Thursday, September 20, 2001
Title: Invisible Monsters
Author: Chuck Palahniuk
Publisher: Vintage
I would like to be able to say that I had found Chuck's work before, but I didn't. Fight Club was my first clue that he existed and with that it was also the first of his books that I read. With the publication of his fourth novel Choke I've got round to going back to his earlier work. I had nearly picked up Invisible Monsters before so it was my choice this time.
Invisible Monsters is the story of a model who has been mutilated in an "accident". From a model with a potentially promising career she has lost half her face and now people can't bear to look at her, becoming treated like an "invisible monster". In the hospital she is befriended by a gorgeous trans-sexual, something of a cult of personality. At the same time she is presented with her ex-best friend and her ex-fiancé, who have been sleeping together behind her back and either one could be responsible for her current condition.
The story is told in jump cuts, allowing confusion to be established while at the same time slowly piecing together events in an order designed to allow the truth of situations to have the maximum impact. The story starts with the culmination of events and then flashes variously between events. In this way we learn about narrator - her brother who died of aids and how she hated him, how this affected her relations with her parents, and how her past relates to her relations with her boyfriend and best friend. Sequentially there is then the aftermath of her disfigurement - her options of extensive surgery and how she interacts with the world. How she then ends up this long road trip around America with the cult of Brandy Alexander - the woman to be who redefines the lives of her and the man that is with them at every stop.
This is a mad, drug heavy journey where the characters seem to be striving towards a self-destructive future, revenge and rejection. The style of the novel is to a degree intended to be disorientating. So that when the author drops a substantial nugget of information on you it takes you by surprise, but to the same extent the clues have been there already. The author plays us along from start to end and through all the jumps along the way, with his well toned, witty writing and his attacks on expectation. There are some great scenes in here, leaving the reader being both shocked and amused - prime examples being the explicit conversations regarding gay sex the narrator's parents have at family get together in response to the death of their son. A work that has set me up just nicely for picking up Choke.
RVWR: PTR
September 2001
