Survivor : A Novel

Rating:
Summary: pretty decent but..
Review: I can't help but notice that this book screams "Look how clever I am!" Many stories are written in a similar narrative, but only Chuck has the balls to use such a one-dimensional attempt at originality, numbering the chapters backward an all. And the awkward insertions of househould cleaning tips are almost embarrassing to read; not to mention that it chops up the flow of the story. The psuedo-psychic female character reminds me of Nicola Six from "London Fields"...only not as developed or interesting. In fact, Chuck Palahniuk is like a Martin Amis wannabe in many ways. If you want to see a good exmple of a backward story, read "Time's Arrow" and don't bother reading all the way to chapter one of this book.

Rating:
Summary: Palahniuk's BEST book!
Review: I've read both Choke and Fight Club, in that order, and I have to say, Survivor beats them both outright. You don't read this book, you hop on and ride the madness until you get off, either satisfied or nauseous, depending on your personality.

This book lets you know the protagonist is doomed from the very beginning. It opens from Flight 2039, about to crash in the Australian outback, with only one person remaining aboard: Tender Branson. He tells his story to the black box on board with him, and to us, as the chapter numbers count down. Tender is a survivor of the Creedish "death cult", who were supposedly religious fanatics who sold their children for labor, and then committed mass suicide when the authorities came to intervene. We weave through his life, seventeen to late thirties. It begins with him working as cleaning houses of the wealthy, keeping quiet about disturbing secrets of his employers. He steals fake flowers from graveyards, runs a help hotline telling everyone calling to kill themselves, and is visited by a social worker. He ends up a media superstar with a body that's half surgically enhanced, blurred by hundreds of combinations of drugs. And that's the mild stuff.

Chuck Palahniuk fills his books with frightening, little known trivia about the real world. How to get blood stains out of fur, how to scam Ronald McDonald Houses, how to get drugs from veterinarians. He then surrounds these facts with his fiction, making the story seem more real and more disturbing.

Survivor is completely unpredictable, unique, and darkly hilarious. I'll say this right now: I think it's brilliant. The insights and food for thought it provides make me laugh aloud and chill me. Palahniuk comments on society, he mocks society, without preaching once. The characters do things you dream to do in your darkest or most honest moments, but wouldn't dare. The storyline shocks you, takes twists and turns you'd never guess and I couldn't reveal here.

A typical paragraph of Survivor goes like this:
This isn't the most marketable job skill, but to get bloodstains out of wallpaper, put on a paste of cornstarch and cold water. This will work just as well to get blood out of a mattress or a davenport. The trick is to forget how fast these things can happen. Suicides. Accidents. Crimes of passion.
Just concentrate on the stain until your memory is completely erased. Practice really does make perfect. If you could call it that.

A downside is that Chuck Palahniuk uses a lot of repetition to make points, and while usually pulls it off excellently, occasionally it can get irritating or dull. It also doesn't have too much rereading value - after once or twice the thrill dulls and you don't feel like reading it again. Also, it is not for the faint at heart. It is fairly graphic and has the ability to shred most optimism. Some people have complained about how ambiguous the ending was, but I think that if he'd given it a solid ending the effect would have been weaker.

Okay. Enough. I loved it. Go find a copy and start reading it. If you liked his other work, you will definitely enjoy Survivor. Another recent Amazon pick I really enjoyed is The Losers Club by Richard Perez -- a totally obscure, totally great book that I can't stop thinking about. Highly recommended.



Rating:
Summary: Can't find a reason to live? Might like this book. Or not.
Review: I'm not an avid reader by any means. I have a short attention span among other flaws. This was probably the first book I have read in its entirety in maybe three years. Even books I like I can't finish - but somehow I finished this one. I also like talking about my problems anonymously on random unrelated internet forums.

Anyway, that's pretty much the state I happened to be in as I read this book: why would I want to live. Why should I. And so I guess any hints the book may have provided along those lines I was maybe more eager to pick up on than the average reader might be.

The insight I felt this book offered as to what you might call "the meaning of life," or whatever, I found to be rather comforting. Or maybe, not so much comforting, as much as making my head spin and leaving me with a slight queasy, freefalling feeling. But then again what doesn't these days.

My point, I guess, is that while I feel I may have been a little too intellectually challenged to have fully wrapped my head around this book's message (yet), I guess reading it just made me feel a little less insane. Like it articulated something I couldn't, even if I haven't yet quite been able to put my finger on it.

But then again I just finished it an hour ago and haven't had a lot of time to let it fully sink in. I'm a slow learner. I've come to accept that.

Here's what I'm thinking could be what I should take away from this book:
Maybe this is all just a consolation to those who want something they can't have: you wouldn't really be satisfied having it anyway. So quit your crying and agony. Maybe this is advice to people like me who want something to live for but can't find a reason: find any goal to work for your entire life, like ending poverty or saving humanity or something, and you will live a satisfying life. Maybe this is just nothing more than a cynical statement, the tenet of the underachiever: you will never be satisfied, no matter what you achieve. So why bother. Or maybe I should be saying to myself, don't be afraid to try, because failing's better than boredom, and you will die anyway.




I should probably mention that I'm kind of dumb and never get the point of something unless people tell me. Like that movie Dr. Strangelove? People had to explain that to me. I'm dumb. So please don't take my word for anything. You are free to derive your own (or the true) meaning. But I still enjoyed this book, if not just for the pornography. Just kidding. Kind of.

Rating:
Summary: pieces are greater than the whole
Review: Testing one, two, three...is this thing on?

I guess since this is what you would call a satire, Chuck P. is excused from drawing characters that are 3-D. I think that's why I didn't like this book as much as I hoped I would. Never once did I have any connection to any of these characters. And don't tell me that was the point.

The story is what you would call imaginative and it's filled with great details. But overall something is missing. The story becomes so surreal at times it becomes disorienting. Wait? How did we get here? I kept finding myself asking.

You could say this story tackles too many themes to feel cohesive. Is it predominantly about the shallowness of America? Or the destructive power of religion? I'm not sure I ever felt the two themes mixed into one grandiose theme. But that's just me. I'm not what you would call a genius.

Rating:
Summary: better than FIGHT CLUB
Review: This novel was waaaaaaaay better than Fight Club. It was just so entertaining to read. I laughed so hard during parts of the book then felt bad afterwards. Loved every minute of it.

Rating:
Summary: Gives new meaning to the word "edgy"
Review: Tender Branson is the last surviving member of the Creedish Death Cult. He's an expert at removing tough stains. He provides dining etiquette advice to his employers, a wealthy married couple with whom he communicates only via speakerphone. He eagerly accepts misdialed phone calls from people seeking a suicide hotline, then convinces them to go ahead and end it all. He has an agent, a line of autographed Bibles, a book of prayers for mundane, everyday needs, his own cologne, and a syndicated radio show. And he's getting married on the field during halftime of the Superbowl, to a woman he's never met before. Oh, and did I mention that he's narrating his life story at 35,000 feet? No wait, make that 34,000 feet. 33,000 feet. As the pages descend in reverse order, so does the plane on which he is the only passenger, recording his memoirs into the flight recorder in the cockpit.

If the rest of Palahniuk's work is as good as Survivor, then he just might be one of the edgiest, most insightful chroniclers of the warped, perverse direction that American culture has taken as we enter the new century. He shows no mercy for our obsession with fame and glamour, or our preference for image over substance. And he makes it very easy to take a step back and laugh at ourselves, at the silliness that we often fill our lives with.


Rating:
Summary: a real page turner
Review: Given that the story begins at its ending, with the reader already knowing the conclusion to the unfortunate life of Tender Branson, it's no small wonder that Palahniuk is able to craft a story that maintains reader attention throughout. Even more amazing than this is the fact that you won't find yourself questioning why you're reading the story you already know the ending to, because you can't help yourself. Nothing about this story should be surprising, and yet - wonderfully - it is.

This is the first of PALAHNIUK's novels that I've had the pleasure of reading, so I can't draw any comparisons, contrasts and so forth with any of his other works. What I can do, however, is say that if all of Chuck's novels are this good, then I eagerly look forward to reading more.

From page 1 `Survivor' is compelling in a way that I've never experienced a book to be before. Though it took me a mere two days to devour the novel in its entirety, I certainly wouldn't be surprised to find that I could re-read it again in a single sitting. It's not that there book is short, or even that it's lacking in substance, but rather that the style is so sharp, so well-rounded, that everything is a pleasure to read.

If the novel has any faults, it is the all too sudden ending. Then again, the life story of Tender Branson is short in itself - a supernova, burning brightly for an instant then fading just as quickly. The final quarter of the book feels rushed, though this could be an attempt to convey the frenzied state of mind our tragic hero is in. Still, however, this makes the book no less enjoyable.

The plot moves in alternating bursts of speed, sometimes lingering on one event or occasion for a long time, and others completely skipping large gaps of time - something which can be, at least at first, somewhat confusing. All of this just adds to the frenzied atmosphere that `Survivor' puts across, as it draws you into the mind of the Creedish Antichrist.

Rating:
Summary: Desensitized to people dying? This book is for you.
Review: The main character, Tender, is an aloof, mid-30s virgin who doesn't care whether he, nor anyone else, lives or dies. He doesn't kill people, but he doesn't attempt to save them either. Such as when they accidently call his phone number, believing it's a suicide hotline, as a last resort before committing suicide.

It was an interesting read, but I didn't like the ending, even though it fit with the book's theme. It felt anti-climatic, and I was very unsatisfied with it, with is why I give it 3 stars. The rest of the book has a lot of neat quirks in it to keep the reader interested. I guess in the end, the book has it's impact on me, because my feelings toward this book parallels the main character's feelings toward human life.

Rating:
Summary: Burnt hands
Review: I read this book so quickly and with such intensity that at one point my copy actually caught fire. I ended up buying a second copy and would have bought a third had circumstances required it. I love this book. You should buy it and then call me to let me know how right I was in recomending it. I could use the confidence boost.