Name: Vojtech's review of Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk
Item: Fight Club
Rating: 5
Author: Vojtech

Chuck Palahniuk

Chuck Palahniuk showed himself to be his generation's most visionary satirist in this, his first book. Fight Club's estranged narrator leaves his lackluster job when he comes under the thrall of Tyler Durden, an enigmatic young man who holds secret after-hours boxing matches in the basement of bars. There, two men fight "as long as they have to." This is a gloriously original work that exposes the darkness at the core of our modern world.

Fight Club

In a confusing world poised on the brink of mayhem, Tyler Durden, a projectionist, waiter, and anarchic genius, comes up with an idea to create clubs in which young men can escape their humdrum existence and prove themselves in barehanded fights. Reprint. 50,000 first printing.

kemi

“There isn’t a me and a you, anymore,” Tyler says, and he pinches the end of my nose. “I think you’ve figured that out.”

That old saying, how you always kill the one you love, well, look, it works both ways.

A Novel

And if there were a telephone in Heaven, I would call Marla from Heaven and the moment she says, "Hello," I wouldn't hang up. I'd say, "Hi. What's happening? Tell me every little thing."

Vojtech

Every weekend, in basements and parking lots across the country, young men with good white-collar jobs and absent fathers take off their shoes and shirts and fight each other barehanded for as long as they have to. Then they go back to those jobs with blackened eyes and loosened teeth and the sense that they can handle anything. Fight Club is the invention of Tyler Durden, projectionist, waiter and dark, anarchic genius. And it's only the beginning of his plans for revenge on a world where cancer support groups have the corner on human warmth.

Wynter

In the immortal words of Robot Chicken - What a Twist!

E-thar

The first rule about fight club is you don't talk about fight club.
The second rule about fight club is you don't talk about fight club. :)

Cheri Fuller

I liked this book a lot. Quite a lot. I think I'd like to read it again after I think about it some more.

‘nothing is static. everything is falling apart. i know this because tyler knows this.’

read this before having watched the film! i love the gritty writing style, and although i was bemused at times, i was sufficiently entertained throughout. the last ten chapters had me gasping after every few sentences; also, the afterword where palahniuk calls the novel a classic and ancient romance? yeah. yeah.

‘nothing is static. everything is falling apart. i know this because tyler knows this.’

read this before having watched the film! i love the gritty writing style, and although i was bemused at times, i was sufficiently entertained throughout. the last ten chapters had me gasping after every few sentences; also, the afterword where palahniuk calls the novel a classic and ancient romance? yeah. yeah.

Aviv Leo Zippin

Fabio Bracht

Difícil dar menos de 5 estrelas pra esse livro.

It was a brilliant yet disturbing book. Had my jaw dropped at the reveal.

nindy

Haylie

This is much darker than the movie (if you can believe it). There's something interesting here, and I almost like how the book shows how dark and relentless the Tyler Durden infamy is rather than glorifying it. I felt that the cause wasn't something to root for in the book as opposed to how it's presented in the movie.

Siya S

The ending is wayyyy better tham the movie version😭😭😭 what a fuel to my angry, trapped, nihilistic corporate-slaved heart.

Isabela H 

I read this book for a college class that I'm taking, and in the beginning, I didn't really "get" the book like I get other books, but as the class progressed and discussed different things, I got very interested in some aspects. 
As a "for fun" read, I don't think I would have enjoyed this as much as I enjoyed it academically - I started getting interesting because of the themes that I was paying attention to. 
Basically, I don't know if I would recommend this book to people as a read just to read something fun. It is a really quick and fast read, but I don't know how much a person would get out of it normally.

this is my second time reading & all i can say is that fight club is a romance

High Fidelity

Can't talk about it. That is one of the rules.

Emma

Non ci ho capito nulla per 3/4 del libro ma alla fine tutto ha fatto senso. 
Io: 🤯
Sono veramente veramente confusa.

the first book i considered to be my favorite. 

asia sky

fleabag

Sian Wadey

This was one of those books that I didn't realise existed. I'd seen the film and was a big fan, it was clever and a fresh idea. It wasn't until years later that I discovered a book had come first. I hadn't found a book that had translated so directly to screen in a long time. It was amazing. The word's and the style were exactly as I imagined. My only wish is that I'd read the book first because I knew what was coming. The characters were intense, the events happening were exciting and reading the book whishked you off to another world.

Sydney Tipton

I’ve never seen the movie and the whole time I read this book I was picturing Brad Pitt as the narrator and he is definitely not

i love this book so much. i’m not even sorry it’s so good

georgia greenway

Ally Gagliardo

** spoiler alert **
           I'm glad I watched the movie first (like every other human being ever) because I would have been so confused and annoyed at how this book was written if I didn't know that he was crazy. However, it was an easy, quick read.

I absolutely love this book. After watching the movie there was no way I would of thought the book was gonna blow me away but it in fact did, I was so invested in it that I could not put it down whilst I was away on holidays.

Dylan 

Incredibly hypnotic and I just felt like I had to continue so I could see where it was going. 

catherine 

Lu 🌷

Emmett

The narrative voice is everything in this razor-blade of a novel that cuts deep. Short, sharp, quick and bloody, it glitters with dark humour, and impresses itself upon memory with many riveting, quotable lines that shine like gems within its splendidly graphic cesspool. The brutal poetry of this verbal performance secures it as an apt medium for delivering a scathing critique of contemporary consumerism and the absence of authenticity. The unnamed narrator and Tyler are enchanting in their subversion, their weariness and acrimony. The energy with which they transform and expose (and puncture) everyday frustrations, capitalist aspirations and its illusions of perfection into the gleefully grubbily violent game of their own making, drives the reader's tireless pursuit of the answer to her question 'what happens now?'. Marla's character pales in comparison as a sort of mouthpiece. She is a whine amid the growls and curses of the masculine cast, and at times she even verges on the melodramatic, which is slightly disappointing for an otherwise very tautly plotted novel. Though, perhaps, in this tale where things teeter near the edge (of violence, of satire, etc.) half the time and eventually spill over, it is possible to find a reasonable home for her shrill voice here.

elif sinem

"And God says, no, that's not right. Yeah. Well. Whatever. You can't teach God anything."

This novel is so fucking good, which I realize I should've known since the movie is so great white dudebros will think Tyler Durden is a genuine role model, but holy fuck. First of all, the PROSE. It was crazy. The allegories? Crazy. The line breaks? Crazy. The trains of thought completely disjointed in a way that's ORGANIZED? Went there, did that, snatched my wigs. [Shangie voice] Done. Sometimes things happened and the narrator was thinking of something entirely else, like real life. This is the sort of prose that I love, and even though you knew that the narrator was a crazy ass entitled white dude who wanted to escape from routine and whatnot, you just kept reading, because the prose demanded your attention. How couldn't it? This is the sort of novel where the whole idea of constantly staying in a character's head makes so much sense, because everything is vivid, and very little is left abstract in your mind.

At the same time though, it's hard to separate this from the movie entirely. I do think the movie's better in some aspects - for one, it feels more organized and much clearer, and it's also more funny in a dark way than the novel is (though the novel has some gems too!) and the reveal of Tyler-narrator being the same person is much much better in the movie. But where I think the novel's better is that Tyler constantly stays this crazy delusion. In the movie, Brad Pitt's Tyler completely eclipses Edward Norton's Narrator in terms of performance, which thankfully doesn't happen in the novel. And well, as much as I love Fincher, it's not like he went completely crazy with his shots like Chuck Palahniuk did with his novel's prose.

Anyways, this is an incredible Novelé. I don't care if you've seen the movie or not, go read it. You will not regret it.

Vojtech &
Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk

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Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk