WARNING! I'm going to
compare this book to his other work. I know everyone hates that, that's why I put a warning up here.
Highly underrated book by
Chuck Palahniuk. I very much enjoyed
Fight Club, and I personally thought the
movie was every bit as good as the book. I even liked the
slight modifications near the end. Many people say this is his
weakest novel, but I think I could almost say it's his strongest. It's not quite as entertaining and captivating as
Fight Club (Many will disagree with me on this next part), but I thought it was far better than the
mediocore, interesting but
ultimately unsatisfying Survivor. I thought that book was interesting, but it almost felt like a
chore to read through it - that's
another node, though.
Invisible Monsters is, simply put,
rad. The characters are outstanding - yes, the
protagonist and
Brandy Alexander have
Jack the narrator /
Tyler Durden similarities, but it's not so bad (at times I felt
Fertility in Survivor was
disturbingly derivative of
Marla in
Fight Club.) The characters in this book, as "out-there" as they may be, are very quirky and fascinating. You end up liking all of them a bit, something that
Palahniuk's other books didn't seem to achieve as well. The story is very
oddly structured, but it's actually surprisingly well put together and is finally tied together skillfully.
Another thing this book is, is
funny. Like
Fight Club, some of its jabs are very clever and will
incite a snicker or two, but it also has a quality that's different from
Fight Club and especially
Survivor: it's not quite so cynical. With
Fight Club, cynicism was used carefully and to good effect; with
Survivior it often felt heavy-handed and overwhelming - not very funny. This book will make you laugh. It is often
very dark humor, but it still comes across as happier and more enjoyable a lot of the time. Also, as stated above, there are some excellent
one-liners. I think this book definitely has some of Palahinuk's best.
To close, this is
a great read and
highly recommended. Similar yet beautifully different from the breakthrouh Fight Club, and far superior to the lacking Survivor,
Invisible Monsters is a super book by a very interesting author.
A final note: I did not know that this book predates Fight Club, that's something I find very interesting . . .