Fight Club Book Review

Rawr Reader,

    Hello there my fabulous readers. (Redundant and I'm sorry.) Happy March and my first read this month will be over Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk. Here is the synopsis by Goodreads:

An underground classic since its first publication in 1996, Fight Club is now recognized as one of the most original and provocative novels published in this decade. Chuck Palahniuk's darkly funny first novel tells the story of a godforsaken young man who discovers that his rage at living in a world filled with failure and lies cannot be pacified by an empty consumer culture. Relief for him and his disenfranchised peers comes in the form of secret after-hours boxing matches held in the basements of bars. Fight Club is the brainchild of Tyler Durden, who thinks he has found a way for himself and his friends to live beyond their confining and stultifying lives. But in Tyler's world there are no rules, no limits, no brakes.

Reference:
   This movie is pretty popular and I have started it a year or so ago but lost interest and never finished it. I got a coupon from B&N and didn't want to get another book for myself so I asked my best friend if there was a book she'd like. If you were thinking this is the book she wanted, you are correct. I got this book for her and since we live far from each other I haven't been able to give it to her yet. I figure I might as well read it before I never see it again. :)

Review:

(safe for those who haven't read this book yet)

    Alright I'm in a fiction technique course this semester and a lately we've been talking about characterization and how the narrator translates the story to the reader. In this story, the main narrator who is never named, tells this story through indirect quotations which was unusual for most books I read, and surprisingly fit well with the rhythm of the story and also wasn't difficult to read. The chapters aren't very long, the book being hardly past 200 pages, so if you're really into the story it could be read within a day.

   Now aside from the technical parts of the book, this book for me is hard to place genre-wise. In the back of my book, it places the book as a satire which I've only ever read one before-- Candide by Voltaire (I love this book)-- and I still don't see why. I guess I'm not very perceptive to world problems since I avoid anything news related and that's why I don't see the satirical themes. It does raise awareness to drugs, chemicals, guns, death, depression,  etc. Man in 200 pages this book covers a lot. 

    The main characters are the unnamed narrator (which I didn't even really notice didn't have a name), Tyler Durden, and Marla Singer. My favorite chapter has to be chapter 6-- which is where Fight Club is first introduced and I enjoyed the entire chapter-- being one of the longer ones too-- and I found it was an important stepping stone to the narrator's and Tyler Durden's relationship. Yes I'll admit this book had it's slow moments, well, the middle part of the book had to have been the worst to read but it all tied together by the last chapters. I have to say that this book became irresistible to put down in the last 60 pages (out of 200 pages I think that's a good way to begin the last push to the finish line).

   While if you haven't seen the movie or read the book yet I won't ruin anything, but if you do decide to see the movie or read the book, the ending is really surprising. I love love love the ending. This author is a really unique writer and I'd definitely be interested in reading another one of his novels. I think if you liked this book, and you're a young adult fan, you should read The Vanishing Game by Kate Kae Myers.

   I need to say this, I still a surprised how much I liked this book. Like I said above, I tried watching the movie and I couldn't finish it. And I'm a huge movie buff, so that is just more reason how books are always better than the movie. I'm sitting here writing this review and I'm still baffled how much I liked this book; it was better than I thought. Maybe I'll get to finishing the movie one of these days. 

   Maybe.

I give this book 4/5 stars. The reason why it isn't 5 stars is because it had it's slow times and I wouldn't read it multiple times. I would recommend for others to read. 

Author's Quote:
“It's only after we've lost everything that we're free to do anything.” 
― Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club

If You'd Like to Check Out My Goodreads:
http://www.goodreads.com/user/show/7170636-nicole

Next To Read:
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien

River Song's Spoilers:

(unsafe for those who haven't read this book yet, so don't read this section)

    Okay I admit, reading into this story I knew that Tyler wasn't real. I saw a part of the movie and I don't remember if someone told me or I read it somewhere (I didn't get that far into the movie), so I guess that's why the ending wasn't as surprising as it should have been with me, but I do love the ending. I love it for the fact that about 50-60 pages from there--when for me the story started to become interesting-- it was when after Tyler's absence from the narrator had begun to take a toll on his life, he returns into his life in a very unexpected way-- he was Tyler. Also I loved how Mr. Palahniuk didn't just drop that fact and end the story, he kept him in there and Tyler comes back as his darker more free side, being another part of his personality, and begins to threatening the narrator. And the end when he literally vanishes instead of the more subtle leaving the room when Marla came to see him, it's the narrator's epiphany. 

    The slow parts of the book was I guess when Tyler began to take the narrator to his jobs with him like when they catered at events and when he began to make the soaps and when the space monkeys became the major components of the story, but it turns out it was all important to the end. I loved how insomnia turned out to be the door for Tyler's existence in the first place. I don't have the disorder but I thought it was an interesting way for the two disorders to be connected. Maybe I'm just naiive on that knowledge but I like the twist. Also when Palahniuk reveals when Tyler came into the narrator's life was after he met Marla and it was his stronger side of himself that was able to try and start a relationship with her. Sure, they both were screwed up, but I liked how screwed up they were for each other, it's meant to be. Well, until the whole him killing himself at the end. 

  

Until Next Time,
Nicole Ciel