Invisible monsters

Title: Invisible monsters
Author: Chuck Palahniuk
Published: 1999 by Vintage
Genre: Palahniuk.
Pages: 297


She was beautiful, a model with her career before her, until someone goes and shoots her in the face. Without a lower jaw, all of it gone, her tongue hanging out from a hole in her throat, she looks like such a monster that people don't even dare to acknowledge her existence. Unable to even speak, she might as well be invisible. Then along comes Brandy Alexander, a beautiful transsexual waiting for that one big operation, who goes and invents her a new background, and more importantly, a new future.

Together with a man who loves them both, more or less, they head out to America, stealing drugs from the rich and selling them to the... no, not the poor. Less rich. Hey, it's a way to make money. Inventing themselves over and over again, they plot new lives and revenge on our 'heroine's' best friend Evie, who she blames for her disfiguration and for losing her old boyfriend.

Of course since this is Palahniuk, there's a lot more to it. The story unravels in short bits that jump from the past to the present and back again, building a picture of the whole, somewhat confusing, story of who's really who and why.

Great book, no doubt about it, but not one of my favourite Palahniuks. Lullaby still reigns supreme! But Invisible monsters is still a twisty tale full of surprises and the usual weird true facts Chuck's so fond of.


""You're a product of our language," Brandy says, "and how our laws are and how we believe our God wants us. Every bitty molecule about you has already been thought out by some million people before you," she says. "Anything you can do is boring and old and perfectly okay. You're safe because you're so trapped inside your culture. Anything you can conceive of is fine because you can conceive of it. You can't imagine any way to escape. There's no way you can get out," Brandy says.

""The world," Brandy says, "is your cradle and your trap.""


Cheery as always!