Tuesday, January 20, 2009

'Snuff' Review

A little awhile ago, Jared/Murtaza introduced me to Goodreads, a site all about books. Being an avid reader, I have come to really enjoy this site, and am starting to log my impressions of every book I read right after it's end. Here's a quick review I wrote on Chuck Palahniuk's 'Snuff':


Snuff Snuff by Chuck Palahniuk

My review

rating: 2 of 5 stars
So far, it's my least favorite Palahniuk book. But really, that's not to say that it's a complete waste of time. A waste of the hefty $24.99 cover price? Well, that's another story.

First off, the good: Palahniuk does many of the things he does well in this book. He does a great job with expository dialogue, mainly because his style isn't really dialogue at all. As in previous books, we learn about our protagonist(s) through anecdotal soliloquies to the reader: sermon-like rants that keep us reading his literature. They're well-described, straightforward, and engaging. That's all here.

The bizarre, hard to believe myths, legends, and little-known facts presented in nearly every Palahniuk book are all here. He doesn't get enough credit for the research that it takes to yield this information.

Porn titles like "Twat on a Hot Tin Roof" make the book worth at least borrowing.

Also is the crazy premise any Palahniuk book is almost guaranteed - the idea of a porn star sleeping with 600 men is provocative by itself, but the possibility of one of those 600 being her long-lost son takes us into Palahniuk territory.

The bad: It doesn't really seem to get past the premise. I would call the end anticlimactic, but looking back, it doesn't really even build suspense. The relatively short book (just under 200 pages, which took me somewhere around 5 hours to read), doesn't take the reader anywhere but a seemingly inevitable snafu. At the end of the book, I found myself asking why I care? The characters aren't very remarkable. Neither are their revelations.

It's just a remarkable premise carrying the book, which is, unfortunately, not enough to reach the high standard faithful readers have set for the subversive mind behind "Fight Club" and "Choke."

View all my reviews.

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