Lullaby

Rating:
Summary: it is still Chuck Palahniuk, but its not his best
Review: It's an excellent book, but

It's not as
hilarious as Choke
big as Survivor
outrageous as Invisible Monsters
or fun as Fight Club

With that said, it is still excellent and its still Chuck Palahniuk
It's like getting into the newer model of BMW. Maybe the new model doesn't offer anything new and groundbreaking to the automotive industry, but it's still a BMW ;)

While you read it, you might get to the point where you feel this is not as good as....... but right then he pulls the rabbit out of the hat and you realize he still got it.

Final Verdict: the book is not a step up or ground breaking stuff, but it's not a step down. The book is still very entertaining and appealing to Chuck Palahniuk's fans

Rating:
Summary: Palahniuk hits paydirt again!
Review: Lullaby is another great novel from Chuck Palahniuk, one of my favorite authors. His previous novels are Fight Club, Invisible Monsters, Survivor, and Choke - all great twisted tales. This novel is probably his most mature work I've read, offering a sort of updated twist of Orwell's 1984.

In Lullaby, a journalist begins investigating a rash of SIDS (sudden infant death syndrome) deaths. When a rare book of poems is found at each location, the journalist discovers that one of the poems contains a spell that kills whoever hears it read aloud. One thing leads to another and the journalist finds himself on a cross-country road trip with a couple of witches and a hippie who are hunting down the remaining copies of the book. Turns out it is a rare collection and only 500 copies were ever printed. When the book hunters learn the poem and use it to kill of anyone that gets in the way of their mission, the group starts to turn on each other, all the while trying to keep their secret from getting out.

On the surface, Lullaby is a great science fiction thriller about a new kind of epidemic. There was actually a Radiohead video much like this story, where a man lay in the middle of the street, afraid to speak. When a crowd gathered and finally forced him to speak, they all dropped dead. The video never revealed what the man said, and this book never reveals the actual poem.

However, Lullaby is really a satire on censorship. What if something like this actually existed? How would it be stopped? Palahniuk mentions that the government would have to step in and ban all music, movies, books, televison, magazines, and so on. Something like this would effectively end all forms of mass communication that were not regulated by the government. Sounds like Big Brother, right?

The author makes one very valid point about people in that so many of us can't stand silence. What we might consider quiet is really noise. Some people always have to have a television or radio turned on, providing some sort of constant distraction. It's like we're pickling our imaginations with entertainment.

Lullaby is not quite as bizarre as Palahniuk's previous work, and it certainly isn't as sexually charged, either. He writes with a break-neck pace, using lots of short, stand-alone sentences to imply blunt descriptions of people, places, and situations. If you are a fan of his previous work, you must check this one out. Fans of George Orwell's 1984 should definitely consider reading this. In addition to Palahniuk, another recent short novel I read and loved is The Losers Club by Richard Perez -- one hell of a book! I picked up a used copy off Amazon by chance, and it really made an impression on me.


Rating:
Summary: Wonderful read, but the underlying message comes out garbled
Review: Lullaby is one of the best books I've read in a while. Does it have a deep, important point to make that I should ponder for a very, very long time? In a word, yes. At the end of the day, though, it doesn't matter all that much whether you "get it" or not. It's insanely well written (emphasis on insane), and while the plot is typical convoluted Palahniuk it never leaves you behind. While things that happen in Lullaby might seem somewhat random, there's always a method to the madness. I took a star off because of that deep, important point--it's very vague. Fight Club had a real message, Survivor had a real message, and Invisible Monsters had a real message. Lullaby's thesis, for one reason or another, eldues the reader. The basic ideas are there, but they're never really pulled together. There are compelling questions raised about power and humanity--but that's all they are. Even if the message escapes the reader, it's still a four-star book. Read it if you love black humor and unique plots.

Rating:
Summary: Better than Invisible Monsters, not as good as Fight Club
Review: This is a good, solid Palahniuk novel. Oddly enough, this foray into the realm of magic is more believable than the incredible string of coincidences in another novel by the same author, Invisible Monsters. Basically, it answers the question, "What would you do if you had the power of a god?" The answer, as anyone who has read Palahniuk will know, is not pretty. It doesn't quite measure up to the mind-blowing Fight Club, but then not much does.

Rating:
Summary: More style than substance
Review: This was my first Chuck Palahniuk book and will probably be my last. His messages are very blunt because he is using un-likable and under-developed characters venting their opinions to tell the reader what the book is about. The story line is too contrived to be believable. It is very repetitive and you get the impression he is struggling to get a novel out of such thin material and is just trying to fill it out as much as possible. I also find all the mantra such as `the more you kill the more things stay the same' rather annoying. It all seems to be style over substance - I can appreciate that some people would like his style but it just doesn't seem to go past that, and I can't help but feel that the style is down to what Palahniuk lacks as a writer than anything else.


Rating:
Summary: observer of the absurd
Review: What first fascinated me was the "culling song" plot element. Really the only part of the synopsis you need to know is "The consequences of media saturation are the basis for an urban nightmare in Lullaby. Assigned to write a series of feature articles investigating SIDS, troubled newspaper reporter Carl Streator begins to notice a pattern among the cases he encounters..."

You don't need to read more as it will give away some plot points that are nice to discover rather than having them exposed on the dust jacket.

The culling spell leads to even more old world spells which when used in modern day have some interesting applications... so of course I suggest it because it has magic and as one review put it "it's chock full of eco-hippie rhetoric and nihilistic tendencies".

But I also found some beautiful paragraphs about color - yes it was the artist in me that drooled over these - and moments of startling profundity that awaken the reader to the absurdity of modern culture and make you wonder whose world is crazier - his or ours. This is a modern day Film Noir pulp detective story - complete with haggard-life-weary detective. It's got a lot of dark and dry humor and is a little gritty.

Half way through it get even more surreal and though I finished it I thought there were two books under one binding... I was not as enthralled with the second half. In Fight Club I identified with Marla (yeah say what you will) in this one I'm just an observer of the absurd.

Give it a peek and see what you think. But if you did not like or see moments of profundity of the counter culture statements in Fight Club you won't like this.