Product Description

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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #10147 in Books
• Published on: 2000-08-03
• Original language: English
• 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.

Amazon.co.uk Review
Tender Branson is the last surviving member of the Creedish Death Cult and finds himself suddenly famous, at the epicentre of a vast freak-show. In response, he commandeers a 747 jet, empties it of passengers and flies it on a collision course for the Australian outback. However, before the kamakazi landing, he decides to dictate his entire story to the flight's black-box recorder. Palahniuk offers a heady mix of startling satire and deadpan humour, with Branson moving from a mindless, obedient servant to a high-gloss media mogul. Survivor seeks to record one man's mental undoing and the result is an unnerving yet hilarious observation on cult life and media obsession with the outlandish. Whether Branson's apocalypse is fulfilling his belief's obligations or the media circus is, the harshest truth of all is "… the only difference between suicide and martyrdom is press coverage." --Danny Graydon

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

Weird and wonderful
This book starts and ends with Tender Branson's suicide attempt - by throwing a Boing 747 into the dessert (after releasing all the passengers and crew). Everything in-between is him telling his story ... being brought up in a religious cult, of which he is the last [known] surviving member and a having become celebrity-of-sorts for it.

The book is beautifully written: Dark, angst-ridden, funny, unpredictable, and addictive, it could well keep you up all night.

More ambitious than Fight Club, but not as successful
Tender Branson is the last surviving member of the Creedish Death Cult, a radical religious group that have committed mass suicide simply because the Elders, or ruling men and women, have ordered them to do so. We all know that this is not entirely fiction - the same thing has happened several times around the world. And why hasn't Tender Branson joined his peers? Because, like the main character from the excellent debut novel Fight Club, he wants more from life.
If this short description sounds interesting to you, wait until you experience the various twists and turns that the plot takes. Palahniuk provides these in abundance - although there is no one real convention-defying plot twist as there was in fight club, that forces you to re-read the entire thing.
Also, it is sometimes difficult to understand just what Palahniuk is trying to get at in the story, and the plot is not always as engaging as you might expect from the excellent author. But regardless of this, if you enjoyed Fight Club, this one is definitely worth a read. If you haven't read Fight Club, if you are a fan of Kurt Vonnegut or Don Delillo, Palahniuk's highly original writing style should appeal to you.

Dark, disturbing, humorous, engaging
Chuck Palahniuk's "Survivor" takes the reader into the world of Tender Branson, the last surviving member of a suicide cult. As the book opens, Branson, the narrator, has hijacked a Boeing 747 with the intention of crashing it, with himself on board, into the Australian outback. Having emptied the plane of passengers, he proceeds to tell his account of his life - ostensibly as it 'really happened' - into the flight recorder, from his childhood under the repressive authority of the Creedish Church to being propelled years later to media stardom as the last survivor.

The first thing that the reader will notice is that the book begins with Chapter 47 on page 289 and counts its way down to Chapter 1 and page 1 at the end, a device which serves to constantly remind the reader that Branson's last minutes are ticking away even as he retells his story, lending an air of foreboding to his words. Palahniuk also has Branson constantly backtrack upon himself in a way which mimics such a stream-of-consciousness dictation. The writing style throughout is informal and extremely sketchy as regards description. Even the names of key characters are never revealed - including the government caseworker appointed to prevent Tender from following the rest of his cult members into suicide, and the agent who later drives him to stardom. On the other hand, by having Tender talk at great length about apparently unimportant and superfluous things such as how to correctly eat a lobster, Palahniuk gives us a sense of Tender's quirky and disturbed nature, almost as if he exists slightly out of tune with reality.

This is a book which tackles big themes: birth and death, murder and suicide, free will and determinism, belief and unbelief, truth and falsehood. Palahniuk conjures up a vividly dystopian and disturbing world, which only grows darker as Tender is drawn within the media culture - a culture which proves every bit as restrictive, false, twisted and soul-destroying as the Creedish society that he used to belong to. What really engages the reader, however, is the strength of the main characters: firstly Tender, who struggles throughout the story to find meaning in his life and to become truly free; and secondly his friend Fertility Hollis, who claims to be able to see the future and acts as Tender's guide. It is their relationship which forms the backbone of the story right up until its climax in the final chapter.

Pacy, inventive, often funny, "Survivor" is a fine (though dark) book, and one that I can easily recommend.