Welcome back to Books With Cause! Let’s dive into my latest review — Diary by Chuck Palahniuk.
This is my eighth experience of reading a Palahniuk novel and what always blows me away about his work is that he finds new ways of telling his stories. If you’re familiar with Survivor, for example, you’ll know the whole thing is supposed to be a confession recorded into the Blackbox of a plane moments before the pilot crashed it. It’s also unusual in the fact that the chapters and page numbers count backwards. And of course, there’s the very out there Snuff which I reviewed in a previous post. And that’s without even touching Fight Club, the one that started it all.
As may be suggested by the title, this book takes the form of a diary that is written by Misty Wilmot but it also serves as a long letter to her husband Peter who is currently in a coma after attempting to take his own life.
Ironically, while Peter is the one in the coma, Misty is the one who feels more trapped. She was once a promising art student with a bright future ahead of her. It was art school where she would meet Peter. The man who would trap her in a relationship by deliberately tampering with condoms and birth control pills to get her pregnant and trick her into marriage. Struggling to make ends meet, Misty is forced to work as a waitress. Peter, meanwhile, is in a lot of trouble because he’s been hiding rooms in the houses he’s been remodelling. In those rooms he’s also been hiding vulgar messages, and now all the homeowners are trying to sue him. One wonders if that’s part of the reason he tried to take his own life.
Of course, all of this already sounds beyond weird as fuck. But this is a Palahniuk novel, so that means we’ve also barely scratched the surface yet. There’s a subplot of a supernatural conspiracy that seems to repeat every four generations. Peter knew this was coming which was why he was prepping Misty and making sure he had her locked down in a relationship. It’s around this time that Misty starts painting again but not necessarily by choice. Her painting is compulsive and too excess. But it may the only thing that can get the family out of crippling debt.
The joy of Palahniuk is that you never know what you’re going to get. I usually rely on my trusty old friend, the blurb to let me know what I’m getting myself in for. But in this case even the blurb couldn’t really prepare me for what was to come in this book. Such is the wild imagination owned by Mr Palahniuk. I envy it.
That said, this is a book that didn’t quite live up to my expectations. There was something about the diary format that didn’t quite work. It didn’t really read like a diary, it read more like Misty writing a really long letter to her husband and then the reader takes the place of her husband. But it didn’t quite work and I always felt at a bit of a distance from the story. But it’s still enjoyable. It definitely won’t be the last time I pick up a book written by Chuck Palahniuk.
My Goodreads rating: ★★★☆☆ (3 stars)
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