Tuesday, February 15, 2011

Survivor


Good bye Hawthorne, welcome to the 21st century.  Chuck Palahnuik’s book, Survivor, a different type of surreal from Fight Club fame, is told in the first person narrative by the character, Tender Branson, flying on a suicide mission on a 747 to Australia and taping the story of his twisted life into the cockpit recorder.  I love how Palahnuik writes the book in reverse order of page numbers, book starts on page 298 and ends at 1.  Nice. Which is a devise hitting us over the head… blastoff or crash at zero.  The reader is left thinking, did Tender die, or is he reunited with his one and only love, the sister of a guy he thinks he murdered.  Quite an involved life Tender lives.  We learn he was born into a religious cult family (Creedish Church), one of 12 kids.  The cult kills all of its members, well almost.  A few hundred escape, including Tender, but then they mysteriously start dying until only one is left… hmmm... Tender?  Yes, and no.  His older brother (Adam), his twin but older by three minutes, reappears to try and save Tender from killing himself.  We learn that Adam actually was the person who turned the cult in to the sheriff after he was forced to watch his wife give birth to their child and then be left for dead, as was their son.  This is a very dark story, lots of suicide or killing by members of the cult (we never really know) and Tender’s own thoughts as the last living Creedich member left to kill himself by hijacking the plane and letting it crash or escape to his new found love, Fertility, the sister of the man he talked into killing himself.  Certainly Palahnuik pushes the envelope on making light of the religious cults and also the joys of living.  Throw in some sex and you have a pretty complicated backwards story.  Gotta give it to Palahnuik to leave his reader guessing.  A pretty light read on the surface, unless you drill down to the deeper meanings that one is left.  A pretty decent read.
   

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