“All of his books, have required various degrees of intestinal fortitude. Some critics note that he’s turned the corner with Haunted, a book that has “plenty of guts, but little glory”.”

 

NO MAJOR SPOILERS

This is the sickest, most disgusting book I have ever read but I truly liked it.

A bunch of people, seventeen if I am not mistaken, are boarding a bus one after the other expecting to go on a writer’s secret retreat on an isolated island, only to find out that they are trapped inside a theater (?).

This is a novel of stories and poems.Its an interesting format,where a character can at any given time recite his poem and his story as if on a stage.

Chuck Palahniuk does an excellent job at describing humans and their perverted attachments to pain AND the past.As the book progresses you get a good taste of what people are capable of doing to ensure they’ll receive sympathy, money,fame and how easy plus pleasurable it is to victimize yourself.Pain is just the means to an ending.

Another interesting topic in this book is how people are always looking for someone else to blame for their pains and miseries, most of the characters in the book ended up there because they were trying to get away from something or they did something bad, running away from the ghosts, but for them someone else must be the evil one, the one to blame.People don’t want responsibilities, they want to be the victims, to be secretely pitied and given perpetual forgiveness.

All in all I liked the novel,it was my first Chuck Palahniuk book.

 

Reviewed by:

Jo Zark

Added 29th August 2015