** spoiler alert ** Long ago, when I was but a young, immature high school student, I devoured Chuck Palahniuk books. He spoke perfectly to my adolescent angst. However, by the time I got to "Haunted," his seventh book, I was pretty bored with him, because his books are all really the same: strange, socially awkward man leads depressing life, meets weird girl, giant plot twist in middle.

I feel sorry for Chuck Palahniuk the same way I feel sorry for M. Night Shyamalan — both made big, career-defining masterpieces (Fight Club and The Sixth Sense, respectively), then spent the rest of their careers trying to make lightning strike twice, only to tarnish their legacy. I pretty much swore off Chuck's books after Rant, a grotesque narrative that tried way too hard to be shocking and provocative and ended up just being gross. I couldn't even make it through the first 100 pages.

So a friend of mine recommended I read Pygmy, and it having been years since I last read Palahniuk, I figured it was worth a try, but in the end, I'm sad to say Chuck reads the same now as he did in 2003, the height of my Fight Club-mania. Artists must evolve to be good, and the fact that I could predict most of the book after the first few chapters (accurately, it turned out) was not a good sign.

The story follows Pygmy (not his real name), a terrorist coming to America in the guise of an exchange student, along with several other comrades. Immediately the book resorts to lazy jokes about America — Walmart, the Catholic Church (complete with pedophile priest), his sex-starved foster mother, his overweight foster father, and so on. The second chapter immediately goes into Palahaniuk-provocateur mode with a disturbing rape scene, I kid you not. Once Pygmy enters school, it's all downhill — no one will give him the time of day, and surprise surprise, he's awkward and weird, while secretly working on a plot to destroy America with the aid of his fellow exchange students.

Perhaps the only part I was actually surprised at was that the bully Pygmy rapes early on develops (Stockholm Syndrome-induced) feelings for him, then shoots up the school when Pygmy doesn't reciprocate his affections. Other than that, however, the plot is pretty tired; it's very obvious that Pygmy is going to fall for his preteen foster sister (for all the talk about it, I'm very glad Palahniuk had the taste to not include a preteen sex scene), and there's a not-quite-twist in which it turns out one of the supporting characters is also a spy for his fatherland. Probably most damning, the ending can be seen a mile away: he finds himself filled with affection for his stupid American family, and he effectively defects in the last pages. It's wholly unearned and cheap, which summarizes most of the book.

The writing style is a huge barrier to entry; Pygmy writes in poor English, so he constantly writes AROUND what he's trying to say, which never gets any easier (I was hoping his English would improve by the end of the book). So he constantly describes everything in a free-association way that gets tired fast. Furthermore, most of the other characters are very one-note or moronically stupid. And the sections describing Pygmy's life back in his home country don't hold up to scrutiny; his people pretty much worship Hitler, Mussolini, every totalitarian in the book, and they're never described as ever actually having their own culture. I recognize that Pygmy is supposed to be kind of warped because he's a terrorist, but his homeland is described as an incredibly generic caricature.

All that said, I will give Pygmy two stars — I don't think it was a complete waste, and the bully subplot was something surprising and original.

I feel like "Pygmy" (the book) was a chance for some seriously cutting satire, and instead we got a whole lot of obvious jokes. With a few more rewrites and an editor more willing to push Chuck to really go for the jugular, I feel like this could've been a good book, but as it is, i don't think I'll be reading Pygmy again.