Choke

Title: Choke

Author: Chuck Palahniuk

Number of pages: 293

Started: 21 May 2011

Finished: 25 May 2011

Opening words:

If you're going to read this, don't bother.

After a couple of pages, you won’t want to be here. So forget it. Go away. Get out while you’re still in one piece.

Save yourself.

There has to be something better on television. Or since you have so much time on your hands, maybe you could take a night course. Become a doctor. You could make something out of yourself. Treat yourself to a dinner out. Color your hair.

You're not getting any younger.

Plot summary:

Victor Mancini has devised a complicated scam to pay for his mother's hospital care: pretend to be choking on a piece of food in a restaurant and the person who 'saves you' will feel responsible for you for the rest of their lives. Multiply that a couple of hundred times and you generate a healthy flow of cheques, week in, week out. Victor also works at a theme park with a motley group of losers, cruises sex addiction groups for action, and visits his mother, whose Alzheimer's disease now hides what may be the startling truth about his parentage.

What I thought:

This is my first Chuck Palahniuk book and, despite his rather discouraging start to the book (see above), I read on. I thought this book was funny and a good read. It brought it urban myths and weird scenarios and a whole load of things that if I explained what they were would seem kind of weird, but actually worked very well. A very readable book - although not necessarily suitable for those of a slightly prudish disposition or who have concerns about people reading their book over their shoulder on the tube.