“Who you are the moment,” Brandy said, “is just a story.”
What I needed was a new story.
Although jam-packed with fantastical characters and events, the typically Hollywood scenes preoccupied with drug use and drag-queen glitz give way to incredibly tender moments as the real suffering and intense feeling of the narrator character is revealed. There is no telling where this story will end up, as your perception shifts drastically from the first page till the last. If you love a novel that is thick with plot-twists and melodrama, punctuated by almost lyrical prose of intense feeling and gravitas, this is novel you will no doubt enjoy.
Invisible Monsters, Chuck Palahniuk’s second written novel –
although it was his third published – is a cinematic, dramatic and highly
visual example of his plot thick, fast-paced writing style. The book was
supposed to be his first published novel but it was considered too disturbing,
and was only given a second chance after the success of the author’s iconic
Fight Club.
The book is narrated by the essentially voiceless ex-model
Shannon McFarland who recounts her experiences after a gun-wound leaves her completely
mutilated, missing the lower half of her face. With a pre-op transvestite named
Brandy Alexander that she meets during her hospitalised recovery as an unlikely
sidekick, she embarks on a quest to exact revenge on the police sergeant
boyfriend she has abducted and stowed in the boot of her car, and his lover and
her best friend. Beginning with Shannon cradling the dying Brandy Alexander in
her arms, our main character takes us on a high-action, mad-cap journey of
revelation to explain how she came here.
Invisible Monsters is a novel about identity, beauty, dysfunction
and love, in a culture conceived entirely by Hollywood and soap operas. Written
in a non-liner format, Palahniuk further evokes the film-like the quality of
the book, using phrases such as “jump forward”, “jump back” and “flash, flash,
flash” to break up scenes. Just like the world of high fashion modelling Shannon is now
expelled from, nothing in this novel is what it seems. Dealing with in reality
which is deceptive, even the conspiring and intimate voice of the narrator
lies.
Although jam-packed with fantastical characters and events, the typically Hollywood scenes preoccupied with drug use and drag-queen glitz give way to incredibly tender moments as the real suffering and intense feeling of the narrator character is revealed. There is no telling where this story will end up, as your perception shifts drastically from the first page till the last. If you love a novel that is thick with plot-twists and melodrama, punctuated by almost lyrical prose of intense feeling and gravitas, this is novel you will no doubt enjoy.
“Who you are the moment,” Brandy said, “is just a story.”
What I needed was a new story.
Although jam-packed with fantastical characters and events, the typically Hollywood scenes preoccupied with drug use and drag-queen glitz give way to incredibly tender moments as the real suffering and intense feeling of the narrator character is revealed. There is no telling where this story will end up, as your perception shifts drastically from the first page till the last. If you love a novel that is thick with plot-twists and melodrama, punctuated by almost lyrical prose of intense feeling and gravitas, this is novel you will no doubt enjoy.
Invisible Monsters, Chuck Palahniuk’s second written novel –
although it was his third published – is a cinematic, dramatic and highly
visual example of his plot thick, fast-paced writing style. The book was
supposed to be his first published novel but it was considered too disturbing,
and was only given a second chance after the success of the author’s iconic
Fight Club.
The book is narrated by the essentially voiceless ex-model
Shannon McFarland who recounts her experiences after a gun-wound leaves her completely
mutilated, missing the lower half of her face. With a pre-op transvestite named
Brandy Alexander that she meets during her hospitalised recovery as an unlikely
sidekick, she embarks on a quest to exact revenge on the police sergeant
boyfriend she has abducted and stowed in the boot of her car, and his lover and
her best friend. Beginning with Shannon cradling the dying Brandy Alexander in
her arms, our main character takes us on a high-action, mad-cap journey of
revelation to explain how she came here.
Invisible Monsters is a novel about identity, beauty, dysfunction
and love, in a culture conceived entirely by Hollywood and soap operas. Written
in a non-liner format, Palahniuk further evokes the film-like the quality of
the book, using phrases such as “jump forward”, “jump back” and “flash, flash,
flash” to break up scenes. Just like the world of high fashion modelling Shannon is now
expelled from, nothing in this novel is what it seems. Dealing with in reality
which is deceptive, even the conspiring and intimate voice of the narrator
lies.
Although jam-packed with fantastical characters and events, the typically Hollywood scenes preoccupied with drug use and drag-queen glitz give way to incredibly tender moments as the real suffering and intense feeling of the narrator character is revealed. There is no telling where this story will end up, as your perception shifts drastically from the first page till the last. If you love a novel that is thick with plot-twists and melodrama, punctuated by almost lyrical prose of intense feeling and gravitas, this is novel you will no doubt enjoy.
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