My first and last Palahniuk book. I might make an exception for Fight Club because I loved the movie, but my hatred toward this novel is really making me avoid any other novel of his. I'm not even going to write a full review anymore. I honestly just wasted my time finishing this piece of...

”Putem trece prin viață lăsându-i pe alții să ne spună cine suntem. Dacă suntem sănătoși sau nebuni. Sfinți sau dependenți sexual. Eroi sau victime. Lăsând istoria să decidă cât de buni sau de răi suntem.
Lăsând trecutul să hotărască viitorul.
Sau putem hotărî și singuri.
Și poate că ține de noi să inventăm ceva mai bun.”

Another Chuck Palahniuk book finished. Another round of therapy needed.

I enjoyed reading this one. I thought it was disturbing, graphic, intense, and funny. I didn't consider any of the characters to be very likable. I was still entertained while I read this. The author always has strong opinions about society and social norms which always fill his books. You can count on it being a wild ride when you read a Chuck Palahniuk book! It'll probably be awhile before I read another one from him. I need time to recover from this one! Chuck Palahniuk if your goal is to shock and offend, you're probably one of the best at it!

2018 review: Why have I now read this book 3 times? Why? I think because the idea of a Palahniuk book about a sex-addict who works in a Pilgrim's re-enactment park, trying to pay his dying mother's hospital bills by also purposefully choking in restaurants to get 'savior' mentors and sponsors, is a really compelling premise, that each time read this, I expect more,, maybe feel that I missed something last time I read it?

This is a typically Chuck episodic, out of sync, dark humorous journey. So what's wrong with the book? It's the repeated realisation each read, that no matter how many times I visit this reality, I don't care about the characters or what happens to them, and just read this for the dark humour. A weak 6 out of 12 from me.

87th book of 2020.

I read Fight Club at about 17 years old, and thought it had the potential to change my life, at least. I was two years into training Wing Tsun Kung Fu then, and had a fairly capitalist/materialist lifestyle, which has now gone. I read it, very much wanting to believe there was some sort of Tyler Durden within me. I think maybe there is a little in most people.

Anyway, Choke is not Fight Club. Maybe if I read the latter now I wouldn't like it either, but I found this book disappointing. It felt as if Palahniuk was desperately trying to cram a lot of ideas in one, like trying to get rid of crap scrabble letters in poor words, hoping to pick some better ones out the bag as a result. There was too much going on in this book. The relationship with his mother could have been its own book, and more sensitive, but instead it was thrown in this messy stir-fry of sex addiction, collecting rocks, choking in restaurants for money... There was so much going on it became disorientating. The language was corny and unlikeable. The characters were flat. I sat down for several hour sessions to clear through this.

I think the only line in the whole book I liked was: "Anything you can acquire," she says, "is only another thing you'll lose." And maybe I liked it so much because it's quite Fight Club-like.

Semen is described as white soldiers and his penis is his dog.

There are boring, eye-roll-inducing lines like this: Love is bullshit. Emotion is bullshit. I am a rock. A jerk. I'm an uncaring asshole and proud of it. It sounds so full of angst and immature.

But worse still, Let God prove me wrong. He can nail me with a lightning bolt. I'm going to take her on the frigging alter. I mean, come on.

Palahniuk uses a technique throughout this whole book where the narrator says something and then follows it up with, See also. For example:

and yeah, okay, we did it in her car in the parking lot about this time last year.
See also: Caren, RN.
See also: Jenine, CNA.

Which, at first was a nice recurring phrase like Vonnegut's so it goes, but after a while got tiresome like everything else in this book.

In conclusion, just read Fight Club, or anything else with lots of sex and drifting.
See also: Less Than Zero
See also: The Rules of Attraction
See also: Money
See also: Crash

Victor spends his days working as an indentured servant in Colonial America. He spends his nights rotating between attending sex addicts anonymous and faking his own untimely demise by choking in high-end restaurants. Once saved, Victor then maintains contact with said rescuers in the hopes that they will send him enough money to cover his mother’s monthly nursing home bill.

Chuck Palahniuk is a very polarizing figure in modern day literature – you either love him or hate him. I fall into the absolutely adore him category, but I still find it nearly impossible to write a review for his books. His brain works in such mysterious ways that a synopsis is the only safe bet to prevent spoilage of his masterpiece. Let’s just say that, once again, his words read like poetry of the most demented order.

So I'm obviously in the minority here. Not even. I'm below the minority here - if such a thing exists.

My God the raving I've heard about this novel. How incredible it is, the genius of Chuck Palahniuk in a book they said. Literary genius that man. Yep, I believed all of it. I believed it because I had read Fight Club, and I had read Diary, and I devoured both. I enjoyed his books so much that I thought, wow. This must be SOMETHING ELSE!

It was indeed...something else. It was revolting. Sickening. Absolutely, bizarrely, disgusting. I hated all the characters, I hated the storyline. I hated it all. I couldn't make it through the book without wanting to "choke" on my own bile.

The premise is somewhat interesting, you could say. A sexaholic whose mother is in the hospital dying, and to pay for her medical bills, he pretends to choke on a piece of food, therefore conning diners into assuming they have saved his life and forever indebted to him. I mean, I'm sorry, I don't know if this is actually the case, and that is how these things happen, but from where I'm sitting, it feels like it should be THE OTHER WAY AROUND. If someone saved YOUR life, shouldn't YOU be indebted to THEM. I've already paid you enough by saving your life, why am I suddenly obligated to pay for everything else as well? I'm just baffled here people.

Not to mention of course the vile, disgusting prose that Palahniuk likes to take us through, like Victor cleaning his friends face and hair from piss or feces or vomit or taking us through a detailed description of someone picking their zits or some such thing. I mean, sure, you've achieved your point Chuck, but I wasn't impressed. Instead all I did was skim through quickly because I couldn't stomach it.

Sigh. I'm just going to stop now, because really what's the point? I hated it. That's all there is to it. I didn't find anything redeeming in this novel. Nothing creative or unique. Whereas Fight Club had me on the edge of my seat, Choke had me wincing in distaste.

So glad it's over.

-De la lucha eterna entre el poder de la trama y el de los momentos de la misma.-

Género. Novela.

Lo que nos cuenta. Victor vive su vida como puede, alternando su trabajo como figurante en un parque temático con la esperanza de que sus fingidas asfixias en restaurantes le generen ingresos, mientras trata de entender a su madre a pesar de su enfermedad mental, de conocer más de su pasado y de buscar ayuda profesional para manejar su satiriasis.

¿Quiere saber más de este libro, sin spoilers? Visite:

http://librosdeolethros.blogspot.com/...

Hmm, interesting.Hmm, that's hilarious. That's grotesque, vulgar, and hideous. Did I mention, it's unattractive?
And, it's also a let down. It doesn't deliver whatever it aimed. I read a book for the story and, I'm all for "it's not about the destination,but the journey" sorta books, but not Palanhiuk's. The whole book has to pay off by the end, because his gimmicky narrative style doesn't allow him to slip at that stage. At least for me. It's a beautiful bunch of fascinating phrases and ideas, but failed spectacularly to take off as a whole. In retrospect, there's so much of superfluous narrative threads here, either to pad the book or to confuse the reader, or for both.

"Μπορούμε να περάσουμε τη ζωή μας ολόκληρη αφήνοντας τον κόσμο να μας υπαγορεύει ποιοι είμαστε. Τρελοί ή λογικοί. Άγιοι ή σεξομανεις. Ήρωες ή θύματα. Να αφήσουμε την ιστορία να αποφασίσει πόσο καλοί ή κακοί είμαστε. Να αφήσουμε το παρελθόν μας να καθορίζει το μέλλον μας. Ή μπορούμε να αποφασίσουμε μόνοι μας."

I have choked in public on two different occasions.

The first was at an Olive Garden with my mother, where an extremely lanky busboy had to give me the Heimlich to dislodge a chunk of poorly chewed steak consumed during a meal of Alfredo.

The second involved another steak-related dinner at QDoba shared with about a dozen friends. An ambulance was called much to my irritation.

Choking, at least in my experience involved vomiting up ropes of phlegm as the body attempts to dislodge the offending article. There's nothing comical about it, and nothing pops out like a cork, splashing comically in someones drink. It is disgusting, it is frightening, and generally feels unpleasant for everyone involved.

That's why I can't really view the plot of "Choke" as being all that credible these days. No one who saves you is going to feel like they need to take care of you their whole life.

I didn't buy into the strictness of his period correct theme park. I wasn't convinced by his notion that there was loose sex waiting around every corner of society. The notion of any one mother having as many quirky ticks as his did wasn't a sell. There was no plot thread that didn't break my suspension of disbelief. While the flashbacks seem deliberately unrealistic and exaggerrated, the present tense fares only slightly better.

And that's the flaw with about half of Palahniuk's novels; they just flat-out don't seem plausible to me. It's just ridiculous in a way that he's trying to sell to the audience as secret facts.

"Invisible Monsters", "Haunted", and "Snuff" also fall into this category. He goes into waters he doesn't know how to navigate, but never loses the swaggering authority that brought him so much attention with "Fight Club". There was a certain point in each novel where I cried foul and couldn't get back into the setting.

So much of "Choke" is like that, which is why I don't understand how it's the favorite of so many Palahniuk fans. The story is ludicrous without being genuinely surreal, and the eye-rolling threatens to damage my vision after a while.

The only real saving grace is that good or bad, a book by him won't take a regular reader more than an afternoon to clear, especially since the style is exceptionally breezy, and that's all the recommendation I can really give it.

This book was crazy, but in a great way. The end of the book I was like WHOA! This was my 1st Palahniuk book,I don't count Fight Club, because I didn't finish it, it wasn't like the movie, and it messed me up, but I will read and finish it.