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Publisher: Random House |
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Palahniuk's third novel, Invisible Monsters, more than ably responds to this call to arms. Set once again in an all-too-familiar modern wasteland where social disease and self-hatred can do more damage than any potboiler-fiction bad guy, the tale focuses particularly on a group of drag queens and fashion models trekking cross-country to find themselves, looking everywhere from the bottom of a vial of Demerol to the end of a shotgun barrel. It's a sort of road movie with a skin graft and hormone-pill obsession...
As with Fight Club and Survivor, the book is invested with a cinematic sweep, from the opening set piece, which takes off like a house on fire, to a host of filmic tics sprayed throughout the text. Palahniuk every now and then loosens his grip on the story line, which at points becomes as hard to decipher as your local pill addict's medicine cabinet. However Invisible Monsters works best on a roller-coaster level. You don't stop and count each slot on the track as you're going down the big hill. You throw up your hands and yell.
