Fight Club

By Chuck Palahniuk
I did a bit of research on Wiki after I finished this book, because I wondered if it had ever been banned anywhere – it does read like a bit of a primer for civil disobedience, after all, and that usually gets the book-banners’ blood boiling. Waiters spitting (and worse) into restaurant food, selling soap made from liposuction fat to the ladies who had the liposuction (at outrageous prices), bare knuckle fist-fight clubs, blowing things up…this book had it all. I can also easily imagine the society depicted in Fight Club appealing greatly to the disenfranchised, angry, despairing, bored and/or lonely – the type of person who can often end up in a cult. As Hercule Poirot would say, the psychology of the book was right.

Well Wikipedia didn’t mention any attempts to ban the book (or the subsequent film), although Fight Club has attracted some criticism for its violent nature, suggestions of misogyny etc. (Incidentally, my own inbuilt misogyny detector was not activated while reading this book). The Wiki entry on Fight Club did indicate, however, that it has generated rather a lot of deep and meaningful essays and critiques. (Arrrgh). To quote Wiki, “[Fight Club] is now widely considered to be a defining work and an uncompromising critique of humanity's loss of identity through mass consumerism.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fight_club). Oo-er.

Interestingly, the fight club society that evolves in the book is made up entirely of men. I’m not sure if this makes me prey to gender stereotypes, but I don’t think I would have found it believable if there were lots of women joining up to bash each other’s faces in and obey ridiculous rules unquestioningly. Tell me if I’m falling prey to gender stereotypes, won’t you? I'd hate to fall prey to gender stereotypes...

Fight Club is a curious book – definitely worth reading – it feels like it’s being written by someone with ADD (or possibly extreme sleep deprivation, which is what our unnamed hero suffers from), but as you get towards the end and it all comes together…geez! I mean, I didn’t see that coming! I think Chuck Palahniuk is a bit clever.

Also Fight Club has the rare commendation of being a book that invites comment by total strangers on public transport. I was only on about page 5 when a bloke on the train started telling me what an awesome book it was; I can only recall two other books inviting comment from strangers, Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse 5 and one of Dorothy Sayers’ Lord Peter Wimsey novels.

I think I’m going to give this book a 10, even though I didn’t quite like it as much as my other favourites, but it was just so well done. A dangerous book!!

Rating: 10 out of 10

The Queen of the Damned (2006)

By Anne Rice
I’m always a bit suspicious of books that contain the word “frisson”. It turned up relatively early in this book, but at least I didn’t notice a repeat offence. This book all seemed a bit silly at first, but I got sucked in (Ha!) by all those eternally youthful beautifully beautiful dark and mysterious and sexy vampires. Really, it did start to bother me after a while that they were all so attractive. Rice even muses, through the voice of her hero vampire Lestat, are there any ugly vampires? Well I think I spotted one, but he didn’t last very long.

This book is the third in Rice’s Vampire Chronicles, following Interview with the Vampire (the one made into a film with Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt; not bad, from memory, surprisingly…) and The Vampire Lestat. To sum up, Lestat has gone and woken up the Mother of All Vampires (I’m not kidding), the titular (that’s for you, Ian) Queen of the Damned, Akasha, who has been dormant for thousands of years, but now she’s awake again and this time she’s a lot crosser.

For some reason, the Queen seems to be killing off all the vampires, except for our favourites of course. What is she up to?? We find out along the way how vampires came to exist and what the Queen’s badass dealio is anyway. I got a bit addicted to the whole story, if a little impatient with all the descriptions of how gorgeous and tortured everbody was.

Rice even manages to weave in some serious topics, a la Cocoon. For example, if someone offered you a smoothie that would make you immortal, would you drink? (Ha!) If someone dangled a tempting tidbit in front of you that would make your loved ones immortal, would you bite? (Ha! Ha!) Also, more to the point, would you ask them first?? Would a world run by women really be any less violent than one that’s still pretty much ruled by men? (You’ll have to read the book to see how that one fits in). She also offers some interesting alternative theories as to how embalming and mummification came to be the dominant way of honouring the dead – as opposed to eating their corpses, of course. (I must confess I began to be persuaded of the merits of this option – eww!! Boy, I was really sucked in).

This book was written in 1988 and I’m wondering if that was the same era as Virginia Andrews and Flowers in the Attic and so forth – it has that same kind of outrageous gothic scandalous mixed up relationships thing going. Hmmm…must re-read some good old Virginia Andrews sometime…

Rating: 6 out of 10

Queen of the Flowers (2005)

By Kerry Greenwood

You know, I find that I don’t really like Greenwood’s heroine, Phryne Fisher. I tried to read one of her mysteries before and gave it up quite fast; Phryne is kind of cold and superior, and, to paraphrase her own words, not prone to guilt or remorse, or to any extreme kind of emotion, in fact. I did warm a bit towards her in the end of this book, for being so capable, and the plot is quite satisfyingly twisty, so I might be persuaded to read another one. (Plot of this one in a nutshell: Phryne is hired to locate a missing girl who is to be part of the Flower Parade at St Kilda; also one of her adopted daughters is having who-is-my-real-father issues).

There is something quite insufferable about Phryne, though. I started to wonder whether I was succumbing to culturally indoctrinated ideas of what women should be like – you know, all warm and nurturing, or at least prone to a good bit of irrational PMT. I wondered, am I judging her more harshly than the boys? (Boy private eyes, I mean). For example, I am quite fond of Sir Peter Wimsey, another toffee-nosed well-to-do detective-because-he-can-afford-to-be literary character. But Sir Peter is tortured, sometimes, and prone to self-doubt. I also enjoyed Sherlock Holmes stories when I was younger, who is not renowned for his emotional depth - but we could excuse him a bit because he was a genius and because there was good old Dr Watson there with him, who had a more normal range of human responses and got hurt when Holmes left him out of things and so on. It’s all that personal growth business – Phryne doesn’t seem to feel she needs any. Also it annoys me that she’s called “Phryne” because it’s so difficult to spell.

In any case, I have the impression Greenwood wouldn’t be the slightest bit perturbed at Phryne not being universally liked – and I’m quite certain that Phryne herself wouldn’t give a toss.

Rating: 7 out of 10
A good lazy Sunday read when you’re in a superior mood – or, to feel, like Phryne, read it in the bath with a good French red.

Wilt (2005)

By Tom Sharpe

This is the story of Henry Wilt, who’s a chap not really content with his middle-class existence. Neither is his wife, Eva, who wishes he had a more prestigious job and a bit more ambition and so on. Wilt fantasises about murdering his wife, especially after she meets an odious American couple, Sally and Gaskell Pringsheim, who are into Sexual Freedom and Women’s Lib and all sorts of revolutionary new things. Wilt even goes so far as to “practice” Eva’s murder, while she is away with the Pringsheims, after which he decides not to murder Eva.

Unfortunately for Wilt, his practice body (a blow-up plastic doll) is discovered and everyone believes he has murdered Eva after all. People become increasingly hysterical from then on, especially at some staff meetings at Wilt’s workplace, which are really very good scenes.

This book is written very cleverly, and is quite amusing, only it bothers me that the “bad guy” of the story is Sally Pringsheim, who really is a super bitch, but also the representative of “Women’s Lib” in the story. So, in satirising Sally, the author also makes Women’s Lib seem shallow and callous and selfish. Eva is “saved” in the end and she and Wilt return to their normal, comfortable existence, but partly because at some level Eva rejected Women’s Lib and what it represented.

In other words, I get the feeling Tom Sharpe is not a fan of Women’s Lib. But then, he is entitled not to be a fan…literature would be very dull if we all had the same opinions…all the same, I will be reading more of Sharpe to decide whether or not I think he is a misogynist, as well as to enjoy his depictions of bureaucratic ridiculousness.

Rating: 7.5 out of 10
Read when you feel in the mood for an episode of “Yes, Minister” or are feeling very anti-Women’s Lib.