Rating: 
Summary: Speechless
Review: So I watched Fight Club, when I found out this was a book I thought: "How can someone be so imaginitive and genius like to write a book like that." I read his book Lullaby and loved it. Invisible Monsters was amazing! I am speechless. I love his stuff so much. I don't see how this guy comes up with this stuff. The novel keeps you moving and you have read on and on to get the full story. I was in shock when I got to the end. My god this is well written. Beautiful.
Rating: 
Summary: Impossible but true: This is boring
Review: I am an ardent fan of Mr. Palahnuik's work. But. This novel could lose the middle hundred pages and become engrossing. Unfortunately after setting up the characters in the first third , the book treads water for a hundred pages before anything interesting is written. I realize this book was written sometime ago, but the characters that get sex changes (about a half dozen) act and talk in such a trite way there is nothing that makes me interested in them. It seemed too predictable. The way Palahnuik constructs sentences is often intensely funny and topical, in Invisible Monsters he just isn't at top form.
The main character was about the only heterosexual women involved, yet there was nothing in her thoughts or actions that made me think of a woman. I kept waiting for the twist to be that Shannon was really her own brother, post sexual reassignment surgery. The author showed the good sense to avoid such a debacle, but the fact that I kept thinking of her as a he shows that a female's psyche is not yet in the writer's grasp. Shannon's parents were also cartoonish and inconsistent. In the past they were Idaho farmers, so why do they act like boring Orange County suburbanites? I may have missed something. I confess I skimmed through several pages looking for interesting commentary. I was nonplussed when I realized I was getting bored. Manus was the least ineresting character of the bunch and the contrived role he plays in the lives of Shane and Shannon is a "cop out". Besides the view that beauty is never what it seems there isn't much to hold interest.
Rating:
Summary: More than just exceptionally interesting!
Review: This was my first Palahniuk novel, and it definitely won't be my last. The plot was wild, and the twists and turns had me glued to the pages. The characters were hilarious and sad at the same time, reminiscent of twisted, self loathing pieces of modern society. The main characters may seem one dimensional at first, but grow to develop deep flaws and sensitivities that only leave the reader searching through parts of the book wondering, "what actually caused this?!". I found this becoming a pertinent question while I read, probably due to the fact that the traits mirror a darker side of our society, intensified and characterized in a hauntingly accurate manner. Especially haunting is the way in which Palahniuk depicts humans attempting to defy their pasts, and overcome their self loathing, unsucessfully. The novel is told from the viewpoint of a bitter, jealous ex-model, and in my mind, Palahniuk does an excellent job of allowing this bitterness to come through his writing. Stylistically, the book is choppy, not only in its general format (written in stream of consiousness), but also in its sentence structure. No, I do not believe that Palahniuk failed 8th grade grammar. Rather, I feel that this choppy sentence structure and poor grammar were completely intentional, meant to illustrate the personality of the narrator, who is obviously not a scholarly character. Had Palahniuk employed any other style, the novel may not have been so sucessful. That said, Invisible Monsters deals with some sensitive topics (sex changes and other surgeries, for example) and might not be the best choice for someone who is easily offended. Also, reading over the reviews, I see that the the style (choppy and soap-opera like, similar to the beginning of Brave New World) proves to be difficult for some- I guess that's just personal preference. However, don't let this scare you- you'll get the hang of it quickly, and from then on, you'll appreciate the style, as it gives the novel a distinct rhythm. If nothing else, Invisibile Monsters is a fantastic read, and will not leave you bored for even a second. I would especially recommend it to lovers of imaginative, "out-there" books, anyone who enjoys satires, and anyone looking for a plain good book, with a reallyyyyyy interesting plot.
Rating:
Summary: Liberating
Review: I love mr. Palahniuk's raw style. Took some getting used to, but wow. The amazing stories this guy creates, the topics and the crazy but nonetheless highly interesting ideas - I couldn't ask for more. This is the first novel I've read by Chuck Palahniuk and I can't wait to dig into the rest. I'd recommend Invisible Monsters to anyone who feels at all detached from society, and to everybody else. Whatever happened to silence?
Rating:
Summary: Nothing is what it seems.
Review: Being in college, I have found little time to read for pleasure. I've been busy reading lit books like the Scarlet Letter or trying to memorize what DNA is all about for Biology. During the last winter break I read my first Palahniuk book and that was Choke. (I loved it, but this is not a review for it.) It's been two weeks since I've been out for the summer, and last night I finished reading The Invisible Monster. I am so happy and thankful that I can finally be a "book worm". With plots and story twists better than most movies coming out now it gives us a reason to put down the remote or stop paying the costs to eat stale popcorn. Just when I thought I had things figured out I was surprised again and this happens all the way to the end. This book, however, is something that my mom's virgin ears can't read so if you get squeamish over the occasional cuss word or a really dirty joke, you should skip it. But those that want to try out something different go buy it today. I've become addicted to his books and I'm now reading Survivor.
Rating: 
Summary: Not My Favorite Palahniuk
Review: I'd read all of Palahniuk's other novels, but missed this one somewhere along the way. I like his biting style and the general tortured weirdness of his characters. He always surprises me. However, that's exactly what I felt was missing from this book. I really knew where everything was going in terms of the relationships between the characters. What's more, I was left with a general feeling of "Who cares?" I don't think that Palahniuk ever really us asks to sympathize with his characters, but I honestly felt nothing for Shannon, and she didn't act anything like any women I know. She's an eccentric stock character--and though that may be the point--I don't have to enjoy it. I don't have to like a main character, but I want to care about what happens to her. On the plus side, the book does have its very funny moments and wicked satire. I'd recommend this book to Palahniuk lovers, but it's not my favorite.
Rating:
Summary: Every chapter better than the last!
Review: This one was fantastic. I'm really on a Palahniuk kick. He constantly jumps back and forth between flashbacks--seems disjointed but all comes together. Like a soap opera only REALLY dark and funny!
Rating:
Summary: Palahniuk's Most Daunting Novel
Review: While many argue the vision of human depravity expressed by the author to be too unrealistic, Invisible Mosters pastes and electrifies his audience with simplistic style and grace. Palahniuk succumbs to the first-person narrative of a character that cannot speak to add just another twist on the array of nameless characters, (Tyler Durdin for example). Palahniuk enriches the book with the simplistic charm of a hopeless monologue filled with dark satire as possible. And in the end, the realization of the entire situation becomes evident and the one who was damned by facial disformity is the only person who exits the climax of the novel having gained a sense of overcoming an obstacle. Let's face it though, Palahniuk does exerpt a vivid flashback sequence that is used as a point of novel rotation and as a flashback of depravity. More and more just seems to unfold in a novel that show the very depths of moral, ethical, social and sexual emptiness. It is a breathtaking love story that unfolds on a massive scale. By the time the climax catches up to you, (most of his books are somewhat postmodern in their lack of a significant time-frame) the main point of interest, the love triangle, becomes exploded on a massive scale. However trite the novel seems to some, the in-depth character analysis of our protagonist and her Jung-like partner, Princess Brandy Alexander proves it to be an explosion of idea and an expression of individuality. The unnamed fashion model blends to you with her horrid knowledge of facial plastic surgery, sex-change operations and fake acting. She, by the end of the novel, overcomes her horrid flaw to see the true beauty that lies within. She was everything, the birds, Palahniuk at his best here, ate her face. That's only in the first twenty pages, and it is another cross-reference point of the narrative.
This book is one book that will really draw you into the character's personalities. Palahniuk describes her haunting grace in a way you would write a love story. She is the modern hopeless romantic bound to a transsxeual who eats pills like it was going out of style. Invisible Monsters sets a trivial spiral of human and sexual depravation, and explores the ideads and metaphors placed throughout Palahniuk's work. He explores the idea presented in Fight Club, which is "the ultimate idea of hitting bottom." The main characters are stealing pills and changing their identity everyday. It is an awesome look at what happens what you have a new literary voice to express the ideads of a society based solely on self-hatred and exploration.
Rating:
Summary: Disturbed
Review: Wow. I first read Invisible Monsters about six months ago, following up on my fascination with Palahniuk's Tyler Durden and Victor Mancini characters. I was completely unprepared for the negative visceral reaction I would have to parts of Invisible Monsters. At times I would put the book down in disgust but would soon be wondering how things would end up with Brandy and her demented entourage. Invisible Monsters amplifies Fight Club's theme of distroying a thing of beauty.... By the end of the novel, the reader is left with the feeling that these characters seek to destroy all that is beautiful (and seemingly normal) in their lives. I give this work 5 stars. Not because I "liked" it, not because it was overwhelmingly well written, but because the plot creeps back in my mind again and again. Palahniuk has managed to create an original idea -- a task that is apparently pretty difficult for modern fiction writers.
Rating:
Summary: Targeted
Review: Sorry to those fans of Chuck Palahniuk's that can do nothing but wait agog for Chuck to blow them away with chilling surprises, maybe this book wasn't unreal enough for them. However, I found it pleasantly close to real. It hits and amplifies topics that many Americans can identify with: appearances, definitions of them, and nebulous personalities. This book is no different from the rest of Palahniuk's to me, it unravels some of the hidden verity within ourselves in a whole new way. If people want to remain ignorant, I can see why they would attack this book.
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