CHUCK PALAHNIUK’s eleven best-selling novels—Tell-All, Pygmy, Snuff, Rant, Haunted, Lullaby, Fight Club, Diary, Survivor, Invisible Monsters, and Choke—have sold more than five million copies in the United States. He is also the author of Fugitives and Refugees, published as part of the Crown Journey Series, and the nonfiction collection Stranger Than Fiction. He lives in the Pacific Northwest.
Praise for Damned:"As gleefully, vividly, hilariously obscene as
you'd expect. . . . Irreverent and hugely entertaining."
—NPR"Brilliant. . . . Palahniuk's descriptions of hell are
inspired, crafted with great comic flair. . . . A winning and funny
book." —The Washington Post"Hilarious. . . . The Judy Blume book
from hell, just as Mr. Palahniuk intended." —The New York Times
"When it comes to drawing up a vision of hell, there are few
American writers better suited to the job than Chuck Palahniuk."
—Los Angeles Times
"Damned is gross, sick, nasty, silly, all the things you want from
the merry madman of American letters, Chuck Palahniuk. How can you
not be instantly transfixed by an opening like this?: 'Are you
there, Satan? It's me, Madison. I'm just now arrived here, in Hell,
but it's not my fault except for maybe dying from an overdose of
marijuana.' And so begins the kind of goofy, but hypnotically
endearing tale of a 13-year-old girl who, completely lost in life,
finally starts to discover herself in Palahniuk's demented version
of the afterlife....With Damned, [he] opens the fire hose to full
bore again, stripping away the veneer on American society and
showing us the yucky parts we don't want to see."—Chris Talbot,
AP
"[T]horoughly original...satiric and horrifying, enough so you'll
want to repent after you read."—Christian DuChateau, CNN
"Some Fight Club trademarks--youthful disaffection, violence,
gross-out humor, a dystopic setting, cultural satire as an extreme
sport, a decent helping of third-act pathos--can be seen
in...Damned. Even prepubescent Madison Spencer, the
protagonist of Damned, has traits that could be seen as Tyler
Durden-esque. She's disaffected from society (i.e., those still
alive), she kicks serious butt and is a cultural critic who becomes
an unlikely leader....It's hard to pitch the broadly satirical
Damned as a useful replacement narrative of life after death, but
it's a rollicking adventure of Swiftian proportions, a Valleyfair
of the Underworld that, incidentally, shows an overweight teenage
girl bringing Satan himself down a peg."—Claude Peck, Minneapolis
Star-Tribune
"Damned is typical of Palahniuk's work: a scathing satire that is
unfiltered, caustic and smart....[His] descriptions of hell are
priceless."—Rege Behe, Pittsburgh Tribune Review
"Even just its first few chapters reveal several layers of satiric
humor, social commentary, Grand Guignol violence and heartbreaking
insight....The narrator's blend of snark, precocious wit and
unconcealed vulnerability and need is a combination as refreshing
as the book is hard to put down."—Bill O'Driscoll, Pittsburgh City
Paper
A teenage girl named Madison dies of a drug overdose and awakens in hell, alongside every stereotypical character in the history of bad writing: a jock, a cheerleader, a headbanger, and, naturally, a science dweeb. The twist is that this is a hell that only Palahniuk could have imagined, and the journey to escape it is as unpredictable as anything he's ever written. Narrator Tai Sammons delivers a stellar reading in which she captures the essence of Madison. Her dialect, delivery, and tone are perfectly suited to that of a 13-year-old who's having a really, really bad day. Listening to Sammons's narration is an intimate experience as her rendition of Madison pours her heart out and prays her words won't fall only on dead ears. A Doubleday hardcover. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
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