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."