Tuesday, May 15, 2012

Survivor by Chuck Palahniuk (CBR-IV #18)

Cannonball Read IV: Book #18/52
Published: 1999
Pages: 289
Genre: Fiction


Chuck Palahniuk books are kind of hard to review. They are the closest thing I can imagine to being inside the mind of a crazy person. They always start out disjointed and then once you start piecing things together, they start to make a little more sense. But still -- mind of a crazy person. Survivor is more of the same formula. 


Basically, you're inside the mind of a crazy guy who used to be in a religious cult where most of the members killed themselves. He survived, but now he's hijacking a plane to commit suicide. Then the story goes backwards and tells us what happened between the cult and the hijacking. From there it's a just a scrambled mess of craziness.

I wanted to like this book. Kind of like I've wanted to like every Palahniuk book I've picked up since Fight Club. But I couldn't have cared less what happened to the guy in this book (I can't even remember his name for the life of me!). For such a short book, it shouldn't have been such a chore to read. It wasn't BAD -- Palahniuk is a very gifted writer -- but I wish he'd find a new schtick, because this one is getting kind of old. And it really pains me to say that.

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