To be clear at the outset: this is not a good book. There are many reasons why Chuck Palahniuk’s new novel, his first in four years, fails, but perhaps the most depressing is how stale his premise feels. A vapid Nineteen Eighty-Four for the Snapchat generation, mixed with a ghoulish touch of The Purge, the often incoherent and confused narrative revolves around the much-ballyhooed “Adjustment Day” itself, a massacre of the educated in society by the uneducated, and the resulting new order that arises.
Eschewing a central character, Palahniuk, best known for his debut, Fight Club, introduces the reader to a series of figures of varying interest and narrative importance. There is a Big Brother-esque oracle, Talbott Reynolds, who offers gnomic but essentially fascist wisdom such as: “First make yourself despicable, then indispensable”.
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