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Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Fair warning: this is a dark, disturbing, and horrendously gruesome book. If you have a weak stomach, have difficulty with the idea of self inflicted violence in every conceivable form and fashion, or can’t imagine a world where death is not the worst thing that can happen then this is not a book for you. Otherwise, Chuck will not disappoint.

Haunted is written in a somewhat unusual, at least to me, style. There is an over arching story that frames a collection of short stories, each of which is preceded by a short about one of the characters. The short stories are meant act as a window into the past of each character in the framing story. For me, this style was a bit of a problem. The contextual switches between the short stories kept distracting me. That coupled with the text’s graphic content forced me to read the book much more slowly and in much smaller chunks than I would have liked.

My introduction to Haunted was an article on Chuck Palahniuk’s site, The Cult, titled The Guts Effect. Guts is the first of the short stories after the opening scenes of the framing story. It does a good job of setting the tone for the rest of the book and is by no means the worst of what lay within. I don’t know if I can convey to you how horrific this text is without giving too much away.

I’ll say it again, fair warning. This is not a book to read if you’re having even the slightest hint of stomach troubles.

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~ by Chris on .