Fight Club, Chuck Palahniuk's controversial and blazingly original debut novel, introduced a fresh and even renegade talent to American fiction, one who has retooled the classic black humour of Terry Southern and Kurt Vonnegut for the lunacy of the millennial age. In his new novel, Choke, he gives readers a vision of life and love and sex and mortality that is both chillingly brilliant and teeth-rattlingly funny. Victor Mancini, a dropout from medical school, has devised a complicated scam to pay for his mother's hospital care: pretend to be choking on a piece of food in a restaurant and the person who 'saves you' will feel responsible for the rest of their lives. Multiply that a couple of hundred times and you generate a healthy flow of cheques, week in, week out. Between fake choking gigs, Victor works at Colonial Dunsboro with a motley group of losers and stoners trapped in 1734, cruises sex addiction groups for action ('You put twenty sexaholics around a table night after night and don't be surprised.')
, and visits his mother, whose anarchic streak made his childhood a mad whirl and whose Alzheimer's disease now hides what may be the startling truth about his, possibly divine, parentage. An antihero for our deranging times, Victor's whole existence is a struggle to wrest an identity from overwhelming forces. His creator, Chuck Palahniuk, is the visionary we need and the satirist we deserve.
Choke is the story of Victor Mancini and his friend Danny, over the course of a few months of their lives. However, there are frequent flashbacks to their childhood. As a med-student dropout, Victor devised an ingenious scam to help make money. He likes to pretend to choke, while dining in fancy restaurants. When he is not pulling off this scam, Victor likes to attend Sexaholics Anonymous meetings, looking for action.
I have read one Chuck Palahniuk novel before, Fight Club and I did not think much of it. I originally thought maybe it was the fact that I have already seen the movie and knew what to expect. I picked up Choke because it was on the 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die list and thought it was a good excuse to try another of Palahniuk’s books. I know for certain that Chuck Palahniuk is not an author for me.
I found that Choke and Fight Club just had too many of the same elements in common. I expected psychological elements, I expected twists and I knew that Palahniuk would try to write something for shock value. Everything was expected and this made the novel feel boring and generic. There was nothing I really enjoyed about Choke at all, and I was looking forward to it ending.
I know there are a lot of Chuck Palahniuk fans out there, and I can see why he would appeal. For me it was the same book as Fight Club, and reading Choke offered nothing new to my reading experience. I am sure people might offer suggestions of other Chuck Palahniuk novels to try that are better, but in all honesty, I think I am done. I have so much to read, I do not have time to give this author another chance. Having said that, who knows what the future will bring, I might find myself reading my Palahniuk, but I will not be in any hurry to pick one up.
This review originally appeared on my blog; http://www.knowledgelost.org/book-reviews/genre/contemporary/choke-by-chuck-palahniuk/
Reading updates
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8 September, 2015:
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8 September, 2015:
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