Chuck Palahniuk's Entrancing "Lullaby"

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	• Lullaby Chuck Palahniuk Anchor, 2002 - 272 pages average customer review:based on 267 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Chuck Palahniuk's Entrancing "Lullaby"

What if a disease existed that you could catch through your ears?

That is just the case in Chuck Palahniuk's "Lullaby." The book begins by introducing the protagonist, Carl Streator, and his recent journalism assignment, Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. Throughout his investigations, he finds a single constant: the reoccurrence of a children's book, "Poems and Rhymes from Around the World," open to Page 27, at every death scene. On this page, a culling song is found, an ancient African chant that is deadly to anyone who hears it. Streator memorizes the poem, and with it acquires the ability to unconsciously kill anyone that annoys him even the slightest bit with a single thought. He eventually meets Helen Hoover Boyle, a woman who lost a son to the culling song many years before, and who sells haunted houses for a living. Together, they go on a trip around the country to dispose of every copy of the book in existence in order to put a stop to the threat of this lethal verbal disease.

Chuck Palahniuk wrote "Lullaby" in 2001, following the murder of his father. He was asked to testify about the extent of his suffering in the murderer, Dale Shackleford's, trial, and make a statement about his opinion on the death penalty. He had to decide if he really wanted this man to die. Palahniuk relates his own experiences to the book by stating that "what had started out as a dark, funny book about witchcraft became a story about the constant power struggle that is life." Clearly, Palahniuk's own life experiences played a significant role in the writing of "Lullaby."

For the most part, I enjoyed this book very much. Palahniuk's writing style is very different, and the way he uses details and character developments are extremely effective. I thought that this novel was an outstanding portrait of human nature, pinpointing aspects like the need for power and the longing for acceptance. Overall, "Lullaby" is an exciting and an insightful novel that will appeal to almost any reader.

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I just finished reading the novel.

Of course some people are going to gasp and frown disapprovingly at Lullaby-understandable, the novel's blunt and stark insights about society and its morals can cause discomfort and denial. Still, Lullaby makes it clear that Palahniuk is one of the most exceptional writers of our time-his ability to address society's moral dilemmas and stuggles is done in an incredible stylistic and insightful manner that I have not witnessed for quite a while.

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An interesting vision

Reading Lullaby, I kept thinking of Thomas Pynchon's Crying of Lot 49. They share not only aloof prose, post-modern juxtaposition, and comically baroque detail, but also the same sense of order just below the surface of ordinary life. In Lullaby, that order is embodied in "a culling song," a rhyme that--when read from a children's book, recited, or even thought--kills the listener. Behind that central premise is another--if something like this can exist, where does it come from and what sort of world are we really living in? "Paranoia" is the simple term for that feeling, but it's bigger than that. Once you see a new truth--and the prose reinforces that everything is connected--how can you discount anything as insignificant?

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Mind-Blowing

This was the third book I read by Palahniuk, and although not 'Fight Club' it was sucha reflief after the mess that was 'Diary'. This novel was engrossing in itself, although slightly, how do I say this, well lets just say that at first I thought the whole Idea was a little on the lame side, but as I read it got more and more fullfilling. The story revolves around Carl, a journalist doing a series of articles on SIDS cases, crib-death, and he finds a simularity to many cases, and that simularity is a 'culling song', an ancient African song that was sand to peacfully put loved ones to sleep in death, you know, so they won't suffer. Well for some reason this song is in childrens poem books and is being read to infants who are then dieing for no aparent reason. Enter Helen, a real estate agent who sells possessed real estate. She wants to help. So along with two wannabe-witches they travel the states looking for every one of these books to destroy them. Throw in a 'book of shadows', some sex while in flight and one heck of a crazy ending (I think my favorite ending of his so far) and you have some classic Palahniuk. Chuck is a talented story teller. This was a great book, great story, and although not as great as 'Fight Club' or 'Invisible Monsters' it will still keep your mouth watering for more.

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Another solid hit by Palahniuk

This is the 4th Palahniuk book I've read. An oft-repeated criticism is that his style is repetitive in the way he uses repeated catch phrases from his first-person narrator and then has an amazing knock-you-off-your-feet twist at the end. My counter to that is to not read all of his books in one sitting. I take a few months off between each one, so I can see the stylistic similarities, but I never get sick of his style.

This is a terrific novel, but there is no gut-wrenching twist at the end. You see the ending coming towards you and the pieces of the puzzle all start to fall together.

Palahniuk manages to shock the reader with necrophilia, death, taking advantage of consumers, among other things. This book is nowhere near as disgusting as Choke, however, and I found it easy to stomach. I learned a lot about how cows are slaughtered, how journalists operate, the introduction of non-native species and how the bring havoc to the environment, SIDs, and much more trivia that Palahniuk worked into the prose.

Invisible Monsters is my all-time favorite Palahniuk, so be sure to give that one a shot, too.

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reviews: 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, page 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20

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