Lullaby

July 1, 2002

"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. (Sept.)Forecast:Mainstream men's magazines and über-hip glossies love Palahniuk, as do his rabid fans (generally of the young male persuasion), so there's an automatic audience for this title.

In this witty and gruesome fantasy, a journalist discovers an African chant that kills. Just speak or even think the verses, and whoever is on your mind drops dead. Our hero involuntarily becomes a serial killer. He sets out to destroy all 200 books containing the chant, simultaneously learning to control his power and his small coven of helpers, who include a practicing witch, a professional assassin, and a broker of haunted real estate. To impersonate the narrating protagonist, Richard Poe adopts a tone of jaded toughness, like a street-wise private eye. The tack works well in conveying the gorier passages and in keeping the listener alert, for his voice is strong and compelling. But it mutes the sly black humor and blunts the edges of the hero's complex personality. Y.R. (c) AudioFile 2003, Portland, Maine