Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #670 in Books
• Published on: 2000
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
We can more or less deduce the following of the main protagonist in Choke; Victor Mancini is a ruthless con artist. Victor Mancini is a medical school dropout who's taken a job playing an Irish indentured servant in a colonial-era theme park in order to help care for his Alzehimer's-afflicted mother. Victor Mancini is a sex addict. Victor Mancini is a direct descendant of Jesus Christ. Welcome, once again, to the world of Chuck Palahniuk.

"Art never comes from happiness" says Mancini's mother only a few pages into the novel. Given her own dicey and melodramatic style of parenting, you would think that her son's life would be chock full of nothing but art. Alas, that's not the case--in the fine tradition of Oedipus, Stephen Dedalus and Anthony Soprano, Victor hasn't quite reconciled his issues with his mother. Instead, he's trawling sexual-addiction recovery meetings for dates and purposely choking in restaurants for a few moments of attention. Longing for a hug, in other words, he's settling for the Heimlich.

Thematically, this is pretty familiar Palanhiuk territory. It would be a pity to disclose the surprises of the plot but suffice to say that what we have here is a little bit of Tom Robbins's Another Roadside Attraction, a little bit of Don DeLillo's The Day Room and, well, a little bit of Fight Club. Just as with that book and the other two novels under Palahniuk's belt, we get a smattering of gloriously unflinching sound bites, such as this sceptical slight on prayer chains: "A spiritual pyramid scheme. As if you can gang up on God. Bully him around."

Whether this is the novel that will break Palanhiuk into the mainstream is hard to say. For a fourth book, in fact, the ratio of iffy, "dude"-intensive dialogue to interesting and insightful passages is a little higher than we might wish. In the end though, the author's nerve and daring pull the whole thing off--just. And what's next for Victor Mancini's creator? Leave the last word to him, declaring as he does on the final pages: "Maybe it's our job to invent something better ... What it's going to be, I don't know." --Bob Michaels, Amazon.com

Brett Easton Ellis
`Maybe our generation has found its Don DeLillo'

Independent on Sunday
`Immensely entertaining…An extremely funny account of an outsider stuck inside America.'

Customer Reviews

One Of My Favourite Books Ever!
i fell in love with chuck's style of writing when i was about 14 and picked up a copy of fight club because i loved the film and wanted to see how the book compared. since then, i've been completely hooked on his work but i'd have to say that choke is my favourite of his novels so far. as some of the other reviewers have said, it's not for people with weak stomachs or children but i'd also like to add that it's not for people without a fair bit of imagination. a chuck palahniuk novel is always a massive extension of reality and that's what i love about them. the humour is sick, dark and surreal and nothing is ever what it seems to be. it's not something i'd recommend to everyone but if you're looking for something with plenty of twists and are willing to see the funny side in the weird and wonderful then this is the book for you.

Brilliant
Strange, but brilliant and very, very funny. So glad I read it.

5/5

Not going to be for everyone
This book is not going to be for everyone, the way McCrae's "Katzenjammer" is not, or even the works of Sedaris. The humor is unique and while Mr. P has a great sense of humor, he's also capable of great darkness. As with all his works, they're wound around a character who is the very definition of strange. "Choke" was my first Palahnuik novel, but it certainly won't be my last.