Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk is a novel made up of stories: Twenty-three of them, to be precise. Twenty-three of the most horrifying, hilarious, mind-blowing, stomach-churning tales you’ll ever encounter—sometimes all at once. They are told by people who have answered an ad headlined “Writers’ Retreat: Abandon Your Life for Three Months,” and who are led to believe that here they will leave behind all the distractions of “real life” that are keeping them from creating the masterpiece that is in them. But “here” turns out to be a cavernous and ornate old theater where they are utterly isolated from the outside world—and where heat and power and, most important, food are in increasingly short supply. And the more desperate the circumstances become, the more extreme the stories they tell—and the more devious their machinations become to make themselves the hero of the inevitable play/movie/nonfiction blockbuster that will surely be made from their plight. 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.
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"Pretty disturbing, but this seems to be the general consensus. Nevertheless, I was oddly hooked from beginning to end, no matter how many times I had to shut the book for a few minutes and just attempt to clear my head. Not for the faint-hearted, that's for sure. Again... DISTURBING"
— Catherine (4 out of 5 stars)
" Huge piece of crap. Made no sense. It attempted to be intellectual in its presentation of the characters and store line with random mini stories intermixed. All it accomplished was a scattered story with unnecessary asides. I give it a "eh". "
— Philip, 2/3/2014" Dark, gory, and funny. I'm impressed with how Palahniuk tied multiple short stories into his entire novel and made it cohesive. "
— Gregory, 1/24/2014" This was perhaps Palahniuk's worst novel for me. Thinking back on it, I can hardly remember the plot, but I remember really not enjoying it. "
— Heather, 1/23/2014" I feel like the premise of this book was BE AS SHOCKING AS POSSIBLE! I mean, the book comes with an 'epilogue' that basically brags about how many people have passed out during public readings. Let's see, someone masturbates with a pool jet and gets his organs sucked out, a woman passes out and they eat her ass because they think she's dead but then she wakes up and takes a bite before bleeding to death, a man cuts off his penis with a cleaver and another man goes to eat it but he chokes on it and dies...could you TRY HARDER for shock value?! That being said, there are some less gruesome, more gut-wrenching stories, specifically the story of Mrs Clark and her daughter Cassandra. Other stories are simply ironic or funny. There is a message about human behavior woven throughout all of these stories, though it's one we've heard before. So...it's interesting, I suppose, and perhaps might be disgusting at times...but it's nothing as new or shocking as the author would like you to believe. Any B-horror flick does that job just as well without shoving a pseudo-message down your throat. "
— Lauren, 1/10/2014" If you can stomach the first story, the rest of the book is a breeze. "
— Shanna, 12/31/2013" One word: eurgh. "
— Courtney, 12/24/2013" some great short stories in here, but i found the general story inbetween tedious. "
— Robin, 12/20/2013" Chuck Palahnuik is a demented, sick human being and I cannot wait to read whatever he writes as soon as it is out "
— Luke, 12/13/2013" Bloody amazing, so original and throughly gross at the same time. I've already been and bought more Chuck Palahniuk books - would strongly recommend! "
— rach, 12/2/2013" So amazing, portrays society in a beautiful and dark way. "
— Kate, 11/30/2013" This is the most disturbing book I've ever read. A horror story that has no supernatural monsters. A horror story of a reality that consumes this world we live in. If your offended easily or grossed out do not read this book. I'm glad I did but doubt I'll read it again. "
— Willy, 11/11/2013Chuck Palahniuk has been a nationally bestselling author since his first novel, 1996’s Fight Club, was made into the acclaimed David Fincher film of the same name. Twelve of his works have made the New York Times bestsellers list, and his work has sold millions of copies worldwide.
Téa Obreht was born in Belgrade in the former Yugoslavia in 1985 and has lived in the United States since the age of twelve. Her writing has been published in the New Yorker, the Atlantic, Harper’s, and the Guardian, and has been anthologized in The Best American Short Stories and The Best American Nonrequired Reading. She has been named by the New Yorker as one of the twenty best American fiction writers under forty. She lives in New York.