Choke - Chuck Palahniuk

Title: Choke

Author: Chuck Palahniuk

Publication date: August 2002

Publisher: Vintage

Pages: 293

Rating: four out of five stars

Synopsis from Goodreads:

Victor Mancini has devised a complicated scam to pay for his mother's hospital care: pretend to be choking on a piece of food in a restaurant and the person who 'saves you' will feel responsible for you for the rest of their lives. Multiply that a couple of hundred times and you generate a healthy flow of cheques, week in, week out.

Victor also works at a theme park with a motley group of losers, cruises sex addiction groups for action, and visits his mother, whose Alzheimer's disease now hides what may be the startling truth about his parentage.

Just a warning, this in not YA but it is what I've been reading and I thought I'd give it a review. 

It's always a pleasant experience to open a book that automatically tells you to not read it. It did warn me that I wouldn't "want to be here" if I did. Which both worried and intrigued me, but despite the warning I in fact quite enjoyed the whole experience. It was both similar and a bit lighter to read than Less than Zero, which was action packed with hatred-of-mankind moments.

I mean at times this novel can be almost uplifting, but I won't tell you when and where, lest I give any spoilers.

The novel follows Victor Mancini, a medical school drop-out desperately trying to afford his mother's hospital care by working in the 1730s and, even weirder, pretending to choke on food in fancy restaurants to gain the help, and money, of unsuspecting heroes. (I would argue, however, the one with the true hero-complex, maybe more aptly Jesus-complex, is Victor.)

He also goes to sex-addict meanings to get laid. So it's all a bit morally ambiguous, and generally quite pessimistic about life. But within all the bad language and sex lies the true heart of the issue: identity. Victor doesn't really know who he is or what he wants, he doesn't know where he's going, except following the same old pattern of addiction and serious mother issues.

Mother issues become more apparent as we're offered flashbacks of his childhood between chapters. Generally all the relationships he forms in this novel are dysfunctional, and so are the people (although weirdly appealing). His bestfriend, for example, starts hoarding rocks which somehow ends up providing a relevant and inspiring metaphor for the story.

One thing for sure is that Chuck Palahniuk can write some strange, yet brilliant, things. And some really disgusting things, I didn't really want to hear about the adventures of his "dog" (use your imagination) or go quite into as much detail about snot-filled tissues - but there you go.

I enjoyed it, weirdly enough, and do recommend anyone to give it a go (although maybe not the faint hearted).

Favourite quote:
"Even after all this rushing around, where we've ended up is the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night."

We Were Liars - E. Lockhart

Title: We Were Liars
Author: E. Lockhart
Publication date: May 2014
Purchased: ASDA - £3.85
Rating: three stars

We are liars

We are beautiful and privileged

We are cracked and broken

A tale of love and romance

A tale of tragedy

Which are lies?

Which is truth? 

You decide 

*synopsis from back of book*

Honestly, I think I was expecting a little more from this book than I actually got. But whilst it was a good contemporary novel with a powerful story, it just wasn't one hundred per cent for me.

I thought that Lockhart created a fantastic setting, I really could see the island and the houses. She was really good at capturing each scene in the novel perfectly. The only drawback was that I felt like the protagonist Cadence had no personality. I never really got a grasp of who she was and couldn't really get involved with how she felt. She kept using these extreme metaphors to describe how she felt, but, to be honest, I didn't like them. But everyone else I got a real strong sense of personality, made especially by the writing style. Example a: "Mirren, she is sugar, curiosity, and rain" - I love how simplistic yet impacting these little descriptions can be. I thought it was beautiful.

It dealt with some real issues, especially surrounding family. Cadence's parents divorce and her complicated relationship with her mum, and the three sister's relationship with their father was of a lot of interest to me. I'm not a tall, blonde beauty born into a millionaire family with a budding financial problem, but I could believe what I was reading (mostly). The children being cleaved between the pressures of living up to expectations and just wanting it all to end is probably something a lot of people can emphasise with, and it was depicted well enough that I could sympathise.

However, in terms of plot Cadence's illness seemed pretty sketchy to me at some points. I know that there was a big old twist that had for the story's sake to be kept hush, but when it did come out (and no I didn't expect it) it made the story a little meh for me. I honestly don't know enough about what she suffered to prove it was unrealistic, but I felt like she would've know more than she did until the end of her weeks on the island. I really do, but I could be wrong. Like I said before, I didn't expect the twist, maybe that was silly of me not to, but I definitely thought it was the best bit of the book, I shed a little tear.

Overall it was a story with a great plotline, but at times I found it a bit puzzling and I couldn't really get involved with Cadence as a character as I would have liked to. Maybe I'm missing something, but it was just my impression.