Fight Club: A Novel
-
-
4.8 • 12 Ratings
-
-
- $18.99
-
- $18.99
Publisher Description
The first rule about fight club is you don't talk about fight club.
Chuck Palahniuk showed himself to be his generation’s most visionary satirist in this, his first book. Fight Club’s estranged narrator leaves his lackluster job when he comes under the thrall of Tyler Durden, an enigmatic young man who holds secret after-hours boxing matches in the basements of bars. There, two men fight "as long as they have to." This is a gloriously original work that exposes the darkness at the core of our modern world.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
You may know the first (and second) rule of fight club. You may even know about the big secret twist. Heck, you may have memorized every line of the Brad Pitt and Ed Norton movie. But nothing compares to the pure nihilistic thrill of reading Chuck Palahniuk’s endlessly quotable debut novel for yourself. This generation-defining story explores toxic masculinity—and it grips you from the very first line, which introduces us to the book’s most infamous character: chief anarchist Tyler Durden. Palahniuk’s propulsive way with words makes his unnamed narrator’s journey from white-collar insomniac to bare-knuckle brawler page-turning stuff. And even if you already know how his dystopian satire ends, there’s endless fun to be had discovering the numerous hints scattered throughout the book. Enigmatic, subversive, and unwilling to pull any punches, Fight Club is everything a modern cult classic should be.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Featuring soap made from human fat, waiters at high-class restaurants who do unmentionable things to soup and an underground organization dedicated to inflicting a violent anarchy upon the land, Palahniuk's apocalyptic first novel is clearly not for the faint of heart. The unnamed (and extremely unreliable) narrator, who makes his living investigating accidents for a car company in order to assess their liability, is combating insomnia and a general sense of anomie by attending a steady series of support-group meetings for the grievously ill, at one of which (testicular cancer) he meets a young woman named Marla. She and the narrator get into a love triangle of sorts with Tyler Durden, a mysterious and gleefully destructive young man with whom the narrator starts a fight club, a secret society that offers young professionals the chance to beat one another to a bloody pulp. Mayhem ensues, beginning with the narrator's condo exploding and culminating with a terrorist attack on the world's tallest building. Writing in an ironic deadpan and including something to offend everyone, Palahniuk is a risky writer who takes chances galore, especially with a particularly bizarre plot twist he throws in late in the book. Caustic, outrageous, bleakly funny, violent and always unsettling, Palahniuk's utterly original creation will make even the most jaded reader sit up and take notice. Movie rights to Fox 2000.
Customer Reviews
Great concept
The concept of the book is well done. However, I found Tyler Durben to be more poignant in the movie adaptation (which I preferred over the book).