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With biting humor, brutal honesty, and more than a touch of magical realism, Chuck Palahniuk examines and satirizes American culture in his latest novel. In LULLABY, his fourth novel, the author of FIGHT CLUB again turns a critical eye on materialism and consumerism, reinvents the road trip novel and turns the idea of big brother upside down and inside out.
Carl Streator is a journalist who has put the mysterious death of his wife and baby daughter behind him until he begins a five-part series on Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. As he interviews grieving parents he discovers a pattern: all the nurseries have the same book of poetry open to the same page. Page 27 of "Poems and Rhymes from Around the World" has an ancient African culling song. Could its recitation be responsible for the deaths of babies and adults around the world? As bodies begin dropping around him, Carl teams up with Helen Hoover Boyle, realtor of haunted houses and assassin for hire, to destroy all copies of the culling song. Soon Carl, Helen, Helen's assistant Mona and Mona's boyfriend Oyster are on the road, determined also to find the original copy of the song. But, as they travel across the country it becomes apparent their goals are not all the same.
Carl is a reluctant hero, but a likable one. Surrounded by disturbing and disturbed characters, Carl struggles to control his thoughts, which, he finds, have gained a new and awesome power. Helen is as hilarious as she is evil. She creates and then profits from the very misery she once suffered from herself. Still, there is a wonderful glimmer of humanity in Helen, and the reader cannot help but enjoy her honesty, wit, and instinct for self-preservation. Oyster and Mona, the symbolic children of Carl and Helen, have confused ethics and priorities, yet their values are admirable.
Carl, Helen, Mona, and Oyster quickly form a twisted nuclear family. However, like all children, Mona and Oyster eventually strike out on their own, much to the consternation of their "parents." Across the dizzying landscape of an America that is both more and less than it seems on the surface, our fractured and amazing family blazes a trail of miracles and struggles for ultimate power; the power of life and death.
Dark and clever, LULLABY pits youth against middle age, optimism against cynicism, love against lust, truth against appearance, big brother against the gullible, soulless masses, not to mention Carl Streator against calm-ophobics and distraction-oholics. A scathing presentation of life in America and a new justice that lacks morality and kindness, LULLABY taps into the greatest fears of those who are willing and able to question the assumptions made all around them. Uncomfortable and nihilistic yet thrilling and funny, LULLABY is a small masterpiece of both imagination and reality.
--- Reviewed by Sarah Rachel Egelman
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