In A Hundred - Palahniuk’s Haunted
Wednesday, May 2nd, 2007
Chuck Palahniuk’s Haunted is a wonderfully disgusting collection of 23 horror stories.
Taken individually, these stories are top-notch in the bizarre: disembowelment, deadly foot massages, men in drag.
Palahniuk’s characteristic style, full of dark humor, screenplay-style narration and sentence fragments, works well in these short pieces. Each story’s a “scream” (pardon the pun).
However, the plot structure tying them all together, a meditation on egotism, idol worship and truth in media, takes itself far too seriously.
Focus on the individual tales. It’s entirely worth the time for “Guts,” a short story so intense that, when read aloud, it causes people to faint!


