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A review by lauraeydmann82
Damned by Chuck Palahniuk
5.0
Described by the author as “if The Shawshank Redemption had a baby by The Lovely Bones and it was raised by Judy Blume.” I wasn’t sure if I was going to like this. However, I quickly got into it and really enjoyed it, often falling asleep with the book still in my hand at 2am. It’s written in the same style as “Are you there God, it’s me, Margaret”, with each chapter starting with Madison talking to Satan. Maddy is dead, possibly from a cannabis overdose, she can’t be sure. She has found herself in hell, possibly because of the drugs, although it turns out that there are many ways you can get yourself damned (most of which you wouldn’t have thought of).
Hell isn’t too bad, (apart from the mountains of toe clippings, vomit ponds and worse) and Maddy even makes a few friends along the way. We see her thinking about her life before she died, as the daughter of a film star and a billionaire who adopted brothers and sisters for her every other year, refused to let the public know her real name, and shipped her off to a Swiss boarding school. They were not the nicest of parents. We also see her trying to find her way in hell, working in one of the hell call centers, making friends and defeating demons. Palahniuk’s hell consists of the typical damnation scenes you have come to expect, eternal torture at the hands of demons, cells with dirty bars, hoards of wailing damned souls, rivers of excrement, and some that are less typical, call centers to people on earth, designed to annoy in the middle of dinner, and endless crappy sweets and candy (the main currency in hell).
There are some weird and wonderful scenes in this book, not least of all the bizarre way one of the demons is dealt with involving a severed head performing a sex act… and the way that Maddy manages to persuade hoards of Nazi’s, Romans and other armies in hell to help her tidy the place up a bit… Madison’s life is also interesting, with us finding out exactly how she did actually die, and the circumstances around it.
The whole book is written in Madison’s voice, as a sarcastic intelligent 13 year old girl, with insecurities about her weight and intelligence, and sarcastic wisecracks about the living. It’s very amusing, entertaining and not easy to put down… It’s slightly open ended, and I have heard rumours of a sequel. I hope it’s in the works as I really enjoyed this and I am looking forward to reading more of Palahniuk’s work. All in all, I enjoyed this much more than I thought.
Hell isn’t too bad, (apart from the mountains of toe clippings, vomit ponds and worse) and Maddy even makes a few friends along the way. We see her thinking about her life before she died, as the daughter of a film star and a billionaire who adopted brothers and sisters for her every other year, refused to let the public know her real name, and shipped her off to a Swiss boarding school. They were not the nicest of parents. We also see her trying to find her way in hell, working in one of the hell call centers, making friends and defeating demons. Palahniuk’s hell consists of the typical damnation scenes you have come to expect, eternal torture at the hands of demons, cells with dirty bars, hoards of wailing damned souls, rivers of excrement, and some that are less typical, call centers to people on earth, designed to annoy in the middle of dinner, and endless crappy sweets and candy (the main currency in hell).
There are some weird and wonderful scenes in this book, not least of all the bizarre way one of the demons is dealt with involving a severed head performing a sex act… and the way that Maddy manages to persuade hoards of Nazi’s, Romans and other armies in hell to help her tidy the place up a bit… Madison’s life is also interesting, with us finding out exactly how she did actually die, and the circumstances around it.
The whole book is written in Madison’s voice, as a sarcastic intelligent 13 year old girl, with insecurities about her weight and intelligence, and sarcastic wisecracks about the living. It’s very amusing, entertaining and not easy to put down… It’s slightly open ended, and I have heard rumours of a sequel. I hope it’s in the works as I really enjoyed this and I am looking forward to reading more of Palahniuk’s work. All in all, I enjoyed this much more than I thought.