Rating: Summary: It's worth reading Review: Lullaby is another weird tale from the nihilistic genius of Chuck Palahniuk (what is the origin of that last name?). He explores just about every facet of religious and philosophical conversation. Actually, this book borders on magical realism. The story is has a typical Palahniuk feel to it, with the main character narrating for us. He has makes brutally honest (and witty) remarks throughout the book. The only negative to this is that it is too much like his other books. This book almost felt like I was reading Fight Club again or something. It is worth reading. Just don't expect anything besides entertainment. It isn't going to be placed in the classics section anytime soon. It's pop art. But it sure is funny.
Rating: Summary: Book in search of screenwriter Review: Chuck Palahniuk seems to be uncomfortable as a human. If we were to take some of the sentiments of his characters to be his own, we might well assume he would like to see us all blasted into space on a chunk of rock, or put to death by an African poem, as in Lullaby. This book tells the story of a journalist whose current assignment involves writing a series of "soft news" articles on crib death, only to discover the eerie thread tying all of the deaths together: the bedtime reading af a certain "culling song" from a book of childrens rhymes and stories. Once our journalist and narrator sets out to find the origins of the song, he meets a set of deliberately and inorganically odd characters -- most of whom bear more than a passing resemblance to characters from that other Palahniuk novel, Fight Club.The problem with this book is not the story, even though Palahniuk does seem to enjoy making the same point with slightly varying language multiple times on the same page. Rather it's the writing, which never manages to really conjure up any concrete images of places or things or really flesh out characters the way the author obviously thinks it does. These characters are often just collections of nasty habits or odd bodily traits, and the only feeling any reader might be able to muster about them is indifference. Palahniuk's world is one in which everyone is vaguely menacing, and where no one is to be trusted. This conceit leaves little room for originality, as it's already been done with deft hand by Vonnegut and Camus. However, as bleak a world as it might be, no one ever seems affected. It isn't cool and aloof so much as it is shorthanded and badly in need of a friendly editor or a screenwriter to flesh out the details and make some images happen, rather than these pseudo-gritty glib generalities that pass for settings and character traits. All in all this very short read was worth the effort. I think Palahniuk is obviously going places, and in his defense Survivor, which I am now reading, is shaping up to be quite good. I still know that I will probably forget all about having read this book weeks from now, whereas entire chunks of Cat's Cradle will be burned into my brain forever. Perhaps an unfair comparison, but one which Palahniuk not only invites but may someday rise to.
Rating: Summary: Fabulous start that went off track Review: I have to admit that this book I bought because of the reviews printed on its jacket. I rarely buy books this way. I read the first chapter and was so excited to continue but the story failed to deliver on its promise from the beginning. The whole plot of re-selling haunted houses and having the secretary check out new listings for vibes seemed very original but never went anywhere. At the point where Carl builds miniture doll houses I thought, Good! here's a great opportunity to tie the Helen and Carl characters together mystically - but that never happened. All the creative juices from the beginning wore out and the book became a repetitive rant on our culture, adn the plot became a boring road trip. I was disappointed.
Rating: Summary: WOW!!! REALLY GOOD TIME WASTER!!! Review: i read this book pretty fast, mostly because i wanted it to get over with....basically all of lullaby is so stupid, i pretty much gave up that it would ever pick up at the end(then it kinda started to seem like it was going to pick up at the end,but THEN,...NOOO!!!!...it had to go and be all crappy again) i never cared about the any of the characters at all, because they were all so personality-less and i could never tell who was who because they all seemed like one big piece 'o crap boring sorry excuse for a human, that i just wished they would all say the stupid poem thingie to each other so they would all die(or maybe that necrophilliac guy could just shoot them so they could suffer more){?}
Rating: Summary: A Book for Illiterate Ape-Men Review: Anyone with a shred of rationality can tell that LULLABY is a very, very stupid book. The author's level of literacy corresponds to that of a gorilla. Is LULLABY "anti-intellectualist"? No, it's merely anti-intelligence. It has been said over and over and over and over and over again that media messages infiltrate human consciousness like a plague... Indeed, about 40 years before LULLABY was published, media theorists said this. The problem with all of chuckpalahniuksnovels is that they think that they have "things to say" and no real "stories to tell"---but everything that they say has been said before ad nauseum. All of chuckpalahniuksnovels explain themselves. But what they say is o-so-very trite. LULLABY says: Our minds are murderously colonized by the media... in the same way a book of spells may kill those who listen to them when they are read aloud, paraphrased, thought, or misread (don't ask). LULLABY is fiction for illiterate ape-men.
Rating: Summary: Solid Idea, Ridiculous Plot Review: I admire Palahniuk because he picks ingenious material to write about. This book seems to indicate that Palahniuk had a great IDEA, but lacked the methods through which to develop a good plot. I was completely fascinated at the beginning, but quickly lost interest when the plot became ridiculous and weak. I don't think he spent enough time expounding on this great idea and spent too much time expounding on characters that didn't contribute to the immense capability of the idea.
Rating: Summary: Weird stuff Review: This book was too bizarre for my tastes. It was somewhat entertaining, but seemed thrown together. The plot was difficult to follow in some places, with random stuff interspersed in there. However, it was much better than Glamorama, the worst book I have read this year.
Rating: Summary: 3.5 stars Review: Not up to par. Merely a so-so effort. The quirkiness is there, the speedy-intense prose is not. Chuck overuses the repeated phrases shtick which made his first several novels so memorable. Here, it's just annoying.
Rating: Summary: I love This Book Review: This book was sooo funny. This and Choke are by far my favorite books by this Chuck Palahniuk. If you liked choke you will really like this too.
Rating: Summary: Stick and stones Review: Of the four Palahniuk books I've read, three of them deserved to be re-read (except for Invisible Monsters, I just got bored). There's so much subtlety and irony that you just can't pick up on until your second read. Just little details that you remember a week later and go 'ah! So that was what it's there for.' Lullaby is no exeption. It's more horror than previous works, but still has the old nihilistic social commentary twist that Chuck's famous for. A Culling Song that kills the listener when recited. For a concept that could have been done very, very badly indeed, our author focuses on the social implications of the Culling Song, stating that if it ever existed, 'the deaf shall inherit the earth'. As with all Palahniuk novels, you can tell that prior to writing each one, something pissed him off in a big way. With Invisible Monsters it was beauty models. With Fight Club it was Ikea. With Lullaby, it's beatboxes and stereos and white noise. This makes it seem all the more personal, and the author's voice is all the more evident for it. Lullaby is less obvious in its satirical undertones than Fight Club, much more subtle than Invisible Monsters, and more plot-driven than Choke. It marks a change in direction on Palahniuk's part to horror, but he sticks to what he does best... which is getting angry and writing about the feeling.
|