Hardcore Chuck Palahniuk fans are not hard to find. Since grabbing the attention of readers through book and movie versions of "Fight Club," Palahniuk has earned the support of a wide-ranging fan base who appreciate his ability to incorporate shock value into (usually) well-crafted stories.
Unfortunately, Palahniuk's latest release, "Haunted," is chock-full of shock value but is lacking a cohesive or interesting narrative, making it a novel that will probably only be appreciated by truly enthusiastic Palahniuk fans.
The novel opens with brief descriptions of each member of its extensive cast as they board a bus headed for a writers' retreat. Each character is given a name related to his or her identifying characteristic (i.e. "Miss Sneezy" or "Comrade Snarky"). In a very un-Palahniuk like fashion, the characters remain mostly one-dimensional, and lack any real development beyond their namesake quirks. Throughout the novel, the 19 characters blur into one voice under many different names.
|
An advertisement reading: "Writers' retreat: abandon your life for three months" is what has brought this cast of characters together. The advertisement promises a supportive environment, far from the distractions and obligations of everyday life, where budding writers will be able to "create a new future as a professional poet, novelist, or screenwriter." The writers (who never really seem very interested in writing) board the bus to their all-inclusive writing getaway, blissfully unaware of the (mostly self-imposed) horror they are going to encounter.
Upon arriving at the retreat, a well-hidden gothic theater run by the elderly and eccentric Mr. Whittier, the writers learn that they are going to be locked away and cut off from civilization for their three-month stint at the retreat. The doors are locked, the phone lines are cut, and Mr. Whittier commands the participants (who begin their whining almost immediately) to write in between meals of freeze-dried turkey Tetrazini and beef Wellington.
From here, the thin (and very random) narrative begins to fall apart. After Mr. Whittier's untimely death-by-bloating, the writers realize that the situation they find themselves trapped in has all the ingredients needed for a great story – if they survive their ordeal, they hope to one day cash in by selling their tell-all accounts.
In a "Lord of the Flies"-esque fashion, the writers assign roles in their new society and then go on to deliberately sabotage themselves in order to make their story more dramatic by destroying the food, practicing self-mutilation, and experimenting with cannibalism in acts meant more to shock the reader and spice up the dull narrative tone than to move the storyline along. It feels like an exercise in shock without an underlying purpose.
The best parts of the book lie outside of the center narrative. Interspersed between the in-the-retreat scenes are stories and poems written by the writers/prisoners themselves. Most are presented as personal narratives or thinly veiled autobiographical sketches, providing backstories for characters who are otherwise very generic and similar-sounding. The stories are often grotesque or shocking, but most have a strong enough core to pull it off.
Still, the individual stories aren't enough to keep the readers' attention for the full length of the novel's 404 pages. After a while the shocking aspects get repetitive (cut off toe, tell sexually explicit story, eat a piece of a fellow writer, repeat ...) and cease being horrifying. Senses dulled, it's easy to forget why we're hearing these stories in the first place.
If grotesque entertainment is what you're after, this book should satisfy you. If you're a fan of Palahniuk's trademark style, you'll find it here, though not in top-form. Casual readers probably should pass on "Haunted," or at least go into it understanding what it is: a collection of shocking short stories strung together by uncharacteristically bland narration in a novel of horror without humanity.