Choke
by Chuck Palahniuk
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Book Summary Information
Author: Chuck PalahniukEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2008-08-26
ISBN: 0307388921
Number of pages: 304
Publisher: Anchor
Product features:
- ISBN13: 9780307388926
- Condition: New
- Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!
Book Reviews of Choke
Book Review: Find out how Victor could be the son of Jesus
Summary: 5 Stars
What a great book; Chuck continues to touch my funny bone. I wonder if Chuck is a little crazy himself, because he describes this cast of sex/alcoholics with such detail, you wonder how he gets the inside scoop. I feel so close to the main character that I "understand" why he chooses to make part of his living by choking in upscale restaurants and have people save him. I see no moral problem with this, because he is giving them the idea that they really made a difference and for once in their lives they were heroes. So what if the main character, Victor, sometimes asked for a little help or if he accepted birthday cards from those who saved him.
Victor did all this because he had recently dropped out of medical school and had to foot the bill of a nursing home for his dying mother. He justified his actions in such a way that you could not help but to cheer for him.
Along the way you get a glimpse into his addictive sexaholic life and his exploits in some of the most bizarre places. It makes you wish you had the guts to do the things he pulls off; are there really people like this? You will have all the questions you have about sex addicts answered in this book, and make you think about joining a support group in hopes that you may meet some people that Chuck describes.
Another choice part of the book that I loved was Victor's best friend and how he chooses collecting rocks instead of acting out in a sexual life. It is a classic exchange of one addiction for another. I see part of this in myself as I choose running mile after mile so I don't drink beer after beer.
Finally the most important aspect of the book is Victor's journey to find out what was written in his Mother's diary, which may unlock the mystery of his Father. Along the way Victor befriends a Doctor at the nursing home, who just happens to read Italian (language his Mother's diary is wrote in), and she tells him that he was spawned of the reconstructed DNA from a religious relic of Christ himself (DNA from Jesus' foreskin).
Victor doesn't want to admit that he really is a good guy, and one who brings a lot of joy to other peoples' lives. Victor could be found accepting blame from all kinds of patients at the nursing home, and even though he was just trying to get them to leave him alone or to shut them it, he unwittingly gave them closure and comfort at such a vulnerable time in life. He still is convinced that he is just a screwed up person making his way through life, however just when he is about to accept it, he finds out a tragic truth right at the time of his Mother's death. He finds out that his Doctor friend was in fact a patient and crazy. Victor really is not the child of Jesus.
I would recommend this book for a light read that will make you feel good and give you a fun voyeur look into addicts' lives. Chuck, must have really did a good job of investigating addicts, or maybe he has a little bit of crazy in himself.
Summary of Choke
Victor Mancini's a medical school dropout with a problem. He needs to pay for elder care for his mother, who's got Alzheimer's. So he comes up with the perfect scam: pretending to choke in upscale restaurants and getting ?saved? by fellow diners who, feeling responsible for Victor's life, offer him financial support.Meanwhile, he cruises sexual addiction recovery workshops and spends his days working at Colonial Dunsboro, where his stoner colleagues are sentenced to the stocks for any deviation from the colonial lifestyle. Oh, yeah, and he's desperate to find the truth of his paternity, which his addled mother suggests may be divine.Victor Mancini is a ruthless con artist. Victor Mancini is a med-school dropout who's taken a job playing an Irish indentured servant in a colonial-era theme park in order to help care for his Alzheimer's-afflicted mother. Victor Mancini is a sex addict. Victor Mancini is a direct descendant of Jesus Christ. All of these statements about the protagonist of Choke are more or less true. Welcome, once again, to the world of Chuck Palahniuk.
"Art never comes from happiness." So says Mancini's mother only a few pages into the novel. Given her own dicey and melodramatic style of parenting, you would think that her son's life would be chock-full of nothing but art. Alas, that's not the case. In the fine tradition of Oedipus, Stephen Dedalus, and Anthony Soprano, Victor hasn't quite reconciled his issues with his mother. Instead, he's trawling sexual-addiction recovery meetings for dates and purposely choking in restaurants for a few moments of attention. Longing for a hug, in other words, he's settling for the Heimlich.
Thematically, this is pretty familiar Palahniuk territory. It would be a pity to disclose the surprises of the plot, but suffice it to say that what we have here is a little bit of Tom Robbins's Another Roadside Attraction, a little bit of Don DeLillo's The Day Room, and, well, a little bit of Fight Club. Just as with Fight Club and the other two novels under Palahniuk's belt, we get a smattering of gloriously unflinching sound bites, including this skeptical bit on prayer chains: "A spiritual pyramid scheme. As if you can gang up on God. Bully him around."
Whether this is the novel that will break Palahniuk into the mainstream is hard to say. For a fourth book, in fact, the ratio of iffy, "dude"-intensive dialogue to interesting and insightful passages is a little higher than we might wish. In the end, though, the author's nerve and daring pull the whole thing off--just barely. And what's next for Victor Mancini's creator? Leave the last word to him, declaring as he does in the final pages: "Maybe it's our job to invent something better.... What it's going to be, I don't know." --Bob Michaels
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