Last week I finished reading Chuck Palahnuik’s Lullaby.  Really good stuff.  His first genuine stab at urban fantasy and probably his most sensible and linear plot.  Though it still has all the trademark Palahnuik weirdness and narrative tricks.  The book is basically about a lullaby that kills, but it’s more then that.  It’s actually all about the media… about how it invades nearly every aspects of our lives, how what we see and what we watch and what we read actually determines all our actions.  And so what if there was a piece of media, a lullaby, that killed if you heard it?  What would that do to the world around us?

Science ficton / fantasy writers play around with these thought experiments, usually in short stories.  But it was interesting to see Chuck’s take on the whole thing.  And because it’s Chuck you know it’s going to a strange and wild ride.

My only issue with the book – and I’m finding this with most of his stuff – is that his main characters are so detached and so strange. Everyone we come across is neurotic or eccentric in some way.  And everyone seems to be a nihilist.

But, in this instance, the characters and their quirks only add to the story.  I mean, only with Chuck could you have a real estate agent who makes her living by selling people actual haunted houses.  Brilliant!