Invisible Monsters

Chuck Palahniuk
Invisible Monsters
W.W. Norton & company, 1999.
Heart.
Borders $13.95.
Fiction.
297 Pages.
Mrs.Smith

Birds Ate My Face
by Bradley Kaiser
You’re driving down a highway on your way to work, window half way down, then you get shot in the face, weird huh? That is just the beginning. After getting to the hospital, parts of your face start to fall off, people missing limbs are letting you go ahead of them, genuflecting because they think that your needs are worse than theirs. A nurse vomits because she can see you’re missing the lower part of your jaw, all just corpus lying on the floor. And after all of this all the doctors can do after years and years of plastic surgery and physical therapy all you can do is babble like baby. This is just the beginning of the life of Shannon McFarland. Invisible Monsters by Chuck Palahniuk is another great book, but not for the gentle and squeamish.
Although Invisible Monsters is a fantastic book, the style is a little confusing. The whole story is told from first person of a mute nobody detached freak. In the beginning of the story the narrator tells you that “This story is like a Vogue magazine” how everything is continued on page X. This is most certainly shown in this book. The book is bound to cause some confusion, once you realize what’s happening, the story flattens out and only has the occasional flashback or foreshadow. This is a terrific book if you can understand what’s happening. If you don’t, then just read a little farther, the author is really good to try to explain things out.
Chuck Palahniuk is an erudite author with wide variety of works from his well known Fight Club to his lesser known books like Snuff. I myself am a big fan of these books. Most of his books are fictional and just describe the strange lives of (mostly) normal people. Most of the characters in his books are mentally ill, suicidal people, or in this case, deformed and mute. His books are usually targeted to people in college level people, I would say.

There are some things you should know before you read this book. For one, be prepared for some things that won’t be explained until later on in the book, be patient. This whole book is about the life of a supermodel whose face gets deformed from a freak gunshot, and how she goes through the rest of her life with two friends. Although through this whole review I’ve been talking about this book and how it must seem depressing, it’s actually pretty funny.
In conclusion I would recommend this book to no ends. It’s funny, enlightening, and overall a terrific read, I could not put this book down when I was reading it. Give it a try and if you don’t like it, then you don’t have to read it! But at least give it a chance. Invisible Monsters by Chuck Palahniuk is another great book, but not for the gentle and squeamish.