DiaryA Novel

Chuck Palahniuk

Summary

Diary

By: Chuck Palahniuk

Narrarated by: Martha Plimpton

“CAN YOU FEEL THIS?”

Chuck Palahniuk, the bestselling author of Fight Club, Choke, and Lullaby continues his twenty-first-century reinvention of the horror novel in this scary and profound look at our quest for some sort of immortality.

Diary takes the form of a “coma diary” kept by one Misty Tracy Wilmot as her husband lies senseless in a hospital after a suicide attempt. Once she was an art student dreaming of creativity and freedom; now, after marrying Peter at school and being brought back to once quaint, now tourist-overrun Waytansea Island, she’s been reduced to the condition of a resort hotel maid. Peter, it turns out, has been hiding rooms in houses he’s remodeled and scrawling vile messages all over the walls—an old habit of builders but dramatically overdone in Peter’s case. Angry homeowners are suing left and right, and Misty’s dreams of artistic greatness are in ashes. But then, as if possessed by the spirit of Maura Kinkaid, a fabled Waytansea artist of the nineteenth century, Misty begins painting again, compulsively. But can her newly discovered talent be part of a larger, darker plan? Of course it can …

Diary is a dark, hilarious, and poignant act of storytelling from America’s favorite, most inventive nihilist. It is Chuck Palahniuk’s finest novel yet.

Sample Audiobook
Audiobook Information
New York Times Best Seller
  • Edition: Unabridged
  • Author: Chuck Palahniuk (See All Books)
  • Date Released: Sep 17, 2007
  • Publisher: Random House Audio
  • Genre: Contemporary Fiction, Suspense, Fiction & Literature

Total File Size: 213 MB (7 files) Total Length: 7 Hours, 47 Minutes

eMusic Review 0

Avatar Image
Ed Champion

eMusic Contributor

09.17.07
Chuck Palahniuk, Diary
2007 | Label: Random House Audio

A crude but gripping tableau of trailer trash drifters, failed artists, intervening tourists and the struggle for integrity against class-based limitations.
If this audiobook is not likely to inspire the same mass faintings as Palahniuk's bookstore readings of his short story "Guts," Diary at least reminds us that Palahniuk's work, for all of its oft-predictable sensationalism, strikes a blunt yet effective iconoclasm at odds with most popular literature. Sidestep the shock value and you'll find a crude but gripping tableau of trailer trash drifters, failed artists, intervening tourists and the struggle for integrity against class-based limitations.

The odd Trojan horse here is Martha Plimpton, who reads in the hard, husky manner of a woman who's witnessed too many ineffable banalities. Seven discs may be too much for such an approach. Pimpton's vocal affectations occasionally grate, particularly when shredding through large chunks of dialogue. But flitting through Palahniuk's run-on, instructive sentences with a slam-style timbre, Plimpton sustains the urgency in the novel's many four-letter words and negotiates the book's tricky second-person voice without drawing too much attention to Palahniuk's stylistic showboating. And that's no small feat.

Diary may be about as emo as an audiobook can get, but listeners searching for a hard, bitter pill to swallow will likely be satisfied.

Write a Review0 Member Reviews

Please log in before you review a release. Log in