Haunted A Novel of Stories

This book is the first one by Chuck Palahniuk that i’ve read. I was very excited because i love reading psycho horrors, yes it’s shocking but still enjoyable in a very bizzare but realistic way. People are horrible, even though this is a fiction, stuff like this happen all the time all over the world, even worse. It was very entertaining and satirically funny and kept me reading constantly. I’ve read couple of passages to my friend and she stopped me, didn’t wanna hear more, so I guess it’s not for everyone. There were some parts i didn’t want to talk about. About in the middle of the book i got a little bit bored but i’m happy i finished it because the end was very good. These kinds of books are my favorite. Maybe because we all have some traumas to accept and live with them. I would check trigger warnings on this book.

A collection of short stories of short stories surrounding topic of bodily fluids, gore, depravity and characters who are anything but likable. That being said, as much as the story at the centre of the novel, which contains all of said characters in one place, is perhaps a bit lackluster, the short stories (although not tying in much to the main events as one might expect from the blurb) offer quite a colorful spectrum of the human experience.

Content: 17 individuals participate in a secret writing course which takes place in an abandoned theater where they are locked-in for three months. Though they live under harmless conditions at first, they decide to torture themselves in order to sell their story as soon as the experiment is over. The story alternates between the frame story and a short story by one of the participants. The atmosphere in the theater is well described. The reader can constantly suffer with the participants and feel the solitude and the frowst of the location. But that is also the reason why I missed some tension from time to time. The short stories on the other hand were always a pleasure to read because they are so different (not only the topics but also their genres) but still have the special style that I expect from something that was written by Chuck Palahniuk. I'm sure that I wont read the whole book again in the next years but I may have a look at some of the short stories again from time to time. This was the second book by Chuck Palahnkiuk that I have read and it definetely whet my appetite for his other writings.