Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2390 in Books
• Published on: 2000-08-03
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Survivor, the second novel by Chuck Palahniuk--whose debut novel The Fight Club was widely received to critical acclaim--is a deranged comedy of nightmares, a groin-kick at Western society's worst excesses. This is satire at its best, and Palahniuk handles it all with a distinct, engaging prose style and with plot devices that keep the pages turning long after your tea break should have finished.

From the very opening of the book Palahniuk lets us know that his narrator, Tender Branson, the last surviving member of a religious death cult, is on a path to self-destruction. The tension in this book lies not in the outcome, because like Tender's soothsaying friend Fertility, we can see it coming 289 pages away, instead it lies in the intricate plot that takes Tender from farm boy to media celebrity and ruin.

This is a novel that examines what happens when religion meets the overindulgences of our consumerist society. In the world that the author envisages, which is all too real in the light of tragedies such as Waco and the Heaven's Gate suicides, the only acceptable religions are those that can be successfully marketed and controlled at a corporate level; the small separatist models of religion are superfluous, and self-destruct. This is also a look at religion itself, at how it can enslave as many people as it appears to liberate. A comic novel that deals with the most serious issues of society, Survivor places Palahniuk among the most daring and technically able writers of his generation.

Adam said the first step most cultures take to making you a slave is to castrate you ... the cultures that don't castrate you to make you a slave, they castrate your mind.

Synopsis
Tender Branson, the last surviving member of the Creedish death cult, has commandeered a Boeing 747, emptied of passengers, in order to tell his story to the plane's black box before it crashes. Brought up by the repressive cult and, like all Creedish younger sons, hired out as a domestic servant, Tender finds himself suddenly famous when his fellow cult members all commit suicide. As media messiah, he ascends to the very top of the freak-show heap before finally and apocalyptically spiralling out of control.

From the Publisher
Survivor - a prophetic howl of outrage from the X Generation
I was blown away by Survivor when I first started reading it. Sassy, sharp and similar to Fight Club in it's controversial take on contemporary society, Survivor is the second book from an author who is rapidly becoming a cult icon. But don't just take my word for it, here's what the reviewers have said:-

'Survivor has, if this is possible, even more millenial angst sparking across the sentence gaps than Fight Club' ESQUIRE

'A vital, vibrant writer' UNCUT

'A comedy of horrors, a pantomimic romp through America's obsession with secrets and confessions' ARENA

Survivor attack the roots of modern disillusion with a skill and veracity that will restore your faith in contemporary fiction. An important book.

Survivor will be featured on Channel 4's late night book show, PULP.

Customer Reviews

Survivor mp3 edition
Other reviews here cover the book itself, so I won't bother to repeat what's already been said, suffice to say that I'm a fan of Chuck Palahniuk and along with fight club this is my personal favourite of his books.

I just wanted to say a few words on the audiobook edition. As any fan of audiobooks will know a bad reading can ruin the effect of even the greatest prose, so I'm glad to say that isn't the case here. The performance is subtle and adroit, perfectly complementing the wry humour. Like a good film adaptation, where you can never re-read the novel with picturing a perfectly cast actor, it would be impossible for me to now re-read survivor without hearing it in Paul Michael Garcia's dead-pan delivery.

And given that the narration of the novel is in the form of a man recording his story into an aircraft's black box recorder, it makes an audio version all the more appropriate.

It consists of about 50 or so files, split by chapter in mp3 format at bitrate 128 kbps.

A near perfect read
After reading Fight Club I was curious about Survivor, but shied away due to some negative reviews I'd read. What a waste. Survivor is wickedly funny commentary on our societal obsession with fame & fortune. It was just outrageous enough to be believable, and Palahniuk never shied away from the tougher parts of our protagonist's story. From start to finish a near perfect read... long live Palahniuk!

You WILL survive
Palahniuk's works are so often compared to Sedaris, Christopher Moore, and Jackson McCrae, but I have to disagree even though I like those authors and would recommend their books. Palahniuk's works are very complex and well thought out, and his character of Tender Branson in SURVIVOR is one of my favorites.

The plotline of SURVIVOR is not that complicated---at first. Tender is on a plane with nothing more than a black box. He plans to recite his life story into said box, but as with all C.P novels, things don't go as planned.

The biggest problem with Palahniuk's works is that you can't tell everyone just how great they are without giving away key elements to the story. Everything in his books will come as a surprise and telling almost any detail will give something away. So you just have to trust people when they say his stuff is great----off the wall, way off, but great. Of the three books I've recently read (Moore's "Practical Demon Keeping" and MCCrae's "Katzenjammer") SURVIVOR has been my favorite.