Most helpful customer reviews
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13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
An utter disappointment, May 13 2009
Don't get me wrong, I usually love Chuck's work - even the stuff everyone else hates. So, it pains me to have to give this novel a single star, which apparently in Amazon-speak means "I hate it".
For one thing, the book is written in a broken English reminiscent of scenes from bad racist parodies of Asian cultures in sketch comedy TV shows. Conceptually, this works given the premise of the book; practically, it makes the book incredibly difficult to read for more than a chapter or two.
Even ignoring the difficult language the content of the story itself is boring - something I have never been able to say about one of Palahniuk's books. Even the few "shock value" moments failed to draw my attention more deeply into the story.
Simply put, there is really nothing about this book that would make me recommend it to anyone. If this was the first Chuck Palahniuk book I'd ever read it would be hard to convince me to ever attempt to read another.
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Not up to Snuff, May 29 2009
A few years back I would have told you Palahniuk was one of my favorite authors. His work is cutting edge, unique, and always shocking. Each of his works is unique, from other authors and from his own works. Palahniuk has an incredibly imaginative and creative mind. The closest authors to him are: in Canada Douglas Coupland and in the UK Irvine Welsh. But the problem with always shocking and being so unique is each new work must outdo the previous. As such I think I have lost my taste for Palahniuk's writings.
The book is unique, different and well-written. It is the story of Pygmy, one of a group of youths from a totalitarian state that has been sent to the United States, to live with Christian families and experience a better life. At least that is what the Host Families and church believe. Yet in reality these youths have been raised from a young age as agents of the state, part of a planned terrorist attack on the States.
Palahniuk does a great job of dissecting Midwestern life through foreign eyes. It is a satire both of America's fears and of America itself. However the story is just too much - male rape, high school massacre, planned seductions, pregnancies and impregnations. And the whole book is written as a series of dispatches from Pygmy to his home government, written in a halting, misunderstood English. Palahniuk captures a feel about the language, yet still conveys his message.
Palahniuk's books are usually a pleasure to read and so addictive that I cannot put them down. Some I have read more than once, even back to back - finished it and started reading it again. That was not the case this time. Twice I put it down for a few days, and was uncertain I would pick it up again to finish it. This was the first Palahniuk book I have read that I easily predicted the ending; that, in and of itself, was a disappointment. As a book it is okay, but as a Palahniuk book it is disappointing on many levels. For the hardcore Palahniuk fans out there - they will love it. I think I have just lost my taste for his extremism.
(First Published in Imprint 2009-05-29.)
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4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Really Gross Black Satire About Cultural Differences And Conditioning, Jun 9 2009
"Now, therefore, you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God." -- Ephesians 2:19
Can you see yourself as others see you? Surely not. Chuck Palahniuk draws on that eternal truth to give Americans a picture of their culture from the point-of-view of totalitarian terrorists masquerading as exchange students. Not since Jonathan Swift's "A Modest Proposal" in which the satirist suggested that the starving Irish eat their children has a culture taken such a beating as Americans do in Pygmy.
To be fair, Mr. Palahniuk also takes many potshots at the unidentified foreign nation that so blatantly convinces its people that Americans are vermin. But those shots don't strike home with the same venom.
The book portrays Americans as sex- and materialism-obsessed people who are clueless about what's going on around them. Is that a new finding for you? I doubt it. That's one problem with the book.
Another problem is that the narrator's language is hard to follow. And when you do get it, it hardly seems worth the effort in most cases.
The third problem is that the "exchange students" are exaggerated in their superiority in ways that just seem silly. For instance, Pygmy can discern with perfect accuracy what chemicals are in or on a person's body by smelling them. This leads to a lot of stage setting for scenes based on odor. It was too much for me . . . more gross than funny. Similar sequences push the same gags until they are threadbare, such as the unending searches for new batteries.
I give this book a five for originality of concept and a one for execution.
Unless you have taken a pledge to read all books by Mr. Palahniuk, give this one a pass. The message and humor don't warrant plowing through the writing problems.
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