Choke
Hits the Big Screen but You Can Still Read it First
With
the movie version staring Sam Rockwell and Angelica Huston slated to
be released sometime in 2008, now would be a very good time to take a
look at author Chuck Palahniuk’s bestseller, Choke.
Palahnuik, best known for his underground
masterpiece Fight Club, has
delivered another winning punch with Choke.
This
fast-paced, dark novel takes us through a period in the life of
Victor Mancini, a colonial theme-park worker who goes to Sex Addicts
Anonymous seeking risqué encounters.
It begins with Mancini’s very creative scam to help
pay his aging mother’s nursing home bills. Mancini goes into
restaurants and intentionally chokes to gain the sympathy and,
hopefully, financial support of well-meaning “good Samaritans.”
As always, Palahnuik pulls off the far-fetched making it seem as
normal as brushing your teeth in the morning. And it gets stranger we
follow Palahniuk’s trail of crumbs through plot twist after bizarre
plot twist. As with all of Palahniuk’s books, it would be unseemly
to end anywhere near where it began, or even close to the realm of
reality for that matter.
This
delightfully deranged book is available from Anchor Books and can be
found in the fiction section of your local Barnes and Noble.