Burnt Tongues

Starred review from September 29, 2014
Twenty fictional vivisections shock, disgust, and unsettle in this hallucinatory anthology. The devastation of malicious gossip inspires attempted suicides and helplessness in Neil Krolicki's "Live This Down," featuring a miscarriage at a pool party. After a shower, readers will be thrown off balance by the paradoxical culpability and hope of an animal abuser's redemption in Chris Lewis Carter's "Charlie." Matt Egan's "A Vodka Kind of Girl" and Tony Liebhard's "Mating Calls" face the pain of relationships, while Jason M. Fylan's "Engines, O-Rings, and Astronauts" blurring lines between victim and victimizer amid the terror of school shootings. And flickering pumpkins leer at human frailty and (again) suicidal tendencies on Halloween in Terence James Eeles's "Lemming". Attacking morality, formula, and "political correctness," these acts of literary terrorism provoke, belittle, challenge, and confound, satisfying Palahniuk's demand for " a way of saying something, but saying it wrong." Irritating and uncompromising, they force readers to "read close, maybe read twice," as they slaughter sacred cows left and right.

Chuck Palahniuk, a writer known for his unapologetically visceral works, gathered these selected stories, carefully curated to make listeners as uncomfortable as possible. Highly transgressive, this audiobook offers over a dozen short stories with wildly varying topics. The common thread among them is one of intent--each story's goal is to evoke emotion and stir troubling thoughts in listeners. With such a wide range of scenarios, each striving to generate a different set of emotions, the audiobook benefits from the variety and versatility of the full cast. The performers give each story an individualized style and feel that enhance the vision of each writer. Overall, this disturbing collection will appeal to listeners who are enthralled by the taboo. N.H. 2021 Audies Finalist � AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine