Survivor by Chuck PalahniukPublisher: W.W. Norton 1999
Paperback 289 pages
Ever since I read Fight Club many years ago, I've always read Palahniuk's novels with a sense of anticipation. I'm always expecting the world to fall out from under me to reveal some gritty truth about life, society, love, death, sex... you name it. I have to say that in his novel Survivor I wasn't let down. Religious cults, child exploitation, slavery, steroids, mass suicides, collagen injections, celebrity and the Super Bowl, this book has it all.
What I love about Palahniuk is that he can pull off story lines that would leave other novels feeling overwhelmed or contrite. In Survivor we are taken into the last confession of Tender Branson; an abused child of a religious cult or a disenfranchised Messiah, you take your pick. At once, Palahniuk allows the reader to be repulsed and sympathetic to this character Tender. We are allowed to see his pain and his twisted mind as a product of the brainwashing cult he was born into, but we can also see the human side of him crying to get out.
To anyone who enjoyed Fight Club, or readers of Philip K. Dick, Kurt Vonnegut or Hornsby, you will revel in the mastery of Palahniuk's world. And if he isn't our generations answer to Vonnegut, I don't know who is.
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