Tricia read and liked Shane's review of Haunted:

"This was quite a disgusting book to read, my first Chuck Palahniuk, and probably my last. I think the premise of this macabre parody of human endeavour is that we are in this life to suffer and die, that earth is only a processing plant for Paradise ...more This was quite a disgusting book to read, my first Chuck Palahniuk, and probably my last. I think the premise of this macabre parody of human endeavour is that we are in this life to suffer and die, that earth is only a processing plant for Paradise (or Venus, as it is portrayed in the book?).I think this premise is as old as the Bible, but what a way Plahniuk chooses to tell us this: replete with olfactory emissions, rotting bodies, barf,shit, blood (lots of it) dismembered body parts, sucked-out guts, cannibalism, mass emigration ( i.e. extermination) and every other rotten thing he can think of. I was reminded of the Marquis de Sade and Hitler in an orgy, trying to see who could outdo the other.

A group of off-beat writers are lured into a writers retreat where they are locked up (or they lock themselves up, believing it will add to their mystique) for three months and asked to recount their stories. In between, their numbers start to decrease as their stories and their life at the retreat blur. Their behaviour becomes more bizzare and after awhile the format of narration-poem-story becomes repetitious. I skipped some of the stories because they all end in some form of bizarre entrapment.

I continued reading the book because I was partly curious as to why a writer would choose these devices, why a publisher would publish this material, and most of all, why readers would read this stuff, making Palahniuk a best selling author - are we a bunch of closet coldhearted, bloodthirsty voyeurs? Is this what literature has to descend to in order to be read?

The characters are wooden cardboard cut-outs, who feel no pain or sympathy for either themselves or for their fellow writers. They mutiliate themselves or their colleagues, starve, incarcerate and murder for celebrity and money. Most importantly, they do not seem to have any souls.I wondered how the survivors remained alive without food, heat, and having lost so much blood and so many body parts. Despite all this suffering, intended to resemble our stay on earth, I suppose, at the end of the book, the survivors remain trapped in their self-imposed prison, still waiting for their fame and fortune to arrive.

The writing is jerky and indirect. I wondered if Palahniuk was trying to imitate an assortment of wannabe writers and their styles - a slippery slope, because one wonders if the author himself has gaps in his writing ability.

There was just too much sickening and inhuman behaviour going on that after 250 pages, I had to skip to the final chapter. There definitely has to be a better way to communicate this premise...(less) "