Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #10267 in Books
• Published on: 2006-05-04
• Binding: Paperback
• 432 pages

Sunday Telegraph
"Connoisseurs of bad taste …will devour Haunted."

Daily Mail, Simon Shaw
I laughed until my ribs ached.

Synopsis
"Haunted" is a novel made up of stories: twenty-three of them to be precise. Twenty-two of the most horrifying, hilarious, mind-blowing, stomach-churning tales you'll ever encounter - sometimes all at once. They are told by the people who have all answered the ad headlined 'Artists Retreat: Abandon your life for three months'. They are led to believe that here they will leave behind all the distractions of 'real life' that are keeping them from creating the masterpiece that is in them. But 'here' turns out to be a cavernous and ornate old theatre where they are utterly isolated from the outside world - and where heat and power and, most importantly, food are in increasingly short supply. And the more desperate the circumstances become, the more desperate the stories they tell - and the more devious their machinations become to make themselves the hero of the inevitable play/movie/non-fiction blockbuster that will certainly be made from their plight. "Haunted" is at one level a satire of reality television.

It draws from a great literary tradition - "The Canterbury Tales", "The Decameron", the English storytellers in the Villa Diodati who produced, among other works, "Frankenstein" - to tell an utterly contemporary tale of people desperate that their story be told at any cost. Appallingly entertaining, "Haunted" is Chuck Palahniuk at his finest - which means his most extreme and his most provocative.

Customer Reviews

Fight Club on Steriods
Chuck Palahniuk is most known as the author of Fight Club, the book that became the movie with Brad Pitt and Ed Norton; and overnight Palahniuk had a cult following. Erie, scary, and terrifying; if I had to use three words to describe this book, that would be it. Robert A. Heinlien the classic Science Fiction author once quipped "One man's theology is another man's belly laugh." Of this book I would state, "One man's perversion is another man's pleasure." This book will hit both, depending on who you are and your sensibilities.

This book is a collection of short stories, written by characters who are on a writer's retreat. They all responded to an ad to "give up three months of your life and create the masterpiece you have always said you would". Each of the 18 respondents had an idea of where they would be going - to a large country estate, a camp in the woods; yet the reality is they get locked into an old ornate theatre house. They have food, shelter, and facilities, yet all doors are locked, all windows bricked over and no way out.

From there the book becomes a cross between Fear Factor, Survivor and your most feared horror story. We see the depths to which people will descend to achieve fame and riches. Palahniuk, during the current book tour, was reading the first story called `Guts' and to date there have been 63 people who have passed out with many people being injured falling into book cases in book stores. This book will at times, turn your stomach, but will give you an understanding of the darkest side of human nature.
Readers beware! This book is like the fight club movie on super steroids.

(First Printed in Imprint 2005-06-03 as 'Fight Club author gets Haunted')

Gut wrenching...... but funny
As a contemporary writer Chuck Palahniuk is about as talented as is imaginable. Haunted unfortunately is not one of his best works. In saying that, you shouldn't be put off as even mediocre Palahniuk is better than 95% of most modern writers' best offerings. He is an author who isn't frightened to force upon you his own sense of taste, which at times borders on shocking; this however is something to be celebrated.

Haunted is pure Palahniuk horror/fantasy and in the many short stories contained in the novel the form is perfectly presented drawing you into what is essentially a rather sick voyeurism trip. Each of the characters, all essentially hateful for one reason or another, are allowed to give account of their "short story" and this is effectively the vehicle on which the book rides. During the accounts were exposed to the writer's dark humour which is difficult not to appreciate especially when the context with which it is given is fully recognised. It's often said that the Americans are low on irony compared to us British. Palahniuk has irony down to a tee my dears.

Good but not his best
Other reviewers have given an overview of the structure. I enjoyed reading this book but in places I felt that the author was trying too hard to shock at the expense of the story (or stories) I would recommend it to anyone with the prerequisite strong stomach however it is not the author's best work.