- Hardcover: 304 pages
- Publisher: Doubleday (May 22 2001)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0385501560
- ISBN-13: 978-0385501569
- Product Dimensions: 21.8 x 15 x 3.6 cm
- Shipping Weight: 454 g
- Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (329 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #532,444 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Amazon
We can more or less deduce the following of the main protagonist in Choke; Victor Mancini is a ruthless con artist. Victor Mancini is a medical school dropout who's taken a job playing an Irish indentured servant in a colonial-era theme park in order to help care for his Alzehimer's-afflicted mother. Victor Mancini is a sex addict. Victor Mancini is a direct descendant of Jesus Christ. Welcome, once again, to the world of Chuck Palahniuk.
"Art never comes from happiness" says Mancini's mother only a few pages into the novel. Given her own dicey and melodramatic style of parenting, you would think that her son's life would be chock full of nothing but art. Alas, that's not the case--in the fine tradition of Oedipus, Stephen Dedalus and Anthony Soprano, Victor hasn't quite reconciled his issues with his mother. Instead, he's trawling sexual-addiction recovery meetings for dates and purposely choking in restaurants for a few moments of attention. Longing for a hug, in other words, he's settling for the Heimlich.
Thematically, this is pretty familiar Palanhiuk territory. It would be a pity to disclose the surprises of the plot but suffice to say that what we have here is a little bit of Tom Robbins's Another Roadside Attraction, a little bit of Don DeLillo's The Day Room and, well, a little bit of Fight Club. Just as with that book and the other two novels under Palahniuk's belt, we get a smattering of gloriously unflinching sound bites, such as this sceptical slight on prayer chains: "A spiritual pyramid scheme. As if you can gang up on God. Bully him around."
Whether this is the novel that will break Palanhiuk into the mainstream is hard to say. For a fourth book, in fact, the ratio of iffy, "dude"-intensive dialogue to interesting and insightful passages is a little higher than we might wish. In the end though, the author's nerve and daring pull the whole thing off--just. And what's next for Victor Mancini's creator? Leave the last word to him, declaring as he does on the final pages: "Maybe it's our job to invent something better ... What it's going to be, I don't know." --Bob Michaels, Amazon.com
From Publishers Weekly
Palahniuk (Fight Club; Invisible Monsters) once again demonstrates his faith in the credo that before things get better, they must get much, much worse. Like previous Palahniuk protagonists, Victor Mancini is young and prematurely cynical, a med school dropout whose eerily detached narration of the banal horrors of everyday existence gives way to a numbed account of nihilistic carnage. Cruising sex-addict meetings for action, Victor enjoys bathroom trysts with nymphomaniacs on short prison furloughs, focused on maximizing his sexual highs. During the working day, he is trapped in a 1734 colonial theme park, where the entire self-medicated staff blearily endures abusive school tours while hiding out from the world. Victor supports his mother, who is in the hospital, stricken with Alzheimer's; she is wasting away, and despite the misery she put him through in childhood (revealed in an increasingly horrific series of flashbacks), he wants to be a good boy and take care of her. This becomes challenging when Victor is seduced by a strange hospital worker calling herself Dr. Marshall, who shows him his mother's diary; it describes her self-impregnation by a holy relic she believes to be the foreskin of Jesus. This has a profound effect on Victor, who is stunned by the possibility that there may be some good in him after all. Victor is even more pathetic than Palahniuk's previous antiheroes, in that the world he creates for himself (a carnivalesque m‚lange of theme park, geriatric ward and asylum) is actually more horrific than the one he seeks to escape. Still, the novel showcases the author's powers of description, character development and attention-getting dialogue handily enough to give this dark meditation on addiction a distinctive and humorous twist. Author tour.
Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
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Most helpful customer reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Gagging with laughter and sadness,
By Jeff Walker (Canada) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Choke (Paperback)
"Choke," by Chuck Palahniuk is one of the most unique novels I have ever read. From the first page which implores the reader not to read the book (who does that?) to the surprise ending, the novel was a great read from start to finish. The main character, Victor Mancini, is many things, a con artist preying on other's sympathy, a med-school dropout, an "actor" in a colonial-era theme park, a sex addict, a loving and caring son trying to take care of his mother suffering from Alzheimer's disease, as well as a descendant of Jesus Christ, or perhaps Jesus Christ himself. The other characters in the book are just as demented. The writing style is clear and even the flashbacks to Victor's childhood are not intrusive to the story, but rather enlightening to where Victor is in his life at that moment. Also recommended: DIARY by Chuck P. and KATZENJAMMER by McCrae.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Still The Cutting Edge! - Don't Miss it!,
By Charlie Lamothe (Salida, CA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Choke (Paperback)
In literature today, Chuck Palahniuk is the man of the moment. No other new author in recent memory has made such an immediate and important impact. With the controversial "Fight Club" Palahniuk muscled his way into the spotlight and gave his readers an uncompromising look at the flaws in our sometimes over-glorified culture. With the no less controversial "Choke" Palahniuk continues to deliver. (I haven't gotten to "Haunted" yet; I'm a little behind.)"Choke" is an exploration of sexual deviancy, but the main theme of the novel, like "Fight Club," is the modern-day angst caused from the apparent purposelessness of our watered-down, machine assisted lifestyle. There is a certain desperation that can be felt behind the novel's sometimes witty, sometimes grotesque, always compelling escapades. More so than in any of his other novels, you can hear Palahniuk's own uncertainty behind the false bravado of his unfortunate characters. Essentially, "Choke" is a discussion on what is most important in life and a plea for some guidance as to how to achieve it. But by presenting this argument through a series of ill-conceived misadventures, the discussion is rendered light and compelling. Palahniuk writes with a short, terse style that is always compared to Vonnegut but which also reminds me of Hemingway. He tries to write as people speak, and the often grammatically garbled, yet perfectly understandable sentences that result are given a very spontaneous feel as a consequence. The novel is obviously well conceived and well polished, but it is not tediously overworked, as most novels that try to sound literary tend to be. Although I would hesitate to call Palahniuk's style new, he does add a dimension to this sort of "free" writing that I haven't seen before and which is very refreshing. "Choke" is a marvelous novel. If you have any interest in being on the cutting edge of where literature is going, this is the book you must read. Although many of "Choke's" themes are very similar to the ones found in Palahniuk's previous books, "Choke" provides them with a more personal touch. Palahniuk has matured, and perhaps grown more confident as a writer; he is bringing his readers further and further into his confidence. Check out this book! Another recent Amazon pick I really enjoyed is "The Losers Club: Complete Restored Edition" by Richard Perez -- a totally obscure, completely enjoyable book that I can't stop thinking about. Highly recommended.
4.0 out of 5 stars
Few can survive on premise alone,
By Dennis Marcato (Memphis, TN) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Choke (Paperback)
Few books can survive on a clever idea alone. Palahniuk is probably the only author I know who can pull this off. This is not to say that the rest of "Choke" is not clever--it is--but the premise alone is good enough. Victor Mancini is a con artists of mega proportions. By day he works in a colonial theme park and when he's not doing that, he goes to restaurants and diners and fakes "choking." This, in order to get cash to help his mother who is a nursing home. I thought the writing in this novel was simply brilliant and can't wait to tackle all of Palahnuik's works. Bravo
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