Product Description

She's a catwalk model who has everything: a boyfriend, a career, a loyal best friend. But when a sudden motor 'accident' leaves her disfigured and incapable of speech, she goes from being the beautiful centre of attention to being an invisible monster, so hideous that no one will acknowledge she exists.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3467 in Books
• Published on: 2000-11-02
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

Review
A macabre fantasy, in which a deformed model is guided by a drag queen down the yellow brick road of her past to the Emerald City of her future - all dreamed up by cult novelist Palahniuk (Survivor, 1998) in one of his more baroque moods. There is a certain point in all bedroom farces and comedies of errors when you give up trying to figure out who's who and just go along for the ride. That might be the wisest strategy here. Our narrator is one Shannon McFarland (although she doesn't actually introduce herself until the very end), and she's a real mess, quite literally: she was injured in a mysterious shooting and has lost her entire jaw and most of her face. Oddly (or perhaps not so oddly?), Shannon's brother Shane was also disfigured in a suspicious accident when he dumped a load of trash into the fire and a can of hair spray exploded in his face. Shane eventually turned gay and was thrown out of the house by his parents, who later learned that he had died of AIDS. Shannon grew up, became a supermodel, and got herself engaged to Manus, a vice-squad detective who ditches Shannon after her accident and takes up with Evie Cotrell, a rich Texas bimbo who used to be Shannon's roommate and may have been a man early in her career. But never mind Erie; the one to watch is drag diva Brandy Alexander, who meets Shannon in the hospital and soon becomes her only friend. Brandy takes Shannon on the road, and - along with Brandy's boyfriend Alfa Romeo, who in reality may be Manus - the two steal drugs from expensive homes by calling realtors and posing as potential buyers. Eventually, Shannon discovers that Brandy is not who she appears to be, but by then we're ready for anything. Too clever by half a Chinese box of a novel fascinating in its intricacies but pretty hard to get a grip on whole. (Kirkus Reviews)

Booklist
‘This is a wild ride of a novel’

New York Newsday
‘Palahniuk is one of the freshest, most intriguing voices to appear in a long time.'

Customer Reviews

Full of super-vibrant characters and hallucinatory plot twists
This is a short novel with Palahniuk's characteristically punchy style, describing the connected realms of plastic surgery, transgenderism and the continuum between deformity and beauty via three larger-than-life characters on a drug-induced road trip. To me this was almost like two novels. The first two thirds are a little slow by Palahniuk's standards, but then it races to the end with incredible vigour, helped along by an almost hallucinatory set of wild plot twists and revelations. While for me the ideas and twists in Fight Club worked beautifully, here they seemed just a little over the top. Despite this, I definitely paused for thought on many occasions, and very much enjoyed the ride.

loved it!
My first introduction to Palahnuik was of course Fight Club. Simply loved this book and want to see it immortalized in film please... They've done Choke!

A fierce and strangely beautiful piece.
This novel is something that publishers were so shocked by that when Palahniuk first offered it up, nobody wanted to know. However, thankfully Fight Club opened doors for this genius of the macabre and we are now treated to a frantic and well thought out essential read.
Palahniuk's characters are well known for their nuances and it is a trait that makes his books stand out, but Monsters stands out more than others. He combines the shock factor with philosophy, and somehow creates beauty in horror. As the printed version of the ultimate avant-garde film, Monsters is not as you may believe an excuse for Palahniuk to shock (which he still does, in good measure) but instead it asks us questions as readers that are subtly placed but will keep you thinking as the pages turn. I'd reccommend this to anybody as a shining example of Palahniuk's work-this is the book to read if you want to enter a bleaker yet more interesting universe.