Damned

May 2, 2011
Move over, Dante, there's a new tour guide to hell: Madison Spencer, the 13-year-old narrator of Palahniuk's cliché-ridden latest bulletin of phoned-in outrage. After self-asphyxiating, Madison wakes up in hell and quickly finds, as she's put to work prank-calling people at dinnertime, that her new home is not much different from Saturday detention in The Breakfast Club. Embarking on a field trip with some new friends, Madison fights demons, raises an army of the dead, and storms the gates of Satan's citadel. At the same time, she flashes back to her unhappy life as the daughter of a self-absorbed movie star mother and a financial tycoon father who collect Third World orphans. Unfortunately, Palahniuk's hell turns out to be a familiar place, filled with long lines, celebrities, dictators, mass murderers, lawyers, and pop culture references and jokes repeated until they are no longer funny. In the end, the author seems to be saying that the real hell is the banality of our earthly lives, an observation that itself seems a little too banal to power this work of fiction.

July 15, 2011

As the provocative novelist probably intended, reading this book is hell.

Through 11 previous novels (Tell-All, 2010, etc.), the author who first achieved notoriety through the movie adaptation of his Fight Club debut (1996) has continued to mix edgy humor with sharp social commentary while flirting with taboo. Yet his latest isn't particularly funny, insightful or powerful. Its narrator is 13-year-old Madison—who tries her best to keep secret her full name: Madison Desert Flower Rosa Parks Coyote Trickster Spencer. She has the voice of a typical teenage girl, one who is precocious and a little overweight. But she is dead. And her parents are obviously patterned on Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt (actually more the former than the latter), whose relentless self-promotion includes a series of high-profile adoptions, and who do their best to keep their daughter stuck in time, well short of puberty. Or did, because now that Madison is dead, she is beyond their reach—in hell. The author's creative imagination in conjuring the realm of eternal damnation falls considerably short of Dante's. Telemarketing comes from hell. So does porn. It has rivers and lakes of bodily secretions. It spawned TV and the Internet. It is remarkably easy to become consigned there, making the reader wonder what might possibly be required to gain entry into heaven. Madison is there because of a fatal marijuana overdose, or at least that's what she says at the start. Almost all lawyers, journalists and celebrities are there. It is not a metaphor for life on earth: "What makes earth feel like Hell is our expectation that it should feel like Heaven. Earth is Earth. Dead is dead," writes Madison. Each of the 38 short chapters begins, with a nod toward Judy Blume: "Are you there, Satan? It's me, Madison." 

The novel sustains a consistency of narrative voice, but there is little plot or momentum, until it climaxes at the end with a power play, identity transformation and O. Henry–ish twist, followed by the most frightening of all possible promises: "To be continued..."

(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

May 15, 2011

Daughter of a billionaire and a self-absorbed film star, 11-year-old Madison dies of a drug overdose during the Christmas holiday at her Swiss boarding school. She wakes up in hell and soon joins with other adolescent misfits in a sort of afterlife The Breakfast Club (actually referenced), then takes on Satan himself. Palahniuk's always a bit twisted, but while initially this sounded over-the-top funny, a quick look suggests it's more edgy social satire. Will it work? With a seven-city tour.

Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

June 1, 2011
Palahniuk's latest is no Fight Club (1996) or Choke (2001), his two best, but with frequent laughs and a slew of unexpected turns, readers will find in it a certain charm. Our narrator, Madison, a chubby, 13-year-old outcast, awakes in a cell, realizing she is not only dead but also condemned to hell. Chalking her circumstances up to a marijuana overdose, Madison quickly settles in, befriending a sort of Dead Breakfast Club, complete with the brain, the jock, the rebel, and the prom queen. Palahniuk's hell, sometimes goofy (The English Patient plays on repeat), sometimes gross-out (mountains of nail clippings and dandruff are commonplace), is a far cry from Dante'smore devilish than hellish. As she chronicles her afterlife (assigned to work as a telemarketer), she recalls her life on earth and, in turn, discovers there was more to her death than smoking marijuana. The story scoots along like any great adventure story, as she takes on Hitler and Catherine de Medici, and it's a delight seeing Madison find her place in life, even if it's in death. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: A seven-city author tour, extensive print and online advertising, and author appearances on national media will round out the robust promotional campaign designed for Palahniuk.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)