Diary : A Novel

Rating:
Summary: Where do you get inspiration?
Review: "I loved you a lot more when you were dead." This is what a mother tells her daughter in Diary. It is completely in keeping with Mr. Palahniuk's tone which is dark, with occasional flurries of pessimism.

Diary continues in the tradition of Lullaby - novels that are surreal and could be shelved in the "horror" section. An important bit of information to know is that the format of this book is a "coma diary" written by a woman to her husband. It is NOT a book written in the second-person, despite the liberal use of the word "you."

The book starts like all of Mr. Palahniuk's books do, with plenty of interesting trivia. In this case it's about art history, human anatomy, and graphology. I won't go into to the plot of the novel - which is impossible to describe - but it fits into the category of "one sane person in a town full of crazies."

The best part about reading a Palahniuk novel isn't the story, but all the interesting asides and digressions along the way. There are plenty of them here to keep the reader interested. (BTW, look underneath the dust cover).

Rating:
Summary: Not his best work
Review: First off, I consider myself a Chuck Palahniuk fan and have read all of his previous novels. Therefore, I was rather excited to start reading this one. However, once I got into the book a bit that quickly changed. The plot basically centers around an island conspiracy to save a rich-but-soon-to-be-poor island by finding and procuring a tortured artist. The artist will evidently be the savior but these twilight-zone like episodes will be repeated over and over with new reincarnations of this tortured artist character. Sound confusing? Anyway, in his other books I always found Palahniuk's best trait to be his lively and entertaining (if not eccentric) characters. In this book we basically have a vegetable-of-a-man who tried to kill himself, the tortured artist Misty, Misty's daughter Tabbi, and a few other minor island characters. In other words, who cares? These characters are extremely dry and boring. The book itself doesn't contain the bits of Palahniuk wisdom that you'll find sprinkled throughout works like Fight Club and it is a chore to complete. I had a very difficult time motivating myself to plow through it. The book does contain some similarities to other Palahniuk books as far as writing style but it appears his ghost showed up to complete it. I still consider Palahniuk a good and talented writer and hopefully he will rebound to his true form in the future. Let's keep our fingers crossed!

Rating:
Summary: 1st Chuck Book - Very Good
Review: No doubt, much like many people here, I loved Fight Club (the movie) and at some point noticed it was also book (a short one at that). I checked Fight Club out of the library and, for no particular reason, Diary as well. I swear I did not read a darn thing about the book before I started reading, I didn't check out Amazon and I didn't read the inside covers, I just read. I was enthralled and drawn in to a very interesting style of writing and it wasn't till about page 40 or so that I actually figured out what the heck the book was about. This is a good thing. Too often with books and movies there are too many expectations and prior knowledge that doesn't allow the writer (or director) to take you on the journey the way he intended.

Anyway, it was a very good book but not great. If you're already reading a review i'll tell you, the ending was a little disappointing, so allow for it, it is the reason i'm giving 4 instead of 5 stars. I don't know this man's writing so I don't have overly-heightened expecations, but it's a quick, interesting read.

As a side note that has nothing to do with this book: I read and obviously write some of these reviews on Amazon, but I encourage everyone to just pick up a book they know nothing about and just dive in, more often than not you'll be excited and interested by what you did not expect. Amazon is not an alternative to your local library, it is extension to furthering your joy of reading.