Let me start off with a brief synopsis of the book, courtesy of Amazon.com:
“In the crowded greenroom of a porn-movie production, hundreds of men mill around in their boxers, awaiting their turn with the legendary Cassie Wright. An aging adult film star, Cassie Wright intends to cap her career by breaking the world record for serial fornication by having sex with 600 men on camera—one of whom may want to kill her.
Told from the perspectives of Mr. 72, Mr. 137, Mr. 600, and Sheila, the talent wrangler who must keep it all under control, Snuff is a dark, wild, and lethally funny novel that brings the presence of pornography in contemporary life into the realm of literary fiction.”
This is the first book I’ve read of Palahniuk’s and, given the accolades I’ve heard about him as an author, I was sadly disappointed. I thought it was the most bizarre book I’ve ever read and it took two days of my life that I’ll never get back. The book itself didn’t seem to have much of a plot that I could figure out. It seemed to me that the author tried to imagine every ridiculous situation that he could put into this book just for shock value. It just came off as silly. The ending was just as ridiculous, if not more so than the rest of the book.
I will say that the author’s writing style is very engaging and it is a fast read, but that’s really all the positive emotion I can muster for this particular book. I won’t give up on Palahniuk yet, but I’m going to do a bit more investigating to find his higher rated books next time!
If you’ve read any of Palahniuk’s books, please let me know which ones you’d recommend!
I love his book Invisible Monsters, but it is also very bizarre lol. I haven't read this one yet, but want to.
I read about 1/2 of Survivor years ago. I thought the concept was interesting and I really WANTED to like it, but it felt like work to read it, and then I got bogged down in a project and had to put it aside. By the time I had time to read it again, I'd forgotten too much and would have had to start over – I just didn't like it enough to want to read it all over again.
For your next Palahinuk, I suggest Survivor. It was far more interesting with the right amount of raunchy.