10/12/2011: Book Review: Damned by Chuck Palahnuik - The Guardian
“John Hughes isn’t the only cultural touchstone. As well as Dante and Jane Eyre, Palahniuk frequently invokes Swift, another satirist heavily invested in bodily revulsion: there’s a Brobdingnagian scene in which Madison appeases a giant flesh-eating demon by pleasuring it with the severed head of a teenage punk. But despite copious gobbets of demonology (“Whispering to me, Leonard explains that this is the dethroned Celtic god of stags”), Palahniuk’s hell owes more to South Park than to the Inferno or Gulliver’s Travels. There’s an over-familiarity, too, to his portrayal of the underworld as a place of grinding bureaucracy and trivial torments, endless waiting rooms where the seats are boobytrapped with chewing gum. Hell turns out to be other people’s versions of hell.” - Justine Jordan
(For the rest of the review, click HERE)
Seems middling. Perhaps one for the completist. On the other hand, might be good. Only one way to find out.
