Book 139: "Lullaby" by Chuck Palahniuk
Author: Chuck Palahniuk
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Read In: Trade Paperback
Genre: Literary Fiction
I finished this book just under a week ago, and I really still am not sure what to say. I really enjoyed it, as I do the majority of Palahniuk's novels. The concept (as they usually are) is very intriguing. The story is based around two main characters; each has discovered that there is a culling song in a popular children's book that actully works. A culling song is a song, primarily in African cultures, that is sung to herds and animals when they are in need of population control. Basically, it's meant to kill, painlessly and without a mark, mass numbers. This book is wonderful to pick apart. It addresses:
-materialism
-the meat industry
-reality
-human nature when given the power to kill without consequence
-grief
-power structures
-religion, especially pagan
-And probably other things I missed.
Palahniuk is a master at addressing or touching upon many issues in a short time span; the book is only 272 pages. So if you like to pick things apart, but don't want the commitment of a long novel; he's the perfect author.
What I love about Palahniuk's novels are that he takes very strange and surreal realities and makes them real without the reader even noticing. He makes you think outside the confines of your reality and forces you into the perspective of someone completely different than you, without you realizing what happened. This book is macabre. It is a challenge. It is meant to be picked apart. If that's what you're looking for, I definitely recommend it. If you have read Palahniuk before, well, you already know what you're getting into. He truly has created his own style, no book like the one before it, but you can tell that you're reading a Palahniuk novel. As always, I look forward to exploring more of his work (It's quite the list, see below).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuck_Palahniuk#Bibliography
Comments
Post a Comment