Fight Club
Chuck Palahniuk
What can I say? With exams looming on the horizon I've become a book-reading machine, and all for pleasure. This morning, I decided to take a bite out of this book and I ended up finishing the whole thing. The book moves very nicely, and though I'm not sure how much my having seen the movie affected my reading of the book, I found the book an enjoyable, if scattered and disorienting, ride.
The prose is clear and is remarkably easy to follow considering its semi-experimental nature. The thing is, though, with the narrator himself faced with a losing situation and going slightly crazy himself, the reader is right along for the ride, confused as he is. Again, I can't speak for someone reading the book without having seen the movie, but I expect that the confusion would only help move the reader along with the events in the book, rather than standing in the way.
The plot itself is strangely funny, though gruesome and gritty. Though Tyler Durden is a preacher, Palahniuk manages to make him seem amazingly authentic and never preachy. The reader knows what Palahniuk is trying to say, but he never stoops to the level of merely repeating his own rhetoric through the words of his characters. That is what I may have enjoyed most about this book; it is simple and while exposing readers to a jumbled ideology of anarchy it remains accessible and gritty. Palahniuk never seems obsessed with how great a writer he is. Fight Club speaks for itself unabashedly, and I appreciate that.
This book is a great escape and a great alternative look at what anarchy could do in our lives. It is also one of the first I've read in a long time where the last chapter was perfect, fitting right in with the story and making me laugh out loud at its brilliance and subtle hilarity. Good show.
Grade: A
Chuck Palahniuk
What can I say? With exams looming on the horizon I've become a book-reading machine, and all for pleasure. This morning, I decided to take a bite out of this book and I ended up finishing the whole thing. The book moves very nicely, and though I'm not sure how much my having seen the movie affected my reading of the book, I found the book an enjoyable, if scattered and disorienting, ride.
The prose is clear and is remarkably easy to follow considering its semi-experimental nature. The thing is, though, with the narrator himself faced with a losing situation and going slightly crazy himself, the reader is right along for the ride, confused as he is. Again, I can't speak for someone reading the book without having seen the movie, but I expect that the confusion would only help move the reader along with the events in the book, rather than standing in the way.
The plot itself is strangely funny, though gruesome and gritty. Though Tyler Durden is a preacher, Palahniuk manages to make him seem amazingly authentic and never preachy. The reader knows what Palahniuk is trying to say, but he never stoops to the level of merely repeating his own rhetoric through the words of his characters. That is what I may have enjoyed most about this book; it is simple and while exposing readers to a jumbled ideology of anarchy it remains accessible and gritty. Palahniuk never seems obsessed with how great a writer he is. Fight Club speaks for itself unabashedly, and I appreciate that.
This book is a great escape and a great alternative look at what anarchy could do in our lives. It is also one of the first I've read in a long time where the last chapter was perfect, fitting right in with the story and making me laugh out loud at its brilliance and subtle hilarity. Good show.
Grade: A
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