Just for the record, this is one book you don’t want to curl up in bed with. If you didn’t like Fight Club, then I don’t think you want to pick this up on your next book purchase.
Palahniuk doesn’t hesitate to introduce you to the sickness that inhabits Waytansea (wait and see!) Island. His language, of course very foul, is also very crisp and raw. Or maybe it’s just because I like writers who like to keep things short and punchy. But anyway, Waytansea Island suffers from what most islands suffer from – tourists, and loads of them. The protaganist? Enter Misty Kleinman – a waitress working at Waytansea Hotel who just so happens to be addicted to painkillers and alcohol and is also fat and lumpy in all the wrong places. She also happens to be a gifted artist, till she met her now comatosed husband, a self-gratifying artist with nipples pierced with rusty rhinestone pins.
Palahniuk puts a real sordid touch to the whole starving artist story: poor Misty is posioned and forced by her husband’s family and the Waytansea community to keep painting her perfectly symmetrical drawings. She is the key in cleansing Waytansea of the tourists – on the day of the gallery opening they will set it on fire. How else to remove the glint of a once popular holiday destination, right?
There are of course more unbelievable twists in the whole story, and you wonder how is it possible to tackle them all, but then again it’s Palahniuk…one should only expect everything out of the ordinary. Not recommended for readers who like to relate to the characters of a story, but a must read if you like surprises of the most mind-boggling variety.
Contributed by: D.C
