Choke by Chuck Palahniuk Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Choke
Book Review: "If you're going to read this, don't bother..."
Summary: 4 Stars
How could you not like a book that starts out that way?
Victor is a sex addict who attends sexual addiction groups to find new people to sleep with, chokes on food in restaurants so people will save him and feel indebted to him forever, works in Colonial America as a tour guide in the 1730's, and visits his mom in a mental hospital while pretending to be different people that she knew in the past. She has a secret, but won't tell him and since her diary is in Italian he can't read it.
There are times when we flash back to when he's a child. Even though he is taken away from his mother, she keeps finding him and bringing him back. She sees the world differently, (to say the least) and gives him advice about living in the world that you don't get from books or school. Example: If the Blue Danube Waltz is played in hotel, that means that they are evacuating it. If they say "Elvis has left the building" in a Hard Rock Cafe, then that means the servers need to go and find out what dinner special has sold out. But, in a Broadway theater, that same line means that there is a fire.
Like all Chuck Palahniuk's books, this one is different. There are tons of sexual descriptions, (and as many have mentioned, this is not a book for someone who gets offended easily, or is overly sensitive.) One of the most interesting chapters was when Victor met a woman who wanted him to break in her place and attack her, yet, he was doing it all wrong and she became very picky about it. Some other interesting tidbits were that Victor had all sorts of medical information since he's a medical school dropout, so you learn fun trivia like ABCD (Symptoms of Melanoma) Asymmetrical Shape, Border Irregularity, Color variation, and Diameter larger than about six millimeters. He once told a stripper who was taking off of her clothes in front of him that she needed to get her mole checked out on her inner thigh, because it might be cancerous. I was reminded of the book Survivor, because the character knew how to clean everything, such as, how to get blood off of walls.
When you reach the climax, there are two big curveballs that were not expected. Always surprising, never boring, Chuck is an author I would like to read again and again.
Book Review: "Outrageous" isn't the right word, but it's the one that comes to mind.
Summary: 4 Stars
Chuck Palahniuk is an author who writes boundary-pushing, perversely twisted, bizarrely funny, male-oriented fiction that isn't likely to appeal to most women and will offend a good number of men as well. Palahniuk could be described as an author for the `Maxim' generation but his novels are actually smarter than that. In fact, if you aren't easily offended, you'll find that Palahniuk delivers some of the most perceptive satire you're likely to find anywhere. Palahniuk writes dialogue and prose that is not only insightful, but `catchy'. Few authors can pepper their prose with memorable catch-phrases the way Palahniuk can.
The Plot: Victor is a sex addict who drops out of medical school and who works at a colonial theme park and pretends to choke in fancy restaurants in order to pay the hospital bills for his dying, delusional, anarchist mother. His best friend is a chronic self-abuser who is attempting to beat his self-gratification addiction by collecting rocks that he obsessively cleans, and on occasion, covers in a blanket to create the illusion that the rock is a baby. Victor is plagued with childhood memories of being abducted by his mother and life on the run exposed to his mother's paranoia and crazy brand of anarchy (she mislabels hair color packaging so that blondes are turned into brunettes and vise versa and distributes unauthorized restaurant coupons so that restaurants are bombarded with people demanding a free meal). His perception of himself is shaken when he finds out that he may be the son of Jesus Christ, conceived using DNA from an ancient foreskin; and that somehow, some part of him, might actually be good.
Choke is a novel about addiction and how things need to get a lot worse before they get better. Choke shares similar themes to Fight Club (most notably the rants on consumer culture). It has a similar tone in narration and features a revelation near the end of the novel that is reminiscent, in some ways, of Fight Club. Choke uses absurdly broad strokes to explore the nature of addictive behavior and the drive to self destruction. The novel also explores religious themes, parenthood, and our illusions of self. The people who `save' Victor from choking are being scammed, but at the same time, their illusion of heroism defines them.
If you are looking for a stark, realistic character-study probing the soul of a man who suffers from addition, this isn't it. Palahniuk doesn't write inward looking novels. He writes satire. He explores the simple absurdities of life and amplifies them until they are ridiculous, but in their extremes, simple truths can be found.
A warning: There is a lot of sexual content in this book (although not in a titillating way). It is crude and explicit and certain to offend people. There may be women who like this book, but probably not many. Palahniuk writes with a male voice for a male audience. He may not be an author for everyone, but for those of us who enjoy his warped world view, Choke is both insightful and outrageously funny. I haven't seen the movie yet, but I'm looking forward to it.
Book Review: "Trying too hard" isn't the right phrase, but it's the one that comes to mind.
Summary: 3 Stars
I think Chuck Palahniuk has more funny ideas than he really knows what to do with. "Choke" is so stuffed full of them that none of them have a chance to breathe. A protagonist who pretends to be choking in restaurants so that strangers -- check. A group of stoners and losers who work in a strict mock-Colonial village -- check. Seeing the world through the jaundiced eye of a medical school dropout -- check. All of these elements appear in "Choke" and none of them are as funny or effective in combination as they could have been with a little authorial restraint.
This novel was severely bogged down by Palahniuk's stylistic quirks -- phrases that are repeated for emphasis until the reader is sick of them, attempts to shock with explicit sex, and, in this case, a narrator who talks like a Valley Girl. For sure.
It seems like Palahniuk's attention was divided as he wrote this. Too much of his energy went into trying to be transgressive and extreme. Denny and Ida Mancini could have been great characters, but they were overshadowed by Victor's not-very-compelling narrative voice.
Grow up, Mr. Palahniuk, and try again. I believe you have it in you.
Book Review: A Review by Dr. Joseph Suglia
Summary: 1 Stars
A (brief) review of CHOKE by Chuck Palahniuk -- Dr. Joseph Suglia
Con-artist Victor Mancini pretends to choke in restaurants. Invariably, scores of patrons rush to "save his life." The one who seems to dislodge food from his larynx is heroized. As a result, the one who "rescues" Victor Mancini voluntarily donates money to the "choking victim," a twenty-five-year-old womanizer.
Do you find this premise plausible? Do you think that this premise is logical, that it makes sense? If so, then Chuck Palahniuk's CHOKE is the book for you!
Mancini, allegedly, is a "sex-addict" and yet we are never presented with convincing or compelling evidence of his "sexual addiction." Nor is the character's inner world described. We, as readers, are merely expected to accept the "fact" of Mancini's sexual compulsion because the writer has declared that his character is sexually compulsive.
CHOKE is a rank embarrassment. Passages in this book would make all but Palahniuk's most ardent admirers cringe. In one scene, our protagonist's life is saved by two police officers in an interrogation room; the scene is supposed to be emotionally strong, but it is, quite possibly, the most ridiculous passage in contemporary American letters. Equally astounding are the lines that evoke AMERICAN BEAUTY ("The world is so beautiful...") and the climax, which resembles, painfully, the ending of SCHINDLER'S LIST.
The writer of CHOKE is nothing more than a bargain-basement Bret Easton Ellis.
Dr. Joseph Suglia
Book Review: A spider-web of addiction and reliance
Summary: 5 Stars
Choke is about contradictions and irony. About the yin and the yang, the back and the forth, the dichotomous relationship that produces the amazing and bizarre in life, but when related to addiction results so often in pleasure and pain.
Understandable yet ridiculous, the give and take of addiction manifests itself in many ways throughout Choke. Medical professionals probably feel the elation saving a life or fixing ailments, but are conversely disgusted knowing how that plunger handle got lodged up there - despite the patient's protests. With the subtopics of sexual addiction, religion, and hospital visits in this book, the previous metaphor is disturbingly appropriate.
A med-school dropout, Victor diagnoses strippers' melanoma as incurable cancer and picks up women at sex addicts' meetings for fun. He wears a scratchy wool costume at a colonial reenactment village to pay the bills, most notably his mother's medical bills for Alzheimer's. Outwardly his fellow employees look and act as if transported into centuries past; realistically, however, most discretely yearn for the comforts and addictions of their current lifestyles. Told through a thick haze of self-loathing, Victor is no different from others; his sex addiction is known but he can't beat it off.
When salvation is within grasp, the addicted still don't really want help, which is Victor's issue. Reliant upon others for salvation or help, he pretends to choke at restaurants to get free meals, but primarily to create heroes and earn some extra cash while making himself feel better. With his ruse, however, he tempts fate: if the choking is fake, everyone else thinks it's real; when it's real be careful, lest one end up as the boy who cried wolf.
Told interspersed with oddball childhood recollections of leapfrogging between foster parents and his mother's abductions, Victor is almost predisposed for the codependency on which every aspect of this novel tramples. When the walls come crumbling down around his life, however, pleasure and pain is felt throughout the "colony."
Perverse and heart-warming, chock full of lists of bizarre trivia, this is classic Chuck Palahniuk. If you're familiar with his work, you'll understand and love it. If not, I highly recommend this book for the slightly twisted looking for an original concept with a twist of dark comedy.