Lullaby: A Novel [Hardcover]

The consequences of media saturation are the basis for an urban nightmare in Lullaby, Chuck Palahniuk's darkly comic and often dazzling thriller. Assigned to write a series of feature articles investigating SIDS, troubled newspaper reporter Carl Streator begins to notice a pattern among the cases he encounters: each child was read the same poem prior to his or her death. His research and a tip from a necrophilic paramedic lead him to Helen Hoover Boyle, a real estate agent who sells "distressed" (demonized) homes, assured of their instant turnover. Boyle and Streator have both lost children to "crib death," and she confirms Streator's suspicions: the poem is an ancient lullaby or "culling song" that is lethal if spoken--or even thought--in a victim's direction. The misanthropic Streator, now armed with a deadly and uncontrollably catchy tune, goes on a minor killing spree until he recognizes his crimes and the song's devastating potential. Lullaby then turns into something of a road trip narrative, with Streator, Boyle, her empty-headed Wiccan secretary Mona, and Mona's vigilante boyfriend Oyster setting out across the U.S. to track down and destroy all copies of the poem.

In his previous works, including the cult favorite Fight Club, Palahniuk has demonstrated a fondness for making statements about the condition of humanity, and he uses Lullaby like a blunt object to repeatedly overstate his generally dim view. Such dogmatic venom undermines the persuasiveness of his thesis about mass communication and free will, but thankfully, Palahniuk offers some respite here by allowing for sympathy and love, as well as through his razor-sharp humor, such as his mock listings for Helen's possessed properties: "six bedrooms, four baths, pine-paneled entryway, and blood running down the kitchen walls...." At such moments, Lullaby casts a powerful spell. --Ross Doll

"I need to rebel against myself. It's the opposite of following your bliss. I need to do what I most fear." Beleaguered reporter Carl Streator is stuck writing about SIDS and grieving for his dead wife and child; he copes by building perfect model homes and smashing them with a bare foot. But things only get worse: Carl accidentally memorizes an ancient African "culling song" that kills anyone he focuses on while mentally reciting it, until killing "gets to be a bad habit." His only friend, Nash, a creepy necrophiliac coroner, amuses himself with Carl's victims. Salvation of a sort comes in the form of Helen Hoover Boyle, a witch making a tidy living as a real estate broker selling-and quickly reselling-haunted houses. She, too, knows the culling song and finances her diamond addiction by freelancing as a telepathic assassin. Carl and Helen hit the road with Helen's Wiccan assistant, Mona, and her blackmailing boyfriend, Oyster, on a search-and-destroy mission for all outstanding copies of the culling song, as well as an all-powerful master tome of spells, a grimoire. Hilarious satire, both supernatural and scatological, ensues, the subtext of which seems to be Palahniuk's conviction that information has become a weapon ("Imagine a plague you catch through your ears"), and the bizarre love affair between Helen and Carl offers the lone linear thread in a field of narrative flak bursts. But the chief significance of this novel is Palahniuk's decision to commit himself to a genre, and this horror tale of both magic and mundane modernity plants him firmly in a category where previously he existed as a genre of one.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Life is hell for people in Palahniuk's fictional world (Fight Club; Choke). His latest cast of miserable characters includes hack reporter Carl Streator and Helen Hoover Boyle, a real estate agent whose specialty is the sale of distressed homes those haunted by the crimes previously committed in them. Both have lost children to sudden infant death syndrome, precipitated not by a medical condition but by reading their babies an ancient magic culling song included in a library book of poems from around the world. Once the poem is in one's mind, it's easy to kill anyone one pleases, and the body count is formidable as Carl and Helen take off on a trip to locate and destroy copies of the poem. They are joined in this macabre quest by two witches-in-training, Helen's assistant, Mona, and her boyfriend, Oyster. This is vintage Palahniuk: weird, creepy, twisted, upsetting, and ultimately a great read for anyone who wants to be scared for pleasure. This cult author's novel should be in public libraries everywhere. Andrea Kempf, Johnson Cty. Community Coll. Lib., Overland Park, KS
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

In his last novel, Choke (1999), Palahniuk proved he could write a best-seller without sacrificing his trademark biting satire. And in Lullaby, he manages an even more impressive feat by showing himself capable of tenderness as well as outrage. The story, of course, is plenty outrageous. Middle-aged journalist Carl Streator discovers that all children who die of SIDS are read the same poem the night before their deaths, an African "culling song" traditionally sung to sick animals and people to ease their pain and hasten death. Once he discovers that simply reciting the poem in someone's direction is invariably fatal, Streator can't stop murdering. Then he finds out that Helen Hoover Boyle, a real-estate agent who sells the same haunted houses over and over again, knows the secret, too. They set out on a grand literary road trip to destroy all extant copies of the song. The narrative itself becomes a sort of lullaby, hypnotically repeating its anti-advertising, anti-everything catchphrases, lulling the reader into a false sense of security just as it launches all-out attacks on America's "It's a Small World after All" culture. It's a fun ride, but what separates this novel from Palahniuk's previous work (Fight Club, 2001) is its emotional depth, its ability to explore the unbearable pain of losing a child just as richly as it laments our consume-or-die worldview. John Green
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

"Outrageous, darkly comic fun of the sort you'd expect from Palahniuk."
--Kirkus Reviews (*starred*)

"Hilarious satire."
--Publishers Weekly

From the author of the New York Times bestseller Choke and the cult classic Fight Club, a cunningly plotted novel about the ultimate verbal weapon, one that reinvents the apocalyptic thriller for our times.

Carl Streator is a solitary widower and a fortyish newspaper reporter who is assigned to do a series of articles on Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. In the course of this investigation he discovers an ominous thread: the presence at the death scenes of the anthology Poems and Rhymes Around the World, all opened to the page where there appears an African chant, or “culling song.” This song turns out to be lethal when spoken or even thought in anyone's direction–and once it lodges in Streator's brain he finds himself becoming an involuntary serial killer. So he teams up with a real estate broker, one Helen Hoover Boyle–who specializes in selling haunted (or “distressed”) houses (wonderfully high turnover), and who lost a child to the culling song years before–for a cross-country odyssey to remove all copies of the book from libraries, lest this deadly verbal virus spread and wipe out human life. Accompanying them on this road trip are Helen's assistant, Mona Sabbat, an exquisitely earnest Wiccan, and her sardonic ecoterrorist boyfriend Oyster, who is running a scam involving fake liability claims and business blackmail. Welcome to the new nuclear family.

On one level, Lullaby is a chillingly pertinent parable about the dangers of psychic infection and control in an era of wildly overproliferated information: “Imagine a plague you catch through your ears . . . imagine an idea that occupies your mind like a city.” But it is also a tightly wound thriller with an intriguing premise and a suspenseful plot full of surprising twists and turns. Finally, because it is a Chuck Palahniuk novel, it is a blackly comic tour de force that reinforces his stature as our funniest nihilist and a contemporary seer.

"Outrageous, darkly comic fun of the sort you'd expect from Palahniuk."
--Kirkus Reviews (*starred*)

"Hilarious satire."
--Publishers Weekly

Chuck Palahniuk's four novels are the bestselling Fight Club, which was made into a film by director David Fincher, Survivor, Invisible Monsters, and Choke. He lives in Portland, Oregon.

Prologue

At first, the new owner pretends he never looked at the living room floor. Never really looked. Not the first time they toured the house. Not when the inspector showed them through it. They’d measured rooms and told the movers where to set the couch and piano, hauled in everything they owned, and never really stopped to look at the living room floor.

They pretend. Then on the first morning they come downstairs, there it is, scratched in the white-oak floor:

GET OUT

Some new owners pretend a friend has done it as a joke. Others are sure it’s because they didn’t tip the movers. A couple of nights later, a baby starts to cry from inside the north wall of the master bedroom.


This is when they usually call. And this new owner on the phone is not what our hero, Helen Hoover Boyle, needs this morning. This stammering and whining. What she needs is a new cup of coffee and a seven-letter word for “poultry.” She needs to hear what’s happening on the police scanner. Helen Boyle snaps her fingers until her secretary looks in from the outer office. Our hero wraps both hands around the mouthpiece and points the telephone receiver at the scanner, saying, “It’s a code nine-eleven.” And her secretary, Mona, shrugs and says, “So?”

So she needs to look it up in the codebook.

And Mona says, “Relax. It’s a shoplifter.”

Murders, suicides, serial killers, accidental overdoses, you can’t wait until this stuff is on the front page of the newspaper. You can’t let another agent beat you to the next rainmaker.

Helen needs the new owner at 325 Crestwood Terrace to shut up a minute. Of course, the message appeared in the living room floor. What’s odd is the baby doesn’t usually start until the third night. First the phantom message, then the baby cries all night. If the owners last long enough, they’ll be calling in another week about the face that appears, reflected in the water when you fill the bathtub. A wadded-up face of wrinkles, the eyes hollowed-out dark holes.

The third week brings the phantom shadows that circle around and around the dining room walls when everybody is seated at the table. There might be more events after that, but no-body’s lasted a fourth week.

To the new owner, Helen Hoover Boyle says, “Unless you’re ready to go to court and prove the house is unlivable, unless you can prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the previous owners knew this was happening ...”

She says, “I have to tell you.” She says, “You lose a case like this, after you generate all this bad publicity, and that house will be worthless.”

It’s not a bad house, 325 Crestwood Terrace, English Tudor, newer composition roof, four bedrooms, three and a half baths. An in-ground pool. Our hero doesn’t even have to look at the fact sheet. She’s sold this house six times in the past two years. Another house, the New England saltbox on Eton Court, six bedrooms, four baths, pine-paneled entryway, and blood running down the kitchen walls, she’s sold that house eight times in the past four years.

To the new owner, she says, “Got to put you on hold for a minute,” and she hits the red button.

Helen, she’s wearing a white suit and shoes, but not snow white. It’s more the white of downhill skiing in Banff with a private car and driver on call, fourteen pieces of matched luggage, and a suite at the Hotel Lake Louise.

To the doorway, our hero says, “Mona? Moonbeam?” Louder, she says, “Spirit-Girl?”

She drums her pen against the folded newspaper page on her desk and says, “What’s a three-letter word for ‘rodent’?”

The police scanner gargles words, mumbles and barks, repeating “Copy?” after every line. Repeating “Copy?”

Helen Boyle shouts, “This coffee is not going to cut it.”

In another hour, she needs to be showing a Queen Anne, five bedrooms, with a mother-in-law apartment, two gas fireplaces, and the face of a barbiturate suicide that appears late at night in the powder room mirror. After that, there’s a split-level ranch FAG heat, a sunken conversation pit, and the reoccurring phantom gunshots of a double homicide that happened over a decade ago. This is all in her thick daily planner, thick and bound in what looks like red leather. This is her record of everything.

She takes another sip of coffee and says, “What do you call this? Swiss Army mocha? Coffee is supposed to taste like coffee.”

Mona comes to the doorway with her arms folded across her front, and says, “What?”

And Helen says, “I need you to swing by--she shuffles some fact sheets on her blotter--“swing by 4673 Willmont Place. It’s a Dutch Colonial with a sunroom, four bedrooms, two baths, and an aggravated homicide.”

The police scanner says, “Copy?”

“Just do the usual,” Helen says, and she writes the address on a note card and holds it out.

“Don’t resolve anything. Don’t burn any sage. Don’t exorcise shit.”

Mona takes the note card and says, “Just check it for vibes?”

Helen slashes the air with her hand and says, “I don’t want anybody going down any tunnels toward any bright light. I want these freaks staying right here, on this astral plane, thank you.”

She looks at her newspaper and says, “They have all eternity to be dead. They can hang around in that house another fifty years and rattle some chains.”

Helen Hoover Boyle looks at the blinking hold light and says, “What did you pick up at the six-bedroom Spanish yesterday?”

And Mona rolls her eyes at the ceiling. She pushes out her jaw and blows a big sigh, straight up to flop the hair on her forehead, and says, “There’s a definite energy there. A subtle presence. But the floor plan is wonderful.” A black silk cord loops around her neck and disappears into the corner of her mouth.

And our hero says, “Screw the floor plan.”

Forget those dream houses you only sell once every fifty years. Forget those happy homes. And screw subtle: cold spots, strange vapors, irritable pets. What she needed was blood running down the walls. She needed ice-cold invisible hands that pull children out of bed at night. She needed blazing red eyes in the dark at the foot of the basement stairs. That and decent curb appeal.

The bungalow at 521 Elm Street, it has four bedrooms, original hardware, and screams in the attic.

The French Normandy at 7645 Weston Heights has arched windows, a butler’s pantry, leaded-glass pocket doors, and a body that appears in the upstairs hallway with multiple stab wounds.

The ranch-style at 248 Levee Place--five bedrooms, four and a fact sheets on her blotter--"swing by 4673 Willmont Place. It’s a half baths with a brick patio--it has the reappearing blood coughed up on the master bathroom walls after a drain cleaner poisoning.

Distressed houses, Realtors call them. These houses that never sold because no one liked to show them. No Realtor wanted to host an open house there, risk spending any time there alone. Or these were the houses that sold and sold again every six months because no one could live there. A good string of these houses, twenty or thirty exclusives, and Helen could turn off the police scanner. She could quit searching the obituaries and the crime pages for suicides and homicides. She could stop sending Mona out to check on every possible lead. She could just kick back and find a five-letter word for “equine.”

“Plus I need you to pick up my cleaning,” she says. “And get some decent coffee.” She points her pen at Mona and says, “And out of respect for professionalism, leave the little Rasta doohickeys at home.”

Mona pulls the black silk cord until a quartz crystal pops out of her mouth, shining and wet.

She blows on it, saying, “It’s a crystal. My boyfriend, Oyster, gave it to me.”

And Helen says, “You’re dating a boy named Oyster?”

And Mona drops the crystal so it hangs against her chest and says, “He says it’s for my own protection.” The crystal soaks a darker wet spot on her orange blouse.

“Oh, and before you go,” Helen says, “get me Bill or Emily Burrows on the phone.”

Helen presses the hold button and says, “Sorry about that.” She says there are a couple of clear options here. The new owner can move, just sign a quitclaim deed and the house becomes the bank’s problem.

“Or,” our hero says, “you give me a confidential exclusive to sell the house. What we call a vest-pocket listing.”

And maybe the new owner says no this time. But after that hideous face appears between his legs in the bathwater, after the shadows start marching around the walls, well, everyone says yes eventually.

On the phone, the new owner says, “And you won’t tell any buyers about the problem?”

And Helen says, “Don’t even finish unpacking. We’ll just tell people you’re in the process of moving out.”

If anybody asks, tell them you’re being transferred out of town. Tell them you loved this house.

She says, “Everything else will just be our little secret.”

From the outer office, Mona says, “I have Bill Burrows on line two.”

And the police scanner says, “Copy?”

Our hero hits the next button and says, “Bill!”

She mouths the word Coffee at Mona. She jerks her head toward the window and mouths, Go.

The scanner says, “Do you copy?”...