Rating: 
Summary: This Novel Deserves Acclaim
Review: Chuck Palahniuk's debut novel, Fight Club, has acquired a following, and rightfully so, become a cult classic. It's filled to the brim with brilliant wordplay, insightful narration, and satirical anti-mainstream consumerism concepts. The style of the novel is splendidly unconventional. Everything from haikus and homemade explosive recipes to anatomy perspectives are present in this no holds barred literary work of art. I'm a very happy camper if Chuck really is the future of in your face Gen-X fiction.
Tyler gets me a job as a waiter, after that Tyler's pushing a gun in my mouth and saying, the first step to eternal life is you have to die. For a long time though, Tyler and I were best friends.
So begins our tale set atop the Parker-Morris Building with ten minutes before it's blown to hell. Palahniuk's trademark is opening all of his stories (Fight Club, Survivor, Invisible Monsters) near the end, where the carnage has already really gotten out of hand, where people are about to die. Our Narrator is screwed, and with three minutes remaining before he might die, he tells us how he got in this mess in the first place, he tells us "I remember everything."
Welcome to the world of our hero. He's an insomniac working for a corrupt car company, traveling to wherever his boss doesn't want to go for meetings.
Our paladin is a corporate lap dog, jaded, disillusioned with his life. He's depressed, suicidal, an IKEA addict. On flights, he contemplates his own death by plane crash. Everything has become a routine to him.
I set my watch two hours earlier or three hours later, Pacific, Mountain, Central, or Eastern time; lose an hour gain an hour.
This is your life, and it's ending one minute at a time.
Our Narrator is in dire need of a way to change his life, something to make him feel alive again, and sadly, Angela Hayes is already taken.
So to cure his insomnia, our main man goes to different types of cancer, disease, and terminal illness support groups. And although he's in perfect health, he's been going to these meetings for two years and hasn't been caught doing so because "Anyone who might've noticed me in two years has either died or recovered and never came back." He tells us "...why I love support groups so much, if people thought you were dying, they gave you their full attention." It is at these meetings that our Narrator meets Marla Singer, another Faker, the Narrator's antagonist/love interest. The support group meetings though, they're nothing more than a quick fix.
Enter Tyler Durden. A night job worker who our protagonist meets on a nude beach: part-time movie projectionist, part-time banquet waiter. After our Narrator's home and all his possessions within are destroyed by a bomb, a phone call is made. A changing of the guard occurs.
The phone rang in Tyler's rented house on Paper Street.
Oh, Tyler, please deliver me.
And the phone rang...
Oh, Tyler, please rescue me.
And the phone rang...
Deliver me from Swedish furniture.
Deliver me from clever art.
And the phone rang and Tyler answered...
May I never be complete.
May I never be content.
May I never be perfect.
Deliver me, Tyler, from being perfect and complete.
Tyler and I agree to meet at a bar.
That night, Fight Club is created. It's an escape for those with boring, everyday jobs, a place where yuppies can take their aggressions out on each other by beating the living hell out of each other. It's a boys-only club with eight sacrosanct rules. Soon however, Tyler takes Fight Club up a notch with Project Mayhem, a fascist group rebels against society by way of antics that get more and more extreme, right up until the novel's anti-climactic conclusion. The novel's brooding Catcher in the Rye-type ending is much more thought provoking than the film's impressively cinematic pyrotechnics blowout.
Trust me when I tell you to read this enthralling masterwork. Chuck Palahniuk makes the apocalypse of Western Civilization sound so damn cool even I'm anticipating it. Make sure to pick up a copy of this great book. Another underground, lesser-known classic I want to recommend is The Losers Club by Richard Perez.
Rating:
Summary: Great satire on society! Chuck Rules.
Review: Chuck was asked how to impress an editor or publisher or agent and he replied something to the effect of: make your novel grand and different, something totally off from anything else they'll see---surprise them---or that's the way I remember it. Chuck is a taste, like preferring a merlot to a cheap beer, or the seat next to the window on a plane over the safe one on the aisle. Chuck's for the few, the proud and the crazy brave---that want to read a fine tale from someone unafraid to drop a strawberry on the open blade of a knife and watch it slide in two pieces onto a white-silk table cloth.
Rating:
Summary: WICKED
Review: Fight Club is an awesome, awesome book. It is really better than the movie in a lot of ways (although the movie is utterly fantastic). The writing is absolute genius - all those great narrative lines from the movie are straight out of Palahniuk's writing. The story is essentially the same, but there are some slight differences. I think the character of Marla is a little more exaggerated in the movie.The grasp of philosophical ideas displayed in the novel is great, as is the story's message. The message is great, although it is complex. Basically it's that the search for individuality at any cost can lead to dangerous fascism and conformity. The people in the story want to know how far they can take this and still be alive. They are tired of the plastic commercial world around them. Tyler Durden shows them a better way, and makes them a part of something. So they are eager to serve, like "space monkeys." Fight Club is a dark and witty satire as well. If you saw the movie first (like I did, unfortunately), then some of the great satirical quality of the writing may not be very surprising. The movie sticks close to the book. But it is still a book you should definitely read, whether you saw the movie or not.
Rating:
Summary: Soap suds and more
Review: Fight Club was the first Chuck Palahniuk novel I read, and I have since become a die-hard fan of his works. I first saw the movie with my friend and fell in love with the story. She was the one who first recommended reading the novel, because according to her, the movie leaves out too many things, and you need to read the book to get the full impact of the story. She couldn't have been more right. I purchased the book and read non-stop for two days, then watched the movie again. It's truly captivating. The best thing, however, is not the story itself but the way in which Palahniuk presents the story. His writing style is one that is brilliant and unique. The characters he creates are intense, and you manage to find parts of yourself that relate the each of them, parts of yourself and your mind that you didn't even know existed. This book is amazing, as are all of Chuck Palahniuk's novels. Would also recommend the following books: Children's Corner by McCrae, Survivor, Plot Against America, and Bark of the Dogwood.
Rating: 
Summary: Brilliant!! But Chuck left some meat on the bone
Review: Have you ever felt like nothing you have ever done makes any real sense? In analyzing the motivation and accomplishments as a young adult, sometimes it seems like my purpose was lost right after I was playing kickball in the cul-de-sac with the other neighborhood kids. Chuck nails this feeling brilliantly, addressing 18-30 year olds, who "don't have a Great War in our generation, or a Great Depression," at least in the traditional sense. Tyler Durden, the great leader of the novel, has you screaming for release from the complicated and empty paradigm in which we live. He seduces you into being on of his followers, one of his "space monkeys."
This novel is important. Generation X was the group who needed to read it most. They did, and they fell in love with it, but Generation X was the group who understood it the least. After the movie came out (because lets be realistic, Gen X doesn't read!) there were little fight clubs breaking out all over the states. City ordinances tried to ban them, but how can the fuzz break up a fight when both parties want to be fighting? Difficult, huh? I once met an 18-year old who had a scar on his hand. The scar was in the shape of lips, and the scar was made from lye. Tyler Durden told his masochist followers that it would free them from their meaningless society-the searing pain from a chemical lye burn. Do you think he was freed?
Palahniuk wrote to show all of us how to avoid being "space monkeys," how to think for ourselves. Tyler Durden's passion is unequaled. It doesn't matter what he is passionate about, just that he is passionate. We are always in search of a leader, and we will rally behind a passionate mane like Tyler Durden. Think of the Fuehrer, this is about him. Hitler was irrationally passionate-and his arguments made just little bit of sense. But it was not his Socratic logos that made him powerful, it was his pathos.
Fight Club brilliantly bewitches the reader to be a lover of Tyler Durden and his ideals. Even though Tyler explains his plan, "We have to show these men and women freedom by enslaving them, and show them courage by frightening them. Napoleon bragged that he could train men to sacrifice their lives for a scrap of ribbon." If you don't believe me that you will be convinced by this "free-thinker," just read the book and see.
Palahniuk leaves a little meat still on the bone. That is why I rated this book with 4-stars. His main characters could be more intimately developed. This character development, along with filling in some of the holes in the plots, would make Fight Club one of the greatest novels ever written.
Rating:
Summary: A truly inventive novel and a good read
Review: How many times do you read a novel and just know what it coming next? Too many stories seem to be re-worked versions of things we've read before; after all, how many truly new things are there under the sun? Palahniuk, however, has created something new and it is both interesting and fun to read.
"Fight Club" follows a disengaged young professional whose life is sliding meaninglessly by until he meets a man about his age who is his polar opposite, capturing each moment of life. The two strike up a friendship and a club that pits other disengaged young men in fights against one another. They strike a chord and events spiral. To an unpredictable conclusion.
Read this one.
Rating:
Summary: Very thought provoking
Review: I don't know about you, but I'm sick of watching movies and forgetting what happened in them before I even leave the theater. However, after watching Fight Club, I could not get it out of my head. I went to watch Bringing out the Dead that same day and couldn't even concentrate on what Nicholas Cage was doing, because Fight Club kept playing itself over and over again in my head. The next day I went out and bought Fight Club, Invisible Monsters, and ordered Survivor. I figured that if the book was half as good as the movie I would be satisfied. I read Fight Club every spare moment I had and finished it in two days. Let me tell you, this book is awesome! The movie keeps the intent of the book, but the book takes the storyline to a whole other level. No one but Palahniuk can mix together so many different story lines and odd images into a working novel. His imagery and style are breathtaking and if you're anything after me, as soon as you're done reading it, you'll want to read it again.
Rating:
Summary: Good book but not quite as well as the movie.
Review: I hate to say that I liked the movie better than the book but I did. But before you decide that this is a horrible review, let me finish. The book is is narrated by a guy we don't know, what we do know is that he's an insomniac and that he goes to support groups to help him sleep. Then he meets Tyler Durden and the two start Fight Club. An underground boxing club, but this eventually escalates in Project Mayhem. Project Mayhem features members of Fight Club going out and commiting acts of vandalism before they reach their goal. Anyway, why did I like the movie more? The movie was more visual (which is kind of obvious) and the story kind of went along a little better. Plus,
in the movie, Tyler Durden was considered (more or less) the main character. In the book however he really isn't. Some of the events that took place in the movie like the part where they steal fat from a lipo-suction clinic, featured the narrator and Tyler. In the book its the narrator and some other guy. And also, in the book. The narrators relationship with Marla Singer is a little bit deeper,rather than the I-Hate-You
relationship they had in the movie.B+.
Rating:
Summary: Tooth and nail
Review: I like anything off the beaten path (think McCrae's THE CHILDREN'S CORNER or possibly Boyle's WATER MUSIC). So it was only natural that I'd be attracted to FIGHT CLUB. What I really like about this book is how easy to read it is. The story moves along more quickly than all of Palahniuk's other novels, which I suppose helped in its translation to the screen. There is less build up and a simple plot. This is one of those books that every once in a while I pick back up and read again, just because it is fun and easy. The major messages about society and work and modern life are slap-you-in-the-face obvious, but that fact doesn't take away from their validity or from the more subtle points about friendship and relationships.
Rating:
Summary: Anarchy, Nihilism...A Tour de Force
Review: I'm one of that group of people who, prior to seeing the movie, had never heard of either Chuck Palahnuik or "Fight Club". However, after seeing the movie and being totally mesmerised by the whole concept, the book became a must read. Chuck Palahnuik has created a very unusual novel. Written in the first person but at times offering confusion as to who is the narrator of the tale, the book is a roller coaster of emotions. Who is Tyler Durden? Against what is he rebelling? What on earth will be the outcome? In many respects, "Fight Club" is a whole new genre. It is chaotic. It is anarchic. In fact, the whole tale is more. It is truly nihilistic. Tyler Durden inhabits a bizarre underworld where the rules are just so different from every where else. Fight club's first rule is that no one talks about fight club. Its second rule is that no one talks about fight club. Yet fight club keeps growing before evolving into acts of criminal intent where lives become of little value and social norms are rejected. When reading this book, do not expect a macho punch up novel. It is far more. It is a trip through another world. It is a tour de force.
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