8/11/2023 0 Comments Invisible monsters a novel![]() ![]() The entire cast of main characters - Shannon, Brandy, Evie, Ellis, Seth, Manus and Shannon’s (apparently) late brother Shane - are all weird. Palahniuk loves to use names like that, and in his fiction, they work. When she suffers a family tragedy, she seems lost and even doomed until she meets another of the small group of main characters, namely Brandy Alexander. The main character, Shannon McFarland, is a successful fashion model, and it is this world in particular that the author satirizes most effectively. ![]() Palahniuk is a supremely talented satirist and a very funny writer. To enjoy this novel, you have to have a high tolerance for low language, but your patience - if that is the right word - will be rewarded, for Mr. There is nothing in the way of subject matter or language that the author considers beyond the pale. If you didn’t read “Invisible Monsters,” but think you might like a read on the wild side, please do, though you might want to proceed with caution. If you are among the devoted many who liked the original, however, you’ll definitely like this slightly different version. Laced in are new chapters of memoir and further scenes with the book’s characters.”īeware publishers bearing explanations. Norton & Co., touts the book this way: “Injected with new material and special design elements, ‘Invisible Monsters Remix’ fulfills Chuck Palahniuk’s original vision for his 1999 novel, turning a daring satire on beauty and the fashion industry into an even more wildly unique reading experience. You don't stop and count each slot on the track as you're going down the big hill.Explaining the difference between this version and the original, his publisher, the well-respected W.W. However Invisible Monsters works best on a roller-coaster level. Still working on measuring out the proper dosages of his many writerly talents (equal parts potent imagery, nihilistic coolspeak, and doped-out craziness), Palahniuk every now and then loosens his grip on the story line, which at points becomes as hard to decipher as your local pill addict's medicine cabinet. It's as if Palahniuk didn't write the thing but yanked it directly out of the Cineplex of his mind's eye. As with Fight Club and Survivor, the book is invested with a cinematic sweep, from the opening set piece, which takes off like a house afire (literally), to a host of filmic tics sprayed throughout the text: "Flash," "Jump back," "Jump way ahead," "Flash," "Flash," "Flash." You get the idea. Anyway, the Hollywood vibe doesn't stop these comparisons. It's a sort of Drugstore Cowboy-meets- Yentl affair, or a Hope-Crosby road movie with a skin graft and hormone-pill obsession, if you know what I mean. Set once again in an all-too-familiar modern wasteland where social disease and self-hatred can do more damage than any potboiler-fiction bad guy, the tale focuses particularly on a group of drag queens and fashion models trekking cross-country to find themselves, looking everywhere from the bottom of a vial of Demerol to the end of a shotgun barrel. Palahniuk's third identity crisis (that's "novel" to you), Invisible Monsters, more than ably responds to this call to arms. Which, to an author like Chuck Palahniuk, must sound like a challenge. When the plot of your first novel partially hinges on anarchist overthrows funded by soap sales, and the narrative hook of your second work is the black box recorder of a jet moments away from slamming into the Australian outback, it stands to reason that your audience is going to be ready for anything. And that salvation hides in the last places you'll ever want to look. Enter Brandy Alexander, Queen Supreme, one operation away from becoming a real woman, who will teach her that reinventing yourself means erasing your past and making up something better. But when a sudden freeway "accident" leaves her disfigured and incapable of speech, she goes from being the beautiful center of attention to being an invisible monster, so hideous that no one will acknowledge that she exists. She's a fashion model who has everything: a boyfriend, a career, a loyal best friend. ![]() Love, betrayal, petty larceny, and high fashion fuel this deliciously comic novel from the author of Fight Club. ![]()
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