Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780307388926
ISBN: 0307388921
Label: Anchor
Manufacturer: Anchor
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 304
Publication Date: 2008-08-26
Publisher: Anchor
Release Date: 2008-08-26
Studio: Anchor

Victor Mancini's a medical school dropout with a problem. He needs to pay for elder care for his mother, who's got Alzheimer's. So he comes up with the perfect scam: pretending to choke in upscale restaurants and getting “saved” by fellow diners who, feeling responsible for Victor's life, offer him financial support.

Meanwhile, he cruises sexual addiction recovery workshops and spends his days working at Colonial Dunsboro, where his stoner colleagues are sentenced to the stocks for any deviation from the colonial lifestyle. Oh, yeah, and he's desperate to find the truth of his paternity, which his addled mother suggests may be divine.
Victor Mancini is a ruthless con artist. Victor Mancini is a med-school dropout who's taken a job playing an Irish indentured servant in a colonial-era theme park in order to help care for his Alzheimer's-afflicted mother. Victor Mancini is a sex addict. Victor Mancini is a direct descendant of Jesus Christ. All of these statements about the protagonist of Choke are more or less true. Welcome, once again, to the world of Chuck Palahniuk.

"Art never comes from happiness." So says Mancini's mother only a few pages into the novel. Given her own dicey and melodramatic style of parenting, you would think that her son's life would be chock-full of nothing but art. Alas, that's not the case. In the fine tradition of Oedipus, Stephen Dedalus, and Anthony Soprano, Victor hasn't quite reconciled his issues with his mother. Instead, he's trawling sexual-addiction recovery meetings for dates and purposely choking in restaurants for a few moments of attention. Longing for a hug, in other words, he's settling for the Heimlich.

Thematically, this is pretty familiar Palahniuk territory. It would be a pity to disclose the surprises of the plot, but suffice it to say that what we have here is a little bit of Tom Robbins's Another Roadside Attraction, a little bit of Don DeLillo's The Day Room, and, well, a little bit of Fight Club. Just as with Fight Club and the other two novels under Palahniuk's belt, we get a smattering of gloriously unflinching sound bites, including this skeptical bit on prayer chains: "A spiritual pyramid scheme. As if you can gang up on God. Bully him around."

Whether this is the novel that will break Palahniuk into the mainstream is hard to say. For a fourth book, in fact, the ratio of iffy, "dude"-intensive dialogue to interesting and insightful passages is a little higher than we might wish. In the end, though, the author's nerve and daring pull the whole thing off--just barely. And what's next for Victor Mancini's creator? Leave the last word to him, declaring as he does in the final pages: "Maybe it's our job to invent something better.... What it's going to be, I don't know." --Bob Michaels

Customer Rating:
Summary: review
Comment: This book was fun and vulgar. Read it if you DON'T have a weak stomach.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: I don't get the hype about this one.
Comment: I've read a lot of Palahniuk's books and this is by far my least favorite. If you want something more interesting, read Survivor, Lullaby or my favorite, Invisible Monsters.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: "Outrageous" isn't the right word, but it's the one that comes to mind.
Comment:
Chuck Palahniuk is an author who writes boundary-pushing, perversely twisted, bizarrely funny, male-oriented fiction that isn't likely to appeal to most women and will offend a good number of men as well. Palahniuk could be described as an author for the `Maxim' generation but his novels are actually smarter than that. In fact, if you aren't easily offended, you'll find that Palahniuk delivers some of the most perceptive satire you're likely to find anywhere. Palahniuk writes dialogue and prose that is not only insightful, but `catchy'. Few authors can pepper their prose with memorable catch-phrases the way Palahniuk can.

The Plot: Victor is a sex addict who drops out of medical school and who works at a colonial theme park and pretends to choke in fancy restaurants in order to pay the hospital bills for his dying, delusional, anarchist mother. His best friend is a chronic self-abuser who is attempting to beat his self-gratification addiction by collecting rocks that he obsessively cleans, and on occasion, covers in a blanket to create the illusion that the rock is a baby. Victor is plagued with childhood memories of being abducted by his mother and life on the run exposed to his mother's paranoia and crazy brand of anarchy (she mislabels hair color packaging so that blondes are turned into brunettes and vise versa and distributes unauthorized restaurant coupons so that restaurants are bombarded with people demanding a free meal). His perception of himself is shaken when he finds out that he may be the son of Jesus Christ, conceived using DNA from an ancient foreskin; and that somehow, some part of him, might actually be good.

Choke is a novel about addiction and how things need to get a lot worse before they get better. Choke shares similar themes to Fight Club (most notably the rants on consumer culture). It has a similar tone in narration and features a revelation near the end of the novel that is reminiscent, in some ways, of Fight Club. Choke uses absurdly broad strokes to explore the nature of addictive behavior and the drive to self destruction. The novel also explores religious themes, parenthood, and our illusions of self. The people who `save' Victor from choking are being scammed, but at the same time, their illusion of heroism defines them.

If you are looking for a stark, realistic character-study probing the soul of a man who suffers from addition, this isn't it. Palahniuk doesn't write inward looking novels. He writes satire. He explores the simple absurdities of life and amplifies them until they are ridiculous, but in their extremes, simple truths can be found.

A warning: There is a lot of sexual content in this book (although not in a titillating way). It is crude and explicit and certain to offend people. There may be women who like this book, but probably not many. Palahniuk writes with a male voice for a male audience. He may not be an author for everyone, but for those of us who enjoy his warped world view, Choke is both insightful and outrageously funny. I haven't seen the movie yet, but I'm looking forward to it.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: So they said it was Vulgar
Comment: They've warned you, the book is vulgar. They've warned you it's not for the timid. You've been told to go away if you have a week stomach. If you can't handle the radicalness, you'd better turn around and go right back to the safest section in the bookstore.

But, in reality, this book is not that vulgar. It doesn't make you queesy. It might be a bit foul for Bible Belters, but otherwise, I think Chuck Palahniuk is writing of as being disturbingly nasty, and that is not the case.

Sure there are some thick padded segments that come across as juvenile or sexually ambiguous, but that is to be expected when reading a novel of a recovering sex addict.

Palahniuk is able to do what so many people have troubles doing. Creating a character from the inside and out and making this character true-to-form, never straying away from what we know about him. Real people don't have random change of character, so why should a character in a book?

His style of writing weaves in an out; as if you're able to peak into someone's brain and have them display whatever they're currently thinking about. The images like our thought patterns are full and nonlinear.

Don't believe the hype, but do believe the book is worthy of a read.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Well...THAT was graphic.
Comment: Graphic and entertaining. In a good way, of course.

I found the main character absolutely intriguing, and was delighted to read small excerpts from his past every once in a while. The rest of the characters all had a certain charm to them. The first-person narrative was great, and never exasperating.

However, the book seemed to take too much time describing Victor's many sexual encounters, and not enough on his choking experiences.
I knew the main character was a sex addict and all, but isn't the book called Choke?

I found myself sitting between my mom and grandma at Thanksgiving reading a detailed sex scene, looking over my shoulder every few seconds as to make sure they weren't staring at me wide-eyed.

In the end, it made for a very good read, I recommend it to anyone out there who wants something different and refreshing. I can't wait to see the movie, and I can't wait to read it and go through the experience all over again.

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