear Factor, Survivor and your most feared horror story. We see the depths to which people will descend to achieve fame and riches. Palahniuk, during the current book tour, was reading the first story called `Guts and to date there have been 63 people who have passed out with many people being injured falling into book cases in book stores. This book will at times, turn your stomach, but will give you an understanding of the darkest side of human nature.Readers beware! This book is like the fight club movie on super steroids.(First Printed in Imprint 2005-06-03 as Fight Club author gets Haunted )