I respect the author’s willingness to embrace the supernatural. The idea that a girl from a trailer park can paint domestic scenes of wealthy neighborhoods she’s never seen, but which turn out to exist, with such a level of detail that the subjects recognize themselves on the canvas, is as cool a concept as the nursery rhyme that kills entire families (see Lullabye). Yet the explanation, when it comes, is neither believable nor, more critically, interesting.
The characters are quirky, distinct, original, and wholly unsympathetic. Terrible things happen to most of them, and in every case my reaction was, “Okay, then.”
Palahniuk’s distinctive writing style is fully exercised, but not entirely successful. We’re to believe that the book is the diary of one of the characters, but the narrative voice changes awkwardly, and the text is too insightful and omniscient to possibly be the actual experience of the main character.
I save almost every book I read, but this one is going up on half.com.
Patronize these links, man:
posted to area: Fiction
updated: 2005-01-05 19:58:16
