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Invisible Monsters

Invisible Monsters

List Price: $13.95
Your Price: $10.46
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Fast and Hard
Review: While not as themeatically important as "Fight Club" or "Survivor," "Invisible Monsters" is a fast read with plot twists that rival "Fight Club". The story follows an ex-fashion model (who's jaw got blown off and can no longer speak), a transvestite, and a estrogen fueled male model on a cross-country road trip to stop the wedding of another model. Although this is billed as Palahnuik's 3rd novel, it's actually the first one he wrote. Publishers rejected "Invisible Monsters" for being too disturbing. These same publishing companies later accepted "Fight Club". Maybe that will give you some sort of idea on how jacked up this novel is.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Good, Fight Club is Better
Review: Although not one of Chuck Palahnuik's best novels, Invisible Monsters still gets its point across. The main character, a former model for advertisements, begins on a spiritual journey to find happiness and love [depends what you would like to call it] in a society too focused on appearance. However, her being an ex-model due to a serious mishap, she is forced to live under veils and become "invisible". Her journey of unspeakable coincidences pushes her through Palahnuik's typical identity crisis adventure and even further.

Palahnuik writes Invisible Monsters with a clear intent of poking fun at society's stressors of looking beautiful. If someone is considered ugly, he or she is invisible. If beautiful, society calls them gods. Written with a highly sarcastic, pessimistic, and bitter tone, the novel philosophically examines the decay of society through some extremely demented characters. Palahnuik succeeds at pulling out the demented daily thoughts of typical people and meshing them into 300 pages.

Invisible Monsters is an engaging read with some magnificent points regarding society beneath its' schizophrenic structure. I still recommend "Fight Club" over this title, but this is a great novel nonetheless. Well spoken, thought-provoking, and certainly just as crazy as society itself.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Why can't Chuck Palahnuik write faster?
Review: I like this book a lot. I like Chuck Palahnuik a lot. "Invisible Monsters" is a slightly bizarre story (but hey, Im not saying thats a bad thing!), about finding yourself, finding out about the world and the people you love. It is not dissimilar to fight club when the characters say things like "What you're thinking, a million other folks are thinking. Whatever you do, they're doing, and none of you is responsible". So the world is a bleak and depressing place, but not many people can say it like Mr P can. Palahnuik writes like a schizo poetic truth seeking madman, and I love it. I love the style, I love the descriptions and I love the personal narrative thing that can make you feel so deep into somone elses head and life. Amazing. Many people might not like this (or his others) because of the truths they contain. I gobbled this book up in one day because I just couldnt stop. Some may say that the whole "Flash; give me lust, baby" thing is too annoying, but to be perfectly honest, it works. I think that Chuck Palahnuik is just the very best writer of the moment. Keep it up, baby.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Flash to me destroying myself
Review: Of his 3 books, I would say I liked survivor the best now having read all of them. Having read this one last, I was just waiting for the suprise ending much like the other two books. What I liked best about Survivor was that it kept me wondering after the fact. Fight club sort of did, but invisible monsters did not. There is closure to this book.But that does not mean its necessarily inferior. The last 50 pages or so every 5th page you read reveals something you had no idea about. Looking back, I think to myself, duh, why didn't I catch that - but I doubt many do, if any at all. The flash, or jump to stuff almost seems like Chuck was lazy writing this not wanting to seque, but its effect is one of like a modeling shoot, or a vogue type magazine. Done very well. Trying to explain any of his 3 books is very difficult as situations become very weird very quickly. But its all great stuff.If you liked his other books, you will like this. Another reviewer said it best, a sort of postmodern hemmingway crossed with vonnegut. A very apt description methinks. Check it out

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Highly enjoyable
Review: I truly enjoyed this book, and feel that Chuck is a very good author. He is good at description, and his schizophrenic style in this book, jumping from section to section, is definitly a plus, but I have a few complaints. Firstly, though this is a new story and SHOULD be read, it is too much like Fight Club. I reccomend reading both, but don't expect much difference. Very similar concepts of destroying yourself before getting anything. My other complaint is that the start-at-the-ending schtik is getting very cliched - he has three books, and all three start at the end. In the first it was exciting, the second interesting, and in the third you start to wonder when he's going to change. Though it is an interesting way to write, he should not confine himself to this style. I do admit, however, that I would say that Invisible Monsters is the best of his three books - the three-star rating is only because of similarities to earlier books and the beginning-at-the-end bit (though this was the second book of his I have read - it was not old by this time but I have read his third between then and now). The ending is a lot better than Fight Club's, and at a few point I had to put the book down and take a few deep breaths as there are some very unexpected twists that will shock you.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Good . . . but not the best from Palahniuk
Review: My initial impressions of Palahniuk were a post-modern, self-destructive Vonnegut. His pill-sized divisions of chapters and repetition of key phrases show the influence. With Fight Club, I enjoyed this immensely. With Invisible Monsters, its too much. Jump to Chuck repeating himself. Much like the "I am Jack's emotion" of Fight Club, Palahniuk uses the words from a fashion shoot to display our narrator's emotion: "Give me emotion. Flash. Give me feeling. Flash." It all wears a bit thin. Nearly every new section begins with "Jump to . . ." It's meant to parallel a magazine, and it ends up equally as tiring. Further, Brandy Alexander is simply an extremist Tyler Durden (believe it), and our narrator is less believable than the narrator of Fight Club. Give me something new. Flash. Give me something different. Flash. (See, it's too easy.) So it goes. That said, the book isn't all that bad. It just irritates at times in its erratic nature. Perhaps that's the purpose. Read it, but only if you've already read Fight Club and Survivor.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: this is palahniuk's first work actually
Review: Invisible Monsters was Palahniuk's first work, he stepped with the book under his arm to many publishers, but they all told him to get lost with that weird weird thing. After the success of Fight Club they all came back crouching to please let publish the book.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Chuck Does It Again
Review: I've just discovered Chuck's work , and all I can say is I want more. Like many, I started reading this book and could not put it down. It took less than a day to get through it. Chuck doesn't trip you up with so much flowery prose and $10 words. He lets the characters tell the story, in conversational English. It makes the story more real (even when it's completely unbelievable). What I like best about his work is the way he defies convention. He uses a different writing style in each novel. And I always look forward to what he has in store for me next. Show me happiness and contentment. Flash. Show me brilliance. Flash. Show me engaging. Flash.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Invisible Monsters
Review: I have read all of Chuck Palaniuk's books and this is by far the best. It was very engrossing and only took me one night to read. I highly recommend it to anyone who likes his books.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Recursion and unlikely coincidences
Review: Invisible Monsters is a fun ride. It's the story of a one-time supermodel who gets the bottom half of her face shot off. It's the story of opposition; she travels from extreme beauty to extreme ugliness, from extraordinarily social behaviour to complete antisocial behaviour; from being a "normal" person to being a monster.

In some ways, the writing reminds me a little bit of Brett Easton Ellis's American Psycho. In both books, much attention is paid to brand names and clothing details. Our introduction to the protagonist reads like a skewed write-up in Cosmopolitan magazine:

"My gown is a knock-off print of the Shroud of Turin, most of it brown and white, draped and cut so the shiny red buttons will button through the stigmata. Then I'm wearing yards and yards of black organza veil wrapped around my face and studded with little hand-cut Austrian crystal stars. You can't tell how I look, face-wise, but that's the whole idea. The look is elegant and sacrilegious and makes me feel sacred and immoral."

Make note of this description. If you read the book, you'll see it again. Palahniuk tends to reuse some of his favourite bits. The result is literary vertigo--a deja-vu of words.

Wholly unrealistic coincidences also keep repeating themselves. I won't go into any detail that might destroy plot twists, but you may want to keep in mind that sometimes things are more like they seem than you would think conceivable.

The recursive writing put me into a bizarre post-modernistic fugue state, whatever that means. Really, though, reading this book is rather like one of those sick-making rides at the carnival. After a while, the excitement turns into nausea which turns back into excitement which turns into a "when does this ride stop?" kind of feeling. But that's the way the best rides always are, right?


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