Lullaby

Title: Lullaby
Author: Chuck Palahniuk
Published: 2003 by Vintage
Genre: Chuck should also be his own genre.
Pages: 260


Lullaby. Again. Aw yeah.

First time I read this, or started to, was when I bought it from London back in August 2008. I was sitting in Ten Bells, where Jack the Ripper's victims used to drink, discreetly taking photos with my cell phone and drinking Guinness. It's not a beer you can, or want to, drink quickly, so I took out Lullaby and started reading .

With moving back to Finland and everything, it took a while to get to finish the book. This time however I read it all in pretty much two sittings. Had to sleep in between, though, which was a bit creepy, giving the subject of the book.

The details about the book are that Carl Streator is a reporter investigating crib deaths, when he starts to notice a pattern: all the children, going down as sudden infant death syndrome victims, were read the same poem the night before they died. The same poem he also read to his family some twenty years ago. It's an old African culling song, sang to those too weak, ill or injured to live, to make them fall asleep and never wake up.

With a woman, Helen Hoover Boyle, who also lost her son to the culling song, he sets off on a journey across America, to find and destroy all copies of the song from the book before more children die. Before the culling song becomes public knowledge and every noise in the world could be hiding the words to kill. Along come Helen's secretary Mona, or Mulberry, a young Wiccan woman, and her questionably industrious boyfriend Oyster. As one happy family, they travel from library to library, leaving no culling song untorn.

This is my favourite Palahniuk book so far. He's got more original ideas in one book than most libraries have on one shelf put together. Could be just a fluke, but since it's all of his books that are like this (as far as I know but I'm quite willing to trust all the evidence I've read so far...) I think it's just talent, creativity, hard work and one hell of a twisted mind. Lovely.

I have piles of books waiting to be read for the first time, but now I really want to read Snuff again...


"Imagine a plague you can catch through your ears.

"Sticks and stones will break your bones, but now words can kill, too.

"The new death, this plague, can come from anywhere. A song. An overheard announcement. A news bulletin. A sermon. A street musician. You can catch death from a telemarketer. A teacher. An Internet file. A birthday card. A fortune cookie.

"A million people might watch a television show, then be dead the next morning because of an advertising jingle."

Autofiction

Title: Autofiction
Author: Hitomi Kanehara
Published: 2007 by Vintage
Genre: Says 'original fiction' on the back and I'm just going to go with that...
Pages: 216


First book of the year? Yeah. I've been drawing, writing and playing a lot lately, so reading's taken a back seat for a while. This book, however, put everything else on the back seat, as it turned out to be one of those I couldn't put down. Started reading it on a bus, then continued in bath, and then in bed when I should have been sleeping.

So. Rin is newly married to Shin, and they're flying back home to Japan from their lovely honeymoon. Everything seems peachy keen, until Rin falls asleep and Shin gets up to go to the toilet. She wakes up, becomes certain that he has gone off to seduce and have sex with the stewardess, and shows the reader just how deeply disturbed she can get.

Scary, really.

... also somewhat familiar. I should probably get worried.

Anyhoo! The book then goes on to describe their marriage, and how Rin becomes a successful author, who is one day asked to write autofiction: a fictional autobiography. And for the rest of the book we go back in time, to see just what made Rin miss some gears on the highway.

Told completely from the point of view and through the thoughts of Rin, Autofiction is dark, disturbing, and most of all very good. I'll surely give Kanehara's earlier book, Snakes and earrings, a try if/when I get my hands on it.


"I pray that the plane will crash. He's probably in the lavatory by now. He may already be touching the stewardess waiting inside. His hands may already be touching her. Those hands of my precious husband. Touching. That woman. I want to die. Just thinking about it gives me goose bumps and my entire body is shaking with rage."