Chuck Palahniuk

Twenty-three stories chronicle the experiences of people who have answered an ad for an artist's retreat, believing that they will find a peaceful refuge, only to find themselves isolated and trapped in a cavernous old theater.

Haunted

Jasper

'I fainted...I fainted and you ate my ass?'

She looks at the empty, greasy paper plate still on the snack bar, and she says:

'And if you're really stupid,' Director Denial says, 'you die

      You made the world just a little bit better place.

We fight wars. We fight for peace. We fight hunger. We love

      We fight and fight and fight, with our guns or mouths or

       And the planet is never one lick better than it was before

Her face swimming and flickering with aerobic work, her

     to diminish initial buyer resistance.

With a long-term goal of becoming someone's long-term investment.

      No, this was only a writers' retreat until it was too late for us to be anything,

Alex Dubois

Molly M

most of it i quite liked! plenty of stories kept me on the edge of my seat. did not find the poems engaging tho

I think that chuck’s brand of cynicism is too much for me.

Crew

jess larry

Started off well but couldn't get myself to finish. Got heavy & quite boring for some reasons

Joe Ross

In this novel, the Chuckster proves that although there may be an explosion in "international fiction" and although magical realism is at the front and center of the best new fiction, you do not need to delve too deeply into these ideas to write an original novel.

He is the master of form, blending outright discussions with and confessions to the reader with narratives by his characters and the third person "apathetic obsession" he has perfected.

Amanda Autumn Berrey

Sage

my uncle bought this book at the airport coming home and i think he didn't read it at all because when he came home he was like "do you want this book?" and i was like "ok" cause i was 11 and i loved RL Stine and the cover looked scary.

so 11 year old me read this.

oh, did i read this.

i opened this book tentatively and started to read over dinner. i had noodles. yes. and so the most memorable part of the book comes and the line goes 

(view spoiler)[Otherwise, what you have to do is -- you have to twist around. You hook one elbow behind your knee and pull that leg up into your face. You bite and snap at your own ass. You run out of air, and you will chew through anything to get that next breath. (hide spoiler)]

and i'm biting into my noodles

and i gag and gag and gag and puke into my bowl of noodles.

that being said this book opened me up into a whole new genre of ew-this-is-gross-but-why-can't-i-stop-flipping-oh-god-am-i-now-on-a-list. so i go on and i read Story of the Eye and de Sade and teachers who like fucking their child students and Bear and 

you get it. 

great book.

Kristen Claiborn

My husband doesn't read very often, but when he does he frequently seeks out Chuck Palahniuk. We checked this one out from the library, and if there is a book I haven't read anywhere near me, I will likely read it. So I did. I have since been told that this book probably should not have been the first of Palahniuk's novel's I read, but since it was, I now find it highly unlikely I will ever seek this guy out again. I'm a pretty firm believer that not every book is going to be loved by every person that picks it up, like The Catcher in the Rye. I can't stand that book, yet so many people have told me this is their all-time favorite book. I just don't get it. 
 A long-time ago, I discovered a movie called "The Cube." It's a great premise and a well-done, off-the-wall movie. It follows a group of pretty horrible people who were essentially kidnapped and thrown into a deadly maze. This book is about a bunch of horrible people who, while they didn't entirely know what they were getting into, volunteered to join this bizarre game. From there it felt like it turned into a chaotic, gory, mess of a story. So much of it made absolutely no sense to me, so I just found myself frustrated. There seemed no logical reason any of these people should be making the decisions they made, but I suppose that's part of the point to the story. However, it was a story I just didn't like very much. 
 Again, this is my personal point of view. I'm certain this book is a favorite of many readers and I encourage all to form their own opinions.

Krystal Karim

yeah—these stories are super f*cked up and can actually make you have to take a pause to continue forward. like, if you already think humanity is bleak, this is probably right up your alley

p.s. I was a little bored and confused with the main plot line, but very relieved I finally finished this book haha

Paige mandia 

alright, i think im going to have to DNF this one @ 62%.

the story by comrade snarky really pushed this over the edge for me. so much of this book is just gross for the sake of being gross, rather than well thought-out horror. sorry, but transphobia, pedophilia, and children masterbating isn’t the gross shock-inducing content that you think it is. 

palahniuk’s style of simply writing for shock value reads as quite immature to me. i went into this looking for some real stomach-turning horror, and all i got was crude humor being used to disturb. sure, i definitely did drop my jaw several times while reading, and some of the humor did land for me. but when considering the novel as a whole, there’s no way to look at it as anything other than childish.

the format of this novel really limits what it’s able to achieve, and it just feel really short for me.

Fraser Simons

An interesting concept—writers at a retreat gone wrong using short stories as an allegory for what might be happening, as they sabotage the group in a social experiment, ostensibly. That’s really reductive, but more approaches spoiler territory, I think, since I think what is happening at the meta level is necessarily more interesting than the stories. 

It’s a weird experience because I didn’t find myself interested in the stories, other than to figure out what was being communicated about the situation with the writers. The premise hobbles the stories immediately, even if it is interesting to put stories in the position of communicating truth about “the world”. Yet, that removal makes every story impossible to suspend your disbelief for, too. Instead, they’re just simulacrums of the specific writer. 

This makes everything compelling at a macro, meta level, and as a reflection of society and what happens when people go off script in society. However, I don’t think any of the stories will stick with me, nor were they particularly moving or effective. They all felt like white noise in this structure. Sure, it’s clever, as I haven’t read anything quite like it. But I’m not sure the message is new, and it undermines its own short stories. People devolve without society. With the internet we can see everyday just what anonymity does to some people. Not exactly revelatory. But I do think this book succeeds at what it was trying to do.

Sage Lee

Bowie 

I’m not easily triggered by books or media in general but this book will find *something* that will unsettle you deep down in the pit of your tummy.
I wouldn’t necessarily recommend this book to folks because of its intensity, but it is compelling, riveting and unfortunately near impossible to put down. 

Bianca Pereira da Ponte

Não recomendo para ninguém pq eu não leria de novo e me sentiria culpada de saber que alguém leu isso por minha causa, tanto que não vai rolar resenha no instagram dele. Se foram ler saibam que tem gore, assassinato, automutilação, pedofilia e canibalismo.
Falar que esse livro foi ok chega a ser estranho mas eu não sei ate agora depois de ter lido o que eu sinto, eu sei que é uma mistura de nojo, curiosidade do que se passa na cabeça do autor, um incomodo profundo que eu nunca vou superar e uma admiração por ele ter conseguido me causar tantos sentimentos.

Haunted is a novel made up of stories: twenty-three of the most horrifying, hilarious, mind-blowing, stomach-churning tales you'll ever encounter. They are told by the people who have all answered an ad headlined 'Artists Retreat: Abandon your life for three months'. They are led to believe that here they will leave behind all the distractions of 'real life' that are keeping them from creating the masterpiece that is in them. But 'here' turns out to be a cavernous and ornate old theatre where they are utterly isolated from the outside world - and where heat and power and, most importantly, food are in increasingly short supply. And the more desperate the circumstances become, the more desperate the stories they tell - and the more devious their machinations to make themselves the hero of the inevitable play/movie/non-fiction blockbuster that will certainly be made from their plight.

This book could have been good. The problem is that there are 15+ characters, with an introductory poem for each, a main short story for each, and some have additional stories all wrapped around a "main" story. Some of the short stories are good, and left me wishing that it was the entire book. But then there were the stories with biological fallicies that left me scratching my head. There are also stories at the end that just don't mesh with the rest of the book.

Palahniuk tried to make sweeping statements about humanity that just fell short from using exaggerated short stories about human being horrible. It isn't a scary book so much as a gross book. There were stories with rape, murder, prostitution, self mutilation, explicitly detailed deaths and bad conditions, etc. And it would all be good if Palahniuk took the time to complete the short stories. He gets lost in the descriptions and loses the reader from not being able to make everything flow. That's a big writing problem. 

So give it a go if you liked Catcher in the Rye but want to add adult grit to it. Otherwise I'd pass.

It’s a good book, it was disturbing sometimes and I truly enjoyed it! I could sit down for 3 hours without putting it down. I love the style of Chuck Palahniuk so much, and this book is the genre I was looking for during spooky season!

Jessica Nottingham

The one word that describes this book most easily, is disturbing. Although in this case disturbing was really intriguing as well. I found myself enamored with this book from the moment I started to read, and I just flew through it. This book is definitely not for the faint of heart though. Readers need to brace themselves for ample amounts of descriptive blood and gore!

Haunted takes a look at the deep, dark parts of people that hide beneath the surface. It reminds us how easily we can revert back to those hidden selves. All it takes is a little coaxing.

What really sold the book for me, was the short stories that bind the storyline together. I wasn't always completely sure of how I felt about the characters, but each time I read one of their stories I felt connected again.

Amazing! This book is a gem.

Haunted

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