Snuff by Chuck Palahniuk Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Snuff
Book Review: Definitly for the twisted
Summary: 5 Stars
I laughed harder while reading this book more than any that I have read for awhile. It is Mr. Palahniuk's trademark twisted, demented norm. This isn't for the faint of heart. I was most impressed by just how well researched this book apparently was. The best part is how there is nothing wasted. Every sentence somehow relates to someone in the story. This is a must read for Palahniuk fans and fans of dark comedies.Book Review: Disapointed
Summary: 2 Stars
I am a huge Palahniuk fan, but this book completely disappointed me. I kept thinking he must have written this book years ago and his agent made him release it to get some cash flow, or to meet some contract deadline. This felt juvenile to me, as in college creative writing class juvenile. Won't stop me from picking up his next book, but I won't recommend it to anyone.Book Review: Downright okay
Summary: 3 Stars
Im what you might call a rabid Chuck Palahniuk fan: Ive read everything he has written and reccommended his work to all of my friends. So on the day that "Snuff" came out, naturally I had to buy it and read it all in one sitting.
And as a rabid fan, I found it to be just okay. The concept of the story in and of itself is great, and the little side notes and tips that the characters drop along the way are neat too. The biggest problem was that none of the characters were... gripping. In all of his other books, no matter how messed up and sick the characters were, you felt like you KNEW them, you loved them. In this one the characters just didn't seem to pop as much. They weren't hateable, but certainly not as memorable as, say, Rant.
The other problem that I had with this book was that the ending was a little bit too predictable. Now, in all of his other books, Palahniuk leads you to the end in such a way that you put it all together a page before its revealed. It dawns on you just in time to end with a big "AH! AH HAH!" In "Snuff", you kinda saw it coming from a mile away. It could be that Palahniuk wanted you to know right away, but it felt sorta predictable.
All in all, it was a decent book. If you're a hardcore fan you will probably hate it, but if this is one of the first of his that you're reading, you will probably enjoy it. For a really great read, go for "Rant" instead.
Book Review: Eh...
Summary: 3 Stars
Snuff is mediocre. Worth reading if you're a Palahniuk fan, but wait to buy it in paperback. As usual, Chuck shows us the disgusting mess on the bottom of our shoe, in graphic detail. He doesn't hesitate to show us how attached to the meaningless details of life we become. The story was good, and there were a few small twists. I came away looking at the porn industry, relationships, and sex in a new light.
Nothing here hasn't been said before, however. It's kind of "more of the same" from Palahniuk. I'm happy, but in a disappointed way.
Book Review: Everything you hate about stage plays - in a novel
Summary: 2 Stars
The thing I hate about stage plays is that the characters pretty much stay in the same location for the entire play. There's no movement. Sure, some plays do work. Those are usually the ones, like the plays of Oscar Wilde, where the dialogue is so good that you don't care that no one's going anywhere. However, if the dialogue isn't very good, then plays can be a bit of an ordeal. Reading "Snuff" is like watching a bad stage play.
Set almost entirely in the one room, "Snuff" tells the story of three of the 600 men who are waiting to appear in "the greatest porno of all time". That's right, a small number of characters and no movement. I actually had to check to make sure this book hadn't started its life as a play, it read so much like one. As I said previously, plays can be tolerable if the dialogue is good, but the three men really don't have anything worthwhile to say. It's not that the writing is terrible, it's actually more like a series of facts about movie stars, rattled off one after the other - interesting, but if I wanted to know these things, I'd be reading non-fiction, not a novel.
Finally, the title and the blurb of the book are very misleading. Given the book is called "Snuff" and we are told that there are 600 people gathered together to make a porno, I thought that at least a couple of hundred of those people would die in a spectacular and highly comical death scene in the final couple of pages. They don't. No one dies! After reading almost 200 pages, anticipating the finale all the way, I felt ripped-off, and was wondering what the purpose of it all was.
Usually Chuck Palahniuk is great writer, and I gave his last book, "Rant", 5 stars in my review. Nevertheless, "Snuff" is incredibly disappointing, the worst of his books to date, and should be avoided by all but the most dedicated of fans.