#invisible monsters
BOOK REVIEW
Title: Invisible Monsters Remix
Author: Chuck Palahniuk
Genre:Contemporary
My Rating: ★★★★ (4 of 5 stars)
A reentry to Chuck Palahniuk’s universe after long stays in more run-of-the-mill (though not necessarily less entertaining) worlds in literature can send you a refreshing bolt of shock, reminding you of this author’s forte. He doesn’t hold back. He removes filters. He scrunches your eyes open as he exposes all the possible ugly truths in anything you may find beautiful. Sometimes, he makes you realize that ugly truths are the exact reasons why things are beautiful in the first place.
These realizations came back when I read Invisible Monsters Remix. I’ve been meaning to read Invisible Monsters for a long time, but I somehow got distracted by other genres—the lighter ones, those that spell the meaning of “escape” instead of those that enumerate why you really can’t get away from reality even through books.
In a recent book fair, I chanced upon a copy of Invisible Monsters’ “director’s cut” edition, Remix. The cover features a skinny blonde model whose disheveled hair was brushed to cover about three-fourths of her face, one dark eye staring out passively for dramatic effect. There was a bit of red paint over the picture to make for an illusion of carelessly smudged lipstick, a wonderful symbol for the book’s subjects if you ask me: the protagonist’s “post-accident” appearance, the fashion industry, the complexity of sexuality, plastic surgery, and violence (that paint could actually be blood and not lipstick at all…or maybe it’s both, who knows?). The texts’ jagged font looked as if a lipstick was used to write them. My point is, everything about the cover drew me in. It’s just too Palahniuk to resist, the bits I said about beauty and ugliness above present in it. Even if I haven’t read the edited version, I bought the book without second thoughts.
Invisible Monsters Remix revolves around the story of a fashion model whose career and charmed life came to a halt when an “accident” leaves her disfigured and unable to speak. She becomes friends with pill-popping Brandy Alexander, and together they travel—conning people, rummaging big houses for drugs, and in the end finding out who they really are and what significant roles they play in each other’s lives.
The chapters jump around literally; there are footnotes telling you to turn to this chapter or that, almost in a Choose Your Own Adventure style minus its alternate-endings effect. The first release of Invisible Monsters years ago wasn’t as topsy-turvy as this; however, Remix contains Palahniuk’s original vision of the novel so I was content to have read it first. The structure’s purpose is to make it so that it resembles a magazine to complement its subject matter. It doesn’t affect the story in a major way, and to be honest I think Palahniuk didn’t have to do that at all, since the contents of every chapter jump around in time and dimension anyway.
Typical of Palahniuk’s characters, everyone in this book is screwed up in one degree or another. I wanted to fully grasp the narrator’s way of thinking, but it just drifts farther and farther away from normal as the chapters go (but then again, I wouldn’t blame her after everything that has happened to her). She projects as a mad example for the society’s obsession with attention the same way Brandy Alexander is an icon for the society’s obsession with beauty and perfection.
Story-wise, I fell in love with it. The narrator spews out the tale in staccatos of flashbacks and vivid imagery that held the plot intact until the bittersweet end. This is one of the few books I’ve read that contain more than one major plot twist that didn’t come out as lame or forced—at every reveal, I find myself wanting to release a thread of curses. I love how in his best satirical approach, Palahniuk showed that grit and glam are the conjoined twins of the reality of everything and everyone that values beauty as a very important “commodity.”
For a very memorable read, I’m giving Invisible Monsters Remix four stars.
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Cross-posted to my blogspot.
Photo by maddiespictures.
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LATEST BOOK HAUL.
- The White Tiger by Aravind Diga. Set in a raw and unromanticized India, The White Tiger—the first-person confession of a murderer—is as compelling for its subject matter as it is for the voice of its narrator: amoral, cynical, unrepentant, yet deeply endearing.
- Damned by Chuck Palahniuk. Follows the story of Madison, a thirteen-year-old girl who finds herself in Hell, unsure of why she will be there for all eternity, but tries to make the best of it.
- Invisible Monsters: Remix by Chuck Palahniuk. Injected with new material and special design elements, this book fulfills Palahniuk’s original vision for his 1999 novel, turning a daring satire on beauty and the fashion industry into an even more wildly unique reading experience. NOTE: I’m done reading this and I love it! Full review to follow!
- The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There by Catherynne M. Valente. September returns to Fairyland where she learns that its inhabitants have been losing their shadows—and their magic—to the world of Fairyland Below. Sequel to The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making.
- Unnatural Creatures edited by Neil Gaiman. A collection of short stories about the fantastical things that exist only in our minds—collected and introduced by beloved New York Times bestselling author Neil Gaiman.
- The History of Love by Nicole Krauss. Leo Gursky taps his radiator each evening to let his upstairs neighbor know he’s still alive. But it wasn t always like this: in the Polish village of his youth, he fell in love and wrote a book. Sixty years later and half a world away, fourteen-year-old Alma, who was named after a character in that book, undertakes an adventure to find her namesake and save her family.
- Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs. Follows junkie William Lee, who takes on various aliases, from the US to Mexico, eventually to Tangier and the dreamlike Interzone. The vignettes are drawn from Burroughs’ own experience in these places, and his addiction to drugs.
- Under My Hat: Tales from the Cauldron edited by Jonathan Strahan. Collection of “witch” stories from the biggest names in fantasy and young adult literature, including Neil Gaiman, Holly Black, Diana Peterfreund, Margo Lanagan, Peter S. Beagle, and Garth Nix.
- All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr. Deftly interweaving the lives of the blind Marie-Laure and German orphan Werner set during WWII, Doerr illuminates the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another.
- Landline by Rainbow Rowell. A tale about a disintegrating marriage and a phone call from the past—and not just from anyone’s past, it’s from the past self of the Georgie’s—the protagonist’s—husband. It’s not time travel, not exactly, but Georgie feels like she’s been given an opportunity to fix her marriage before it starts. (Thanks for the gift, Mamu Kit!)
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