Monday, February 8, 2010

Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk

Originality- 18/20
Characters- 18/20
Remembrance- 8/10
Quote-ability- 9/10
Entertainment- 18/20
Ending- 10/10
Recommend to read- 8/10
TOTAL- 89/100
Grade- B

The first rule about fight club is you don't talk about fight club. Chuck Palahniuk's outrageous and startling debut novel that exploded American literature and spawned a movement. Every weekend, in the basements and parking lots of bars across the country, young men with white-collar jobs and failed lives take off their shoes and shirts and fight each other barehanded just as long as they have to. Then they go back to those jobs with blackened eyes and loosened teeth and the sense that they can handle anything. Fight club is the invention of Tyler Durden, projectionist, waiter, and dark, anarchic genius, and it's only the beginning of his plans for violent revenge on an empty consumer-culture world.
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This book was this months school book club choice. It wasn't my decision to choose this but that's how it turned out. I was actually going to skip reading it entirely. Of course I couldn't do that. Instead I spent my whole Sunday listening to the audio book.

I am so glad that I ended up reading it. I have no regrets. I expected to just read about a whole bunch of fighting but it was so much more. The book not only talks about the narrator's own personal problems but also society's as a whole.

The whole book had a freaky feel to it. Like everyone was crazy or something. You began to agree with what people say even though it sounds insane. I started to say "You don't talk about fight club" a lot.

The characters were amazingly developed. Even though there weren't many that we get to know a lot, the ones that are talked about are crazy awesome. The narrator and Tyler are so different but yet have similar feelings.

I also really liked the idea of fight club. A place where you can just fight to fight. Not to win. A time to take control of your life. I couldn't help but feel overwhelmed and a little afraid when fight club got really big. Even the narrator couldn't stop it and he helped create it. Imagine that everywhere you go, even the police, have members of fight club. People that know you. Eventually you get to watch it take over their lives.

The ending had an amazing unexpected twist. The twist had me thinking back throughtout the book trying to make sense of it. I really had to analyze every part and realize that it made sense.

Overall I think that Fight Club was a action packed, thought provoking book. I would recommend this book to anyone that doesn't mind some very graphic fight scenes.

-Amanda

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I've never read the book but I LOVE the movie. I know exactly the twist you're talking about and it's insanely awesome. This is on my long list of books to read. I did read Invisible Monsters by this author and that was so insane. I think that whole book is one huge twist and turn.

Robby said...

Chuck Palahniuk sounds like such a strange writer, but I'm so interested in his books.