Snuff

After hating the author's last book, to the point of not being able to finish it, and after thinking that his so-called non-fiction compilation was a huge waste of time, I decided to give Palahniuk one last chance. And I can now report that I will never again read another book by this author.

It's not that Snuff is bad. No, there is and ounce of good material in there somewhere. I think this novel would have made an amazing short story or novella. But as a novel, it doesn't achieve much. It is just under 200 pages long but feels much longer than that.

A porn queen is making a movie, wanting to break the world record by sleeping with 600 different men. The novel is told from the point of view of the waiting men; you have the ex television star who's looking for a different kind of comeback, the old porn king who's doing this as a favor to the queen, and a young man who's positive that Cassie, the Porn Queen, is his mother. You also meet Sheila, the young assistant who tries to make sure that everything goes as scheduled.

And that's that. The story is repetitive (the same things being mentioned time and time again - how many times do we need to hear that this or that guy is eating chips at the food table???) and the characters are paper-thin. From the very first few pages, you know exactly where this story is going. It holds no surprises, nothing to make us want to turn the next page to see what happens. In one word, the whole thing is just blah.

No, I wasn't turned off my the context. As a matter of fact, some of it was interesting. You can see that the author did his research and found some great factoids about the industry. But fun facts aren't enough to save a story. Honestly, I was bored while reading Snuff. With a title and premise like this one, it should have been at least remotely entertaining. But in the end, all I could think was, been there, done that.

Chuck is one of my favorite writers and yet this is not one of my favorite books. This book is not as bad as Rant(utterly horrible), but it does have Chuck's signature style of writing and studious research. Written from the point of view of 3 characters waiting for their turn in a 600 man gangbang with an aging pornstar it is typical Chuck. Funny, thouroughly researched, and well crafted the story is the return of Chuck who wrote Choke and Fight Club. Unfortunately I think he had a hard time coming up with an ending to his book because their are like 3, and each one is more ridicoulous than the previous. The book could have also been longer and more fleshed out, once you really start to get involved it ends, then ends, and with one last gasp ends again. If you are a huge fan of Chuck's it is a good, fast read and I recommend the book. If you are new to Mr. Palahniuk then go for his better books: Survivor, Choke, Lullabye, Fight Club and Invisible Monsters. Avoid Rant, Diary and Haunted.

This book is largely taken, at times word for word from a Kevin Bisch story on the adult film star Houston's record breaking gang bang called 'The Gang's All Here.' Look that up as it's a much better read.

First off, let me say that this book is not bad because of its offensive content. In fact, it was less shocking in content and detail than I expected it would be. However, it was bad. Just plain bad. The characters are flat, unlikeable, and boring (not to mention that the four different narrators all sound the same). The plotline goes nowhere. The ending is infuriatingly illogical, unrealistic, and a twist ending for the sake of a twist ending. I like Palahniuk, but this one was awful.

Well, Chuck P is my fave author but I found this one to be a bit of a let down. It seemed like he was gone from putting stuff out for so long I was really expecting big things. Snuff is worth reading but out of all of his books it wouldn't be in my top choices.