Some say that the apocalypse swiftly approacheth, but that simply ain't so according to Chuck Palahniuk. Oh no. It's already here, living in the head of the guy who just crossed the street in front of you, or maybe even closer than that. We saw these possibilities get played out in the author's bloodsporting-anarchist-yuppie shocker of a first novel, Fight Club. Now, in Survivor, his second and newest, the concern is more for the origin of the malaise. Starting at chapter 47 and screaming toward ground zero, Palahniuk hurls the reader back to the beginning in a breathless search for where it all went wrong. This time out, the author's protagonist is self-made, self-ruined mogul-messiah Tender Branson, the sole passenger of a jet moments away from slamming first into the Australian outback and then into oblivion. All that will be left, Branson assures us with a tone bordering on relief, is his life story, from its Amish-on-acid cult beginnings to its televangelist-huckster end. All of this courtesy of the plane's flight recorder.
Speaking of little black boxes, Skinnerians would have a field day with the presenting behavior of the folks who make up Palahniuk's world. They pretend they're suicide hotline operators for fun. They eat lobster before it's quite... done. They dance in morgues. The Cleavers they are not. Scary as they might be, these characters are ultimately more scared of themselves than you are, and that's what makes them so fascinating. In the wee hours and on lonely highways, they exist in a perpetual twilight, caught between the horror of the present and the dread of the unknown. With only two novels under his belt, Chuck Palahniuk is well on his way to becoming an expert at shining a light on these shadowy creatures.

On its way today to gategypsy for the birthday exchange. Enjoy!

YaY for Chuck Palahniuk! Hurrah for VeganMedusa!
Huzzah!

Looking forward to this one, too!

I received this as my Ballyswapper book from GateGypsy! Thanks!

Palahniuk's books are starting to run together for me. What seemed like a wonderful, fresh new voice in Fight Club and still entertained me through Lullaby and Choke and even Rant seemed formulaic in this book. Even so, I was entertained and breezed through the book in about a week.

The book starts at the end--the page numbers actually decrease as you read the book. The book traces the story, as dictated into the flight recorder on a plane destined to crash into the Australian outback, of Tender Branson, the last surviving member of a religious cult. The Creedish religion included a mass suicide and a premise that all members who weren't at the mass suicide should immediately kill themselves when they learned that the Deliverance had come. The satire of religion and celebrity figures was right on point, but in this book, or maybe in my mood right now, it just felt mean instead of darkly comic.

But I think I liked this one better than Lullaby and Choke, so I'd recommend it to fans of Palahniuk who have already read Fight Club and want to read more.

This is now going in the mail as part of the Birthday RABCK Experiment.

Thank you! The only book I have read by Palahniuk is "Diary" which I was mixed on. This one sounds fun.