Chuck Palahniuk's "Fight Club" (The Fight Club - Chuck Palahniuk)

Member Name: jbsabbath

Product:	The Fight Club - Chuck Palahniuk
Date:	18/08/08 (71 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Fantastic piece of writing, dark and very enjoyable

Disadvantages: You'll probably never trust a waiter again

I had a friend who kept going on about Chuck Palahniuk.

He was the best writer there ever was, a god, a true genius.

Without his constant "Read this! Read this!", I might never have given it a second thought, and then also I might never have read "American Psycho", another novel he kept going on about and kissed the shelves it sat on.

I read Bret Easton Ellis' "American Pyscho" a while back and it was truly fantastic.

The writing was superb, it was truly disturbing, and I loved every minute of it.

So I thought, maybe this guy was on to something with his constant praise of Palahniuk's work, so I picked up a few of his novels, including "Fight Club", "Choke" and "Diary", and put them on my reading list.

Now I saw the film version ages ago, only watched it once and had forgotten everything about it, all except for the plot twist at the end of course, which I knew would kind of ruin the novel for me.

Nevertheless, I picked up the book with a fresh mind, spotted Ellis' quote of praise on the front, and knew that I was in for something that was sure to be good.

While I half-expected something far nastier than "American Psycho", it never came to that and felt almost mild in comparison.

The novel is written in a first person stream of consciousness, cleverly pieced together by Palahniuk into a style that feels like it shouldn't work, but it does.

For example, each chapter contains two or three different things he wants to consider, and instead of tackling them one after the other in a (perhaps) logical order, they are all thrown together as ideas pop up, fade away, and pop up again.

He repeats a lot as well, to the point where the rules of Fight Club are pretty much ingrained on your forehead.

The story begins when our nameless hero meets Tyler Durden on a beach and they later move in together.

Tyler is a movie projectionist, a waiter, and is also full of handy information about making soap from human fat and designing homemade explosives.

Together they design Fight Club, a chance for a group of people to meet up and bare-knuckle box each other's brains out.

Why?

To feel something different in their ordinary boring lives, to feel big, important, part of something, and ultimately to be recruited into the ranks of Project Mayhem, a terrorist organisation to spread anti-consumerism and random violence.

Soon enough, Fight Club and Project Mayhem are too big to be controlled, too popular, and they are destroying the protagonist's life, and he sets out to bring them down.

Part of the enjoyment of reading this book is definitely its unusual plot, but it relies heavily on Palahniuk's original writing style, which pretty much assaults the reader with its dark, gritty descriptions and disturbing ideas.

However, this was an easy read and very enjoyable, even though it was very dark, and one day I may take him up on his bomb-making cookery courses.

Just for curiosity-sake of course.

Summary: A book you won't put down easily, excellent