DIARY, by Chuck Palahniuk
I just finished listening to the audio version of Diary by Chuck Palahniuk. When I read the back cover blurb, I thought it seemed like such an intriguing idea for a book. “Diary takes the form of a ‘coma diary’ kept by one Misty Tracy Wilmot as her husband lies senseless in a hospital after a suicide attempt.” The husband, while remodeling the vacation homes of rich people, had begun “hiding” rooms in the houses he worked on, closing off linen closets and bedrooms and even a kitchen. Early on in the book, there are answering machine messages left by the rich people that go something like, “I know I don’t spend much time in this house, but I could’ve sworn it had a kitchen.” Ha!
Anyway, inside these closed-off rooms, the husband left bizarre messages written all over the walls, and Misty tries to find out why he wrote what he did. Then Misty, a former art student, suddenly begins painting again-compulsively painting.
I loved the surreal feel I had the entire time I was listening to this book (read by one of the best readers I’ve encountered so far, Martha Plimpton). He does dark humor well. There were times when the repeated phrases annoyed me (the third-person to second-person references to Peter, the facial muscle descriptions, the weather forecasts, the “for the records”), but most of the time, I liked how it sort of pulled me back to home base. The drinking game reference went on a bit too long, but when it was brought back in a single line chapters later, it was very effective.
All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed this book. The ending went on a few paragraphs longer than it should have. I don’t like endings that leave the reader totally hanging, but neither do I like them to be over-wrapped, as this one sort of was.
The author of this book also wrote Fight Club, Choke, and Lullaby, none of which I’ve read, but I’m curious enough about this author’s style to want to read more.
December 6th, 2006 at 4:14 pm
Diary isn’t Chuck’s best. In fact, it and Lullaby are my two least favorite of his. However, if you do read more, be warned: he has a very dark, twisted sense of humor (which I happen to love) and every book has some sort of “gimmick” like the “for the record” thing.
He also wrote “Haunted,” which has another intriguing premise: “a novel made up of 23 stories told by people who have answered an ad for a writer’s retreat and unwittingly joined a “Survivor”-like scenario where the host withholds heat, power and food. As the storytellers grow more desperate, their tales become more extreme, and they ruthlessly plot to make themselves the hero of the reality show that will surely be made from their plight.” (From Amazon)