Inverarity is not a Scottish village

Dante and Virgil are replaced by super-annoying teenagers in this satirical romp through hell.

“Are you there, Satan? It’s me, Madison,” declares the whip-tongued 13-year-old narrator of Damned, Chuck Palahniuk’s subversive new work of fiction.

The daughter of a narcissistic film star and a billionaire, Madison is abandoned at her Swiss boarding school over Christmas, while her parents are off touting their new projects and adopting more orphans. She dies over the holiday of a marijuana overdose—and the next thing she knows, she’s in Hell. Madison shares her cell with a motley crew of young sinners that is almost too good to be true: a cheerleader, a jock, a nerd, and a punk rocker, united by fate to form the six-feet-under version of everyone’s favorite detention movie.

Madison and her pals trek across the Dandruff Desert and climb the treacherous Mountain of Toenail Clippings to confront Satan in his citadel. All the popcorn balls and wax lips that serve as the currency of Hell won’t buy them off.

This is the afterlife as only Chuck Palahniuk could imagine it: a twisted inferno where The English Patient plays on endless repeat, roaming demons devour sinners limb by limb, and the damned interrupt your dinner from their sweltering call center to hardsell you Hell. He makes eternal torment, well, simply divine.

( What makes earth feel like hell is our expectation that it should feel like heaven. )

Verdict: Palahniuk is an acquired taste, I guess. I do like his prose, I just have yet to really love his books and Madison — fat, self-absorbed, acid-tongued daughter of horrible Hollywood celebrities, an infernally bratty 13-year-old girl damned to hell and determined to stay there — is the first of his characters I've actually liked. If you read Damned as a fantasy novel about a girl who goes to hell, it's kind of stupid. If you read it as a bizarre modern allegory, you'll probably appreciate it to the degree that you appreciate Chuck Palahniuk's sense of humor and the hobby horses he's riding.

Also by Chuck Palahniuk: My review of Diary.

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My complete list of book reviews.

A former art student turned hotel maid cleans rooms while her husband lies in a coma, keeping a diary of her daily soul-crushing tedium until weirdness hits the fan.

Misty Marie Wilmot was an artist. Misty Marie Wilmot was full of talent. Misty Marie Wilmot was in love. Was is the important word here.

A maid in a hotel on the beautiful tourist island Waytansea, Misty is playing clean-up crew for her comatose husband, Peter. He was a contractor who wrote despicable messages in the walls of homes he remodeled before his failed suicide attempt. Now he is being sued by the angry owners who are discovering these messages, leaving Misty with nothing but failed dreams of being a famous artist.

With her mother-in-law and daughter cheering her on—or coercing her with backwards threats—Misty starts painting again. Each piece she paints becomes a masterpiece to be shown at the hotel for all of the tourists to fawn over. Her husband’s expected death and daughter’s unexpected death put her in a state of pure creativity during which she gets locked up in the hotel, given a catheter so she doesn’t have to leave the room, and fed every so often.

People start acting abnormally, interesting things start happening, and Misty is no longer sure if she is painting because she wants to or painting because they are forcing her to.

Palahniuk gives readers a look into the convoluted world of a washed up artist with no idea how to think for herself. He hands out a gaze into an island of seriously venomous people. A twisting end brings Misty full circle in Diary and leaves us wanting to never travel to an island again.

( We were here. We are here. We will always be here. And we've failed again. )

Verdict: An odd, sinister small-town thriller with a touch of horror and general strangeness, I should have enjoyed Diary more than I did. Nothing about Palahniuk's writing is bad, I just don't like his characters, his descriptions, or the slightly creepy vibe I get from everything he writes, and I couldn't get into it. So while this wasn't to my taste, I think this is a very much a YMMV book, and Palahniuk is very much a YMMV author.