Snuff
£6.26
Disappointing. - Palahniuk has descended into the realm of pathetic shock tactics with his most recent novel. It is clear that he believes his varied vocabulary for the word vagina will make the reader gape in awe at his daring and wit. In reality it just reduces the reader s image of him into that of a small, petulant child who just discovered dirty words and wants to shout them at everyone as loud as he can. After the reasonably enjoyable escapades of Haunted and Invisible Monsters, Palahniuk s obsession with being unique has become steadily more transparent with each novel published. Steer clear of this book and instead read some of his earlier works, the ones where he actually managed to wield the smudge of talent he has with some efficiency. I m still reeling that he thought the plot line Porn star has sex until she dies was a winner.
This book pretty much sucked - This is the second Palahnuik book I read. I read Fight Club. I enjoyed it. I didn t enjoy Snuff however.It s just page after page of unconvincing, vacuous drivel. I can t stress how unconvincing the character s interactions are, in terms of both dialogue and behaviour. It s absurd. This reads like the work of an author who has all but given up. Just churning out another routinely shocking piece of transgressive fiction.I tend to appreciate literary minimalism. I felt this technique was used to good effect in Fight Club. But in Snuff this same technique is executed clumsily at times. Which is very unsatisfying. Stylistically, this book attempts to be slick, like baby oil, but somehow falls short. Endless superflous detail is rendered with a nonchelance that comes across as affected and irritating. Also, Palahnuik is found of relaying graphic carnal/genital imagery with that same studied nonchelance. The effect is reminiscent of a self consciously jaded teenager casually boasting about various feats of depravity and/or rebellion.The plot, with its annoying twists, is completely inane.On the plus side, it s short and easy to read. And it may appeal to intelligent, wayward teenagers. In fact I could see myself possibly enjoying this book ten years ago. Than again, maybe not.
Twaddle, tosh, and nonsense - I m not a particularly cerebral bloke, nor am I very picky about what I read. But this, folks, is pretentious, badly written, and utterly without a single redeeming feature. In case you re wondering, it s not titillating, it s not informative, and I m sad if a single tree had to be pulped to print it. As a matter of interest, I tried to start a barbecue with it, and even that fizzled out.
Same old story for Snuff - Snuff suffers from the problems that Chuck s other books have as well: all the characters have the exact same voice and none of them are very likeable.After about a quarter through way the book, I got tired of its formula: Character engaged in some outrageous activity being treated as normal. Same character spouting off facts (that, like all of his books, will come in handy at some further point conveniently further in the book) in the middle of a pointless conversation. Character having flashback to some revealing cliche d past trauma. Over, and over, and over. Every character has at least one chapter like this.I m sorry... but random factoids, pointless twists, and a meandering plot just don t do it for me any more.Pointless porno titles that the author obviously thinks are very cleaver, countless pointless synonyms for masturbators, and pointless facts spouted by every character where solid dialogue could have done much, much better.Another gripe, overall, with Mr. Palaniuk s writing: I don t think the man will ever be able to write a single line of convincing female dialogue.If you re an adolescent boy (age or maturity-wise) and like to snicker at countless different, clever ways to say masturbator and lame porno titles, then this is the book for you.
the darker side of life - One thing I will say about Palahniuk is that he manages to write in such a way that you can smell the unwashed bodies, the urine smell from the toilet, the buffet table laden with crisps and sweets and the body odour of the 600 assembled men. Basically, he manages to write in such a way that you feel slightly grimy by the time you finish one of his books.Don t get me wrong, this is definitely a skill, but I felt that the voices of the 4 characters (72, 137, 600 and sheila) were all a little too similar.In some ways I was dissapointed in this book - the characters just seemd to be lacking something, and it seemed that the author set out to try and shock more than to tell a story.On the other hand, I did sit and read the whle thing in one go - although that was not too hard as this is quite a short novel.I do not think this book will win Palahniuk too many new fans, although I could see teens who ahve not encountered this kind of book before enjoying it, and I think longterm fans will enjoy the book. It is definitely very inkeeping with Palahniuks style of writing, but it is not my favourite of his books.It is trickey, as on the one hand it is a very evocative work, but on the other hand, it was not as good as some of his other things.As one person pointed out, the cover does feature a pair of breasts, but as with the rest of this book, there is nothing erotic about the image, or in the story itself - in fact if anything, this book is a pretty good antidote to feeling frisky.If you are a fan I would give this book a try, if you want to buy a young adult something edgy it may be worth a go, but if you are new to this author I think you would be better starting off with Fight Club.