Doomed

July 1, 2013
In his less-than-triumphant return to a satiric hell, Palahniuk offers a new installment in the story of Madison Spencer, the snide, overweight, 13-year-old heroine of Damned—who happens to be dead. When a Halloween revenge prank on some of Madison’s living tormenters goes wrong, Satan consigns the erudite and opinionated teen to roam the Earth, invisibly haunting the places and people she once knew. During her wanderings she tries to sort out her relationship with her celebrity parents, who since her death have fallen prey to sinister influences and begun a cult of vulgar self-expression. Madison’s homecoming further leads her to revisit some pivotal pre-death experiences, from an eventful trip to upstate New York that ended in tragedy and damnation to her strained relationship with her oblivious parents. But Madison is special: she is stuck in purgatory for a reason, which may be nothing less than the salvation of the entire world. At the heart of the rollicking story is a girl’s relationship with her parents, but Palahniuk embroiders the tale with myriad poop jokes and gratuitous vulgarity with scant comedic value. Meanwhile, his usually acute apothegms sound strained through Madison’s artificial voice. While Palahniuk’s fans will surely be pleased, the book reads like a YA novel from hell whose threadbare premise only sporadically entertains. Agent: Edward Hibbert, Donadio & Olson.

Well, what do you know? Little Maddy Spencer got out of Hell. God help us all. Palahniuk (Damned, 2011, etc.) is rarely known to revisit characters in the manner of Irvine Welsh. But after the heavily experimental voices in Snuff, Pygmy and Tell-All, maybe a little more blasphemy by way of Judy Blume is an acceptable compromise. The author's muse, 13-year-old Madison Spencer, may be a lot of things--chubby, dead, virginal and sarcastic to the point of sadism--but she's often quite funny in her most shocking moments. To catch up, Maddy woke up in Hell. It turns out that Hell has a hell of a lot of rules, and Maddy broke every one of them trying to figure out her predicament--the last when she overstayed a visit to Earth on Halloween. Now, she's stuck here as a ghost. As a notoriously unreliable narrator, Madison can grate on the nerves, but it's sort of peek-between-your-fingers interesting to learn more of her gruesome back story. First, Maddy runs into her dead grandmother, then discovers her billionaire father shagging her rival from Hell. So there's that to fix. For better or worse, Madison is guided by Crescent City, a Ketamine-addicted paranormal detective who can see her during his frequent binges. Oh, remember those rules we discussed? Farting, cussing and picking your nose are all grounds for eternal damnation--except little dead Maddy told her diva of a mother that they were requirements for ascendancy to Heaven, and now Mommy Dearest has founded a new religion based on all of her daughter's grossest behaviors. The book's other revelation--other than a long-hatching conspiracy about Maddy's role in the End of the World--turns out to be the real reason that Madison Spencer believes she was damned in the first place. If you only read one book this year about a dead teenager posting on message boards about playing supernaturalist and tempting Satan's wrath, let it be this one. COPYRIGHT(1) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

September 1, 2013

Our heroine returns! Madison Spencer, daughter of misguided movie stars, pudgy outcast, and resident of Hell, finds herself stranded on Earth for one year as punishment for missing her curfew on Halloween. Keeping the reader updated through blog posts from the afterlife, Madison runs into her Nana Minnie's ghost, which stirs her to reveal personal and painful moments from her childhood. As Maddie works through the time she spent with her grandparents in decidedly down-home upstate New York, she realizes her life might have been molded by something sinister from the beginning. All the while, her parents, taking her tongue-in-cheek advice from an accidental phone connection, have begun their own religion. As the world follows her movie star parents, Maddie becomes responsible for sending people to Hell en masse, accidentally upsetting the balance between God and Satan. VERDICT Palahniuk's follow-up to the best-selling Damned does not disappoint. Our eccentric, sharp-witted tween narrator walks the line between hilarity and sorrow throughout. Highly recommended for the author's many fans.--Brooke Bolton, North Manchester P.L., IN

Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

July 1, 2013
Damned (2011) introduced us to 13-year-old Madison Spencer, newly arrived in Hell after her death; as she tried to figure out what exactly happened to her, she took us on an exciting and often very funny tour of Hell. Now, in the sequel, Madison is back on Earth, stranded there on Halloween, facing the prospect of spending an entire year as (shudder) a ghost among the living. Although not quite as entertaining as Damnedprimarily because it lacks the first book's hellish traveloguethe novel nicely continues Madison's story, filling in a lot of the blanks in her life (we find out, for example, the real reason why she's been damned) and exposing an ancient satanic plot thatbelieve it or nothas poor little Madison at its center. As with the first book, this one lives or dies on the appeal of its teenage narrator. On the face of it, Spencer isn't the most likable of girls: she's self-centered, in-your-face, and almost too aggressively clever for her own goodbut so was Holden Caulfield. She's a compelling character, and she drives a novel that will resonate from the get-go with Palahniuk's many fans. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Palahniuk's 12 novels have sold more than five million copies in the U.S. His latest will profit from both traditional print publicity and an extensive social-media campaign.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)