Reviews for Choke

The average rating for Choke based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2008-06-25 00:00:00 Paul Moreno "If you're going to read this, don't bother. After a couple pages, you won't want to be here. So forget it. Go away. Get out while you're still in one piece. Save yourself. ... What happens here is first going to piss you off. After that it just gets worse and worse." I always feel a little stupid reviewing a Chuck Palahniuk book. It always seems like a futile effort. Especially with Choke, which opens with the above quote. How can you review a book like that? If you like it, you're an idiot who's too easily amused, and if you hate it, Chuck Palahniuk is just laughing at you, going, "Dude, I told you." You can't win. Chuck Palahniuk seems like the type of author who thrives on negative responses. The man's probably wallpapered his bathroom with all the reviews trashing his books, and every morning he looks at them and cackles maniacally while he takes a shit. He doesn't write books for entertainment, or to make you think, or to (god forbid!) preach a moral or a message. Chuck Palahniuk is that kid on the playground who dug up bugs and shoved them in girls' faces just to see them run away screaming. His goal is to offend people, shock them, and just plain gross them out. Not much else. Choke is a little more disgusting than Fight Club, and much, much less disgusting than Haunted. That's pretty much all I can say. So why am I giving this book four stars? Good question. I'm kind of wondering that myself. I liked this book because I was supposed to hate it.

Review # 2 was written on 2007-09-17 00:00:00 Juan Franco "There is no human soul, and I am absolutely for sure seriously not going to fucking cry." reading a chuck palahniuk novel is like one of those long booze-soaked all-night discussions with someone you've just met. by the end of it you're convinced that you've solved all the world's problems, and how to proceed seems so clear. once you wake up in the morning you remember how good it was, but details are hazy and the big plans are gone. his books all share similar themes, but i find this to be at the top of the list. i think it's tied with haunted as his best work, and i think it's actually a more accomplished book than fight club. it's much richer. for such a short read, this book manages to pick apart: the nature of aging and death the perils of being a med student the dangers of too much knowledge insanity and senility sex and love or lack thereof gender issues language and semiotics motherhood (and fatherlessness) the need to have and to be a savior the appeal and drawbacks of sarcasm and anarchy tourism/photos/fetishes and other ways we cling to the past religion/pornography/drugs and other ways we escape the present idealism/ignorance/romanticism and other ways we avoid the future it's all handled and balanced very delicately and well researched, which is a big deal for me. he's not an author who's stingy with his ideas. he uses lots of gimmicks and touchstones in his books to hold together the narrative and make the reader feel comfortable even in his tangents, which is something i like in my novels. some people will complain that all his books share some of the same themes, and they do. this one has the same sort of alternating hopelessness and hopefulness that fight club has, and similar fucked up antihero characters. i always read his books when i need to be reminded how comparatively normal and pleasant my life really is.