Choke: A Novel - Softcover

Palahniuk, Chuck

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0385720920 ISBN 13: 9780385720922

Publisher: Anchor Books, 2002

Synopsis

Victor Mancini, a medical-school dropout, is an antihero for our deranged times. Needing to pay elder care for his mother, Victor has devised an ingenious scam: he pretends to choke on pieces of food while dining in upscale restaurants. He then allows himself to be saved by fellow patrons who, feeling responsible for Victor s life, go on to send checks to support him. When he s not pulling this stunt, Victor cruises sexual addiction recovery workshops for action, visits his addled mom, and spends his days working at a colonial theme park. His creator, Chuck Palahniuk, is the visionary we need and the satirist we deserve."

About this title

Review:

Imagine watching live images of a runaway stolen bus on TV, and imagine that that same bus comes crashing through your own street, maybe even your own wall, into your existence, and you will have imagined what it is like to read Chuk Palahniuk's third novel, Choke. This is satirical literature for the DVD surround-sound generation. As with his debut novel, Fight Club, which has since been adapted into a critically acclaimed film, Palahniuk's central character, Victor Mancini, is a cruiser of support groups, this time sexual addiction groups. Victor is reminiscent of Patrick Bateman, Bret Easton Ellis's central character in American Psycho, and of David Bell, Don Dellillo's character in Americana. He is a social outsider, psychologically fragmented, unable to function in modern society, uncertain of his true identity, a con-man diner struggling to connect to other diners in a godless and consumerist society.

This is a novel full of big ideas, sharp social commentaries; through Victor's actions and his memories of his dysfunctional crackpot mother, a world is revealed in which addictive behaviour is a way of escaping the banalities that pass for realities, a world which could end with a "discreet, tasteful announcement". However, Victor is also a redeemer, his selfish actions, blackly comic, bring meaning into the lives of the strangers he cons, turning him into a creator of heroes, each one claiming to have saved Victor Mancini from choking to death, each one Victor's benefactor, saving them from the emptiness of their existence.

In portraying Victor's attempt to condense his identity from the chaotic waters of his life, Palahniuk reminds us of the struggles that we all face as individuals in our fast and puzzling new millennium. His prose is quick and inventive, his plot never predictable, and he has the unerring ability to make the reader question himself in the context of his fiction, a mark of truly good writing. --Iain Robinson

Review:

"Sheer, anarchic fierceness of imagination . . . [A] raw and vital book." --The New York Times

"Few contemporary writers mix the outrageous and the hilarious with greater zest. . . . Chuck Palahniuk's splenetic, anarchic glee makes him a worthy heir to Ken Kesey." --Newsday

"Palahniuk displays a Swiftian gift for satire, as well as a knack for crafting mesmerizing sentences." --San Francisco Examiner

"Puts a bleakly humorous spin on self-help, addiction recovery, and childhood trauma . . . [F]unny mantra-like prose plows toward the mayhem it portends from the get-go." --The Village Voice

About this edition

• Publisher: Anchor Books
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0385720920
• ISBN 13: 9780385720922
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 304