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Haunted
- Narrated by: Scott Brick, Marc Cashman, Erik Davies, Kimberly Farr
- Length: 13 hrs and 52 mins
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Survivor
- Written by: Chuck Palahniuk
- Narrated by: Michael Braun
- Length: 8 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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Tender Branson - last surviving member of the so-called "Creedish Death Cult" - is dictating his incredible life story into the flight recorder of Flight 2039, cruising on autopilot at 39,000 feet somewhere over the Pacific Ocean. He is all alone in the plane, which will shortly reach terminal velocity and crash into the vast Australian outback.
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Not a tour de force.
- By Journeyman on 2022-11-20
Written by: Chuck Palahniuk
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Invisible Monsters
- Written by: Chuck Palahniuk
- Narrated by: Anna Fields
- Length: 5 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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She’s a fashion model who has everything: a boyfriend, a career, a loyal best friend. But when a sudden freeway "accident" leaves her disfigured and incapable of speech, she goes from being the beautiful center of attention to being an invisible monster, so hideous that no one will acknowledge she exists. Enter Brandy Alexander, Queen Supreme, one operation away from becoming a real woman, who will teach her that reinventing yourself means erasing your past and making up something better. And that salvation hides in the last places you’ll ever want to look.
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Great Story!
- By Customer on 2022-11-21
Written by: Chuck Palahniuk
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Choke
- Written by: Chuck Palahniuk
- Narrated by: Chuck Palahniuk
- Length: 7 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Victor Mancini, a medical school dropout, is an antihero for our deranged times. Needing to pay elder care for his mother, Victor has devised an ingenious scam: He pretends to choke on pieces of food while dining in upscale restaurants. He then allows himself to be “saved” by fellow patrons who, feeling responsible for Victor’s life, go on to send checks to support him.
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Dark & convoluted;just the way I like my Palahniuk
- By Anonymous User on 2018-07-13
Written by: Chuck Palahniuk
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Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke
- Written by: Eric LaRocca
- Narrated by: Laurie Catherine Winkel
- Length: 2 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Sadomasochism. Obsession. Death. A whirlpool of darkness churns at the heart of a macabre ballet between two lonely young women in an internet chat room in the early 2000s - a darkness that threatens to forever transform them once they finally succumb to their most horrific desires. What have you done today to deserve your eyes?
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Do not listen to this book
- By Bert on 2021-10-22
Written by: Eric LaRocca
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Episode Thirteen
- Written by: Craig DiLouie
- Narrated by: Gregory D. Barnett, Sam Slade, Kimberly Bonny, and others
- Length: 9 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Episode Thirteen takes them to every ghost hunter's holy grail: the Paranormal Research Foundation. This brooding, derelict mansion holds secrets and clues about bizarre experiments that took place there in the 1970s. It's also famously haunted, and the team hopes their scientific techniques and high tech gear will prove it. But as the house begins to reveal itself to them, proof of an afterlife might not be everything Matt dreamed of.
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Worth a listen (or read if you have the book)
- By Glorybaron on 2023-10-02
Written by: Craig DiLouie
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The Wasp Factory
- Written by: Iain Banks
- Narrated by: Peter Kenny
- Length: 6 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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The Wasp Factory is a bizarre, imaginative, disturbing, and darkly comic look into the mind of a child psychopath - one of the most infamous of contemporary Scottish novels.
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oddball
- By Alt-Jane on 2022-07-19
Written by: Iain Banks
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Survivor
- Written by: Chuck Palahniuk
- Narrated by: Michael Braun
- Length: 8 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Tender Branson - last surviving member of the so-called "Creedish Death Cult" - is dictating his incredible life story into the flight recorder of Flight 2039, cruising on autopilot at 39,000 feet somewhere over the Pacific Ocean. He is all alone in the plane, which will shortly reach terminal velocity and crash into the vast Australian outback.
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Not a tour de force.
- By Journeyman on 2022-11-20
Written by: Chuck Palahniuk
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Invisible Monsters
- Written by: Chuck Palahniuk
- Narrated by: Anna Fields
- Length: 5 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
She’s a fashion model who has everything: a boyfriend, a career, a loyal best friend. But when a sudden freeway "accident" leaves her disfigured and incapable of speech, she goes from being the beautiful center of attention to being an invisible monster, so hideous that no one will acknowledge she exists. Enter Brandy Alexander, Queen Supreme, one operation away from becoming a real woman, who will teach her that reinventing yourself means erasing your past and making up something better. And that salvation hides in the last places you’ll ever want to look.
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Great Story!
- By Customer on 2022-11-21
Written by: Chuck Palahniuk
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Choke
- Written by: Chuck Palahniuk
- Narrated by: Chuck Palahniuk
- Length: 7 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
-
Story
Victor Mancini, a medical school dropout, is an antihero for our deranged times. Needing to pay elder care for his mother, Victor has devised an ingenious scam: He pretends to choke on pieces of food while dining in upscale restaurants. He then allows himself to be “saved” by fellow patrons who, feeling responsible for Victor’s life, go on to send checks to support him.
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Dark & convoluted;just the way I like my Palahniuk
- By Anonymous User on 2018-07-13
Written by: Chuck Palahniuk
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Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke
- Written by: Eric LaRocca
- Narrated by: Laurie Catherine Winkel
- Length: 2 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
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Performance
-
Story
Sadomasochism. Obsession. Death. A whirlpool of darkness churns at the heart of a macabre ballet between two lonely young women in an internet chat room in the early 2000s - a darkness that threatens to forever transform them once they finally succumb to their most horrific desires. What have you done today to deserve your eyes?
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Do not listen to this book
- By Bert on 2021-10-22
Written by: Eric LaRocca
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Episode Thirteen
- Written by: Craig DiLouie
- Narrated by: Gregory D. Barnett, Sam Slade, Kimberly Bonny, and others
- Length: 9 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
-
Story
Episode Thirteen takes them to every ghost hunter's holy grail: the Paranormal Research Foundation. This brooding, derelict mansion holds secrets and clues about bizarre experiments that took place there in the 1970s. It's also famously haunted, and the team hopes their scientific techniques and high tech gear will prove it. But as the house begins to reveal itself to them, proof of an afterlife might not be everything Matt dreamed of.
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Worth a listen (or read if you have the book)
- By Glorybaron on 2023-10-02
Written by: Craig DiLouie
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The Wasp Factory
- Written by: Iain Banks
- Narrated by: Peter Kenny
- Length: 6 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
The Wasp Factory is a bizarre, imaginative, disturbing, and darkly comic look into the mind of a child psychopath - one of the most infamous of contemporary Scottish novels.
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oddball
- By Alt-Jane on 2022-07-19
Written by: Iain Banks
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Tender Is the Flesh
- Written by: Agustina Bazterrica
- Narrated by: Joseph Balderrama
- Length: 6 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Working at the local processing plant, Marcos is in the business of slaughtering humans - though no one calls them that anymore. His wife has left him, his father is sinking into dementia, and Marcos tries not to think too hard about how he makes a living. After all, it happened so quickly. First, it was reported that an infectious virus has made all animal meat poisonous to humans. Then governments initiated the "Transition". Now, eating human meat - "special meat" - is legal. Marcos tries to stick to numbers, consignments, processing.
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storyline was lacking
- By Haley MacGillivary on 2022-03-31
Written by: Agustina Bazterrica
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Damned
- Written by: Chuck Palahniuk
- Narrated by: Sophie Amoss
- Length: 7 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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The daughter of a narcissistic film star and a billionaire, Madison is abandoned at her Swiss boarding school over Christmas, while her parents are off touting their new projects and adopting more orphans. She dies over the holiday of a marijuana overdose - and the next thing she knows, she’s in Hell.
Written by: Chuck Palahniuk
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A Certain Hunger
- Written by: Chelsea G. Summers
- Narrated by: Hillary Huber
- Length: 10 hrs and 44 mins
- Original Recording
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Eat Pray Love meets American Psycho in a seductive and sinister debut literary thriller. Food critic Dorothy Daniels indulges in her homicidal urges by murdering her lovers and devouring their organs in this intense, visceral, and lushly told tale of food, sex, power, and the pursuit of a very particular taste set between New York and Italy. Please Note: A Certain Hunger contains adult language and depictions of violence. Discretion is advised.
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Perfection
- By Rae on 2023-04-11
Written by: Chelsea G. Summers
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Not Forever, but for Now
- Written by: Chuck Palahniuk
- Narrated by: Raphael Corkhill
- Length: 8 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Meet Otto and Cecil. Two brothers growing up privileged in the Welsh countryside. They enjoy watching nature shows, playing with their pet pony, impersonating their Grandfather...and killing the help. Murder is the family business after all. Downton Abbey, this is not. However, it’s not so easy to continue the family legacy with the constant stream of threats and distractions seemingly leaping from the hedgerow.
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Spectacularly bizarre
- By Talia Clark on 2023-09-10
Written by: Chuck Palahniuk
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The Deep
- Written by: Nick Cutter
- Narrated by: Corey Brill
- Length: 12 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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A strange plague called the "Gets" is decimating humanity on a global scale. It causes people to forget - small things at first, like where they left their keys... then the not-so-small things like how to drive, or the letters of the alphabet. Then their bodies forget how to function involuntarily - and there is no cure. But now, far below the surface of the Pacific Ocean, deep in the Marianas Trench, an heretofore unknown substance hailed as "ambrosia" has been discovered - a universal healer, from initial reports.
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Forgetable but hes a great descriptive wtiter
- By Amazon Customer on 2020-07-07
Written by: Nick Cutter
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American Psycho
- Written by: Bret Easton Ellis
- Narrated by: Pablo Schreiber
- Length: 16 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Patrick Bateman moves among the young and trendy in 1980s Manhattan. Young, handsome, and well educated, Bateman earns his fortune on Wall Street by day while spending his nights in ways we cannot begin to fathom. Expressing his true self through torture and murder, Bateman prefigures an apocalyptic horror that no society could bear to confront.
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Did not like the book at first. Now I can’t stop thinking about it.
- By Philip on 2020-02-23
Written by: Bret Easton Ellis
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The Troop
- Written by: Nick Cutter
- Narrated by: Corey Brill
- Length: 11 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Once every year, Scoutmaster Tim Riggs leads a troop of boys into the Canadian wilderness for a weekend camping trip - a tradition as comforting and reliable as a good ghost story around a roaring bonfre. The boys are a tight-knit crew. There’s Kent, one of the most popular kids in school; Ephraim and Max, also well-liked and easygoing; then there’s Newt the nerd and Shelley the odd duck. For the most part, they all get along and are happy to be there - which makes Scoutmaster Tim’s job a little easier.
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If you're into detailed animal abuse
- By Emilie on 2020-07-28
Written by: Nick Cutter
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Rant
- Written by: Chuck Palahniuk
- Narrated by: various
- Length: 10 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Chuck Palahniuk, the author of the New York Times best-sellers Fight Club and Lullaby, is known for his edgy novels, and Rant is no exception. Palahniuk presents this fictional biography of Buster "Rant" Casey in a series of vignettes told by the people who knew him best. As intricate as a spider web, Rant succeeds in recounting the story of one man's life only through the eyes of others. But the question remains, "Who was Rant Casey?"
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What I've always wanted for Rant
- By Ethan, The Coolest on 2023-01-03
Written by: Chuck Palahniuk
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I'm Thinking of Ending Things
- Written by: Iain Reid
- Narrated by: Candace Thaxton
- Length: 5 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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In this deeply scary and intensely unnerving debut novel, Jake and a woman known only as "The Girlfriend" are on a drive to visit his parents at their secluded farm. But when Jake leaves "The Girlfriend" stranded at an abandoned high school, what follows is a twisted unraveling of the darkest unease, an exploration into psychological frailty, and an ending as suspenseful as The Usual Suspects and as haunting as Misery.
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Better book to read than to listen to
- By DrHex on 2020-01-10
Written by: Iain Reid
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Exquisite Corpse
- Written by: Poppy Z. Brite
- Narrated by: Joshua Saxon
- Length: 8 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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To serial slayer Andrew Compton, murder is an art, the most intimate art. After feigning his own death to escape from prison, Compton makes his way to the United States with the sole ambition of bringing his “art” to new heights. Tortured by his own perverse desires, and drawn to possess and destroy young boys, Compton inadvertently joins forces with Jay Byrne, a dissolute playboy who has pushed his “art” to limits even Compton hadn’t previously imagined.
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graphic
- By James S. on 2023-07-27
Written by: Poppy Z. Brite
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Invisible Monsters Remix
- Written by: Chuck Palahniuk
- Narrated by: Anna Fields, Chuck Palahniuk, Richard Powers
- Length: 7 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Palahniuk’s fashion-model protagonist has it all - boyfriend, career, loyal best friend - until an accident destroys her face, her ability to speak, and her self-esteem. Enter Brandy Alexander, Queen Supreme, one operation away from becoming a bona fide woman.
Written by: Chuck Palahniuk
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Hell House
- Written by: Richard Matheson
- Narrated by: Ray Porter
- Length: 9 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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For over 20 years, Belasco House has stood empty. Regarded as the Mt. Everest of haunted houses, its shadowed walls have witnessed scenes of unimaginable horror and depravity. All previous attempts to probe its mysteries have ended in murder, suicide, or insanity.
But now, a new investigation has been launched, bringing four strangers to Belasco House in search of the ultimate secrets of life and death. A wealthy publisher, brooding over his impending death, has paid a physicist and two mediums to establish the facts of life after death once and for all. For one night, they will investigate the Belasco House and learn exactly why the townsfolk refer to it as the Hell House.
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Mostly just gross and unsettling
- By Erica on 2019-01-25
Written by: Richard Matheson
Publisher's Summary
Haunted is on one level a satire of reality television: The Real World meets Alive. It draws from a great literary tradition, The Canterbury Tales, The Decameron, the English storytellers in the Villa Diodati who produced, among other works, Frankenstein, to tell an utterly contemporary tale of people desperate that their story be told at any cost. Appallingly entertaining, Haunted is Chuck Palahniuk at his finest, which means his most extreme and his most provocative.
What the critics say
"[The stories] consistently, powerfully transcend their macabre premises to showcase the heart beating beneath the horrors." (Publishers Weekly)
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What listeners say about Haunted
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Laura A
- 2019-08-26
Not for timid readers.
This is Chuck Palahniuk unbridled. True to his style, this book is shocking and not for the timid reader. If you're interested in CP and are considering this one as your first read ... don't. Get your feet wet with another title of his.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Anika
- 2023-02-22
Honestly, I hate this book
I thought it was so boring and forgettable, I don't even think I could tell you a single thing that happens in this book aside from maybe a few things from the "Guts" section
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- Bo Z.
- 2021-09-08
Look pass the gore
I find these stories to be dark but surprisingly insightful. The prose is a bit too gritty for me. In some stories it works great. In some others it gets a bit mono-tone.
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- colton
- 2020-10-20
Snoozfest
I found the Narrators in the books to be extremely annoying and felt the book as a whole was boring.
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- Review Rob
- 2019-10-23
I can't stop thinking about these stories...
5 Stars. An anthology of truly disturbing and cleverly written short stories that add so much depth and intrigue to a Haunting tale. The switch off between narrators give each character their own individual aura and it works....
I'll be telling these for a while... the camera behind the camera behind the camera.
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Overall

- Dominique
- 2005-05-24
True Horror -- Not for the faint of heart, stomach
I used to think Stephen King wrote gross horror at times ("Misery"), but this author makes Stephen King look like Nancy Drew (sorry to compare an author with a fictional character, but hopefully you get my drift).
This is the kind of horror novel that's frightening in that it could (theoretically) happen. Although more surreal than real, nothing supernatural occurs; it's simply the horror that people can do to themselves and to one another.
Grotesque doesn't even begin to describe it. If you are the type of person who considered "Reservoir Dogs" part-comedy because of its over the top violence, you may feel similarly about this. If you've ever laughed at the type of cartoon violence like when the Coyote is flattened in his failed attempt to catch the Road Runner, then you might be okay with this book, so long as you can think of it in that context. If you drift away from that mindset, you may never sleep again. Seriously.
My greatest challenge was simply to finish it. It used to be that I was unable to even think about certain types of torture, death, and I wanted to stop listening at least a dozen times, but then I thought, "No, I'm not going to allow a group of common words that someone placed in a certain order get the better of me." And in that way, this book caused me to grow as a person.
Think of the sickest, most taboo thing anyone could ever do, then multiply it by ten and then you'll have this book. I'm not saying this so that your morbid curiousity may cause you to give this book a try, really.
WARNING: Due to the extreme and hideous nature of this novel, before you spend the money or use up a book credit, do yourself a favor and listen to the free excerpt from this book entitled "Exodus." It's 44 minutes long and is completely self-contained. If you can stomach that, then go ahead and listen to the rest of the book.
But don't say I didn't warn you.
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103 people found this helpful
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Overall

- Traci Anderson
- 2006-07-13
Hard to rate. Some great short stories, but...
Well I've read/listened to Chuck's other books and I really like his gritty style. I'm not a prude nor do I have problems with his graphic content. All of the other reviews are correct when they warn you about the vileness and depravity of the characters and the over-the-top grossness in some of the stories. This doesn't bother me. That being said, I loved many of the short stories in the book, but there is an overlying story that tries to bundle it all together into a "novel" and not just a book of short stories. That part was tedious and so totally unbelievable as to be insulting. I was frustrated because of these stupid characters and probably won't recommend this book to anyone, even folks who have liked other Chuck Palahniuk novels. I can't say that I liked a single "person" in this book. There wasn't a single character that I felt anything but contempt for. If this were a book of just the short stories, I would have liked it much more and recommended it to others. The "writers retreat" portion made it hard to listen to and I almost didn't finish it on several occasions. I plowed through to the end to see if there was any reason to do so...there wasn't <sigh>.
By the way--if you aren't familiar with this author, this is NOT the book to start on. Try a different one and see if you like his style, then you can try this book if you really want to.
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23 people found this helpful
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Overall

- Tracie
- 2005-05-23
Spectacular
This book is a wonderfully written satirical look at society, civility, and the ease with which these can be shed. It is a grand rendition of "Murder by Death" meeting "Lord of the Flies" with a little bit of "Alive" thrown in for reality's sake. Unfortunately, it is not for everyone; only those who can stomach hearing the unvarnished truth about society and the potential truth about themselves will be able to stomach this. It is raw, powerful, and at times disgusting. Which, when you get down to it, is a lot like life.
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21 people found this helpful
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Overall

- Alicia A. Jenson
- 2005-05-27
Not for everyone
Everyone says "Shocked" or "disgusting" like this is a bad thing. When was the last time you were truly truly shocked by something? I don't mean the news, that is numbing. Palahniuk does shock like no one else. And not only that, he is a brilliant writer. If you don't finish it, you're missing out. There are some truly beautiful sequences in this book, it's not just "disgusting".
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19 people found this helpful
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Overall

- Cynthia
- 2005-05-23
A must for Chuck fans . . .
. . . because we have the stomach for it. After reading the reviews I have to wonder if they have ever read any of his other books. I mean really . . . no one who has read Choke, Fight Club or Lullaby could say that this book is stomach tuning. I only gave Haunted 4 stars because it lacks the flow of his previous works (Stranger than Fiction excluded). It's choppy in parts and briefly slow. It is however, a cunning way to package your short stories in an original setting. I read "Guts" when it was first published and am happy to see it surface in this collection. If you love Chuck, you'll love this book, but if you're a Koonts/Bush fan it will probably be more than your mind cand handle.
R.I.P. H.S.T. 7/18/37 to 2/20/05
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18 people found this helpful
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Overall

- Ann
- 2005-05-04
Disgusting
Guess this book delivers what the review promised. One story was more than enough for me. Stomach turning.
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15 people found this helpful
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Overall

- Carl
- 2005-07-12
Savage, Ugly, Harsh, Negative, Yet Good Literature
Warning: This book is not for most. It is not a horror story in the sense of good versus evil. It is instead about all that is evil, dark, corrupt, selfish, ugly, and self centered about ourselves. The only thing that makes it readable and good literature is that the author uses great language, he lays naked all we don't like about ourselves, and he is brutally honest about much of what we don't want to see. Its a ugly journey but one that some can come away from knowing more about themselves in order to become better people.
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12 people found this helpful
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Overall

- Therman
- 2010-01-09
Twisted & Wickedly Funny
The best review for this book is just reading all the other negative reviews talking about how offensive and tasteless Chuck Palahnuik is... the fact that he doesn't try to appeal to the lowest common denominator is so rare today. These stories are just fantastically wrong! Also, I can only think of a handfull of living authors that can write a novel with such poetically cadenced and inventive language. For anyone judging the taste level, don't forget that Jonathan Swift wrote about cannibalizing todlers for profit.
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10 people found this helpful
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Overall

- Rachel
- 2005-08-04
haunting, indeed
Previous reviewers have commented on the extremely graphic nature of this book, so I'll not belabor the point here. I will add that, as a pathology student who's assisted at autopsies, studied all manner of gross things, and not exactly a wilting violet, I was extremely disturbed by some of the stories in this book. Also, if you were bothered by the free download of "Exodus," you should not listen to this book under any circumstances, even if you find yourself trapped at a mysterious writer's workshop with a bunch of folks hell-bent on self destructing. "Exodus" is a children's bedtime story compared to much of "Haunted".
That having been said, I'm glad I listened to this to the end. "Haunted" is well-written and well performed. The short stories intertwine to form a larger, and increasingly compelling, narrative about the lives of the trapped characters. In the first volume, there were a couple of stories so revolting I decided to stop listening; but I found myself so involved with the overarching story that I ultimately ended up listening to the last 3 hours straight through. Very good storytelling.
Three gripes, unrelated to Palahnuik's gory prose: 1) Palahnuik can be very preachy, and beats his philosophic points until they're black and blue as one of his characters. While he's a good storyteller, Palahnuik can have a tin ear for parable, and the philosophy does not bear this repetition well. 2) Palahnuik overuses some constructions (e.g. "Still" to introduce a sentence), making different characters sound too similar. 3) Palahnuik gets important factual details wrong. This wouldn't be so bad, were it not for Palahnuik's careful correctness on closely related facts--showing that Palahnuik cared enough to do his homework, but is willing to dispense with any realities inconvenient to his storytelling. This is a sin that Palahnuik's creation Mr. Whittier would not tolerate, so I don't see why his real readers should tolerate it either.
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9 people found this helpful
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Overall

- Jason
- 2005-06-24
An amazingly vivid and graphic tale
This book is so not for your average joe. Iron stomach is the base requirement and a terribly gore riddled imagination. That said this is one amazing book. My skin still crawls when I remember some of the stories but they all left a mark on me. Definitely a classic.
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9 people found this helpful