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Tarfumes.com - Haunted: A Novel
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List Price: $14.95
Our Price: $10.17
Your Save: $ 4.78 ( 32% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Anchor
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9781400032822
ISBN: 1400032822
Label: Anchor
Manufacturer: Anchor
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 432
Publication Date: 2006-04-11
Publisher: Anchor
Release Date: 2006-04-11
Studio: Anchor
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Editorial Reviews:
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Haunted is a novel made up of twenty-three horrifying, hilarious, and stomach-churning stories. They’re told by people who have answered an ad for a writer’s retreat and unwittingly joined a “Survivor”-like scenario where the host withholds heat, power, and food. As the storytellers grow more desperate, their tales become more extreme, and they ruthlessly plot to make themselves the hero of the reality show that will surely be made from their plight. This is one of the most disturbing and outrageous books you’ll ever read, one that could only come from the mind of Chuck Palahniuk.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Shock After Tiresome Shock
Comment: First off, if you're looking for a horror story in the general sense of the genre...this ain't it. The title and the cover illustration would suggest a supernatural horror tale but this isn't in that particular genre--unless you respond to graphic descriptions of self-mutilation, cannibalism and the decomposition of dead bodies. Granted, those are elements of a horror story, but the situations in HAUNTED are far from it.
A horror story fan will be left scratching his or her head.
HAUNTED is about a group of amateur writers who agree to "disappear" for three months on what they believe is a writing retreat. Instead, they're locked in building of artificial light, packaged food and zero contact with the outside world until they produce their greatest work. The characters share stories reflecting their nicknames but we're not given anything more about them as they descend into self-delusion, self-mutilation, murder, cannibalism and suicide. This is a book where everyone in it is just...disgusting. You simply do not care about any of them.
This book operates on the level of a teen slasher/torture porn movie. Sometimes you might laugh or shudder (or both), but after a while....
As well as the stories themselves are crafted, the results are gross and unpleasant and even a little tedious with the sick details. Since the stories rarely have much to do with the main plot of the would-be writers destroying themselves, I wondered if it would've hurt the book to just remove the chapters of the Writers Retreat and let the stories stand on their own (the repititious "poems" made it even more trying). I disconnected from the characters when they started lopping off their own fingers and toes about one-third of the way in, and they never won me back.
And after writing these stories that appear to exist just to gross out and disturb the reader, the author closes out the book with a chapter about how he grossed out audience members with these stories at book signings.
I really enjoyed CHOKE, even with that book's nauseating details, but HAUNTED was a far cry away.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Palahniuk Has Guts
Comment: 'Haunted' is my least favorite Palahniuk book. I'm definitely a Palahniuk fan but 'Haunted' just feels self-consciously subversive. I'd read 'Guts' as a short story prior to the release of 'Haunted' so the graphic content was no suprise and didn't bother me. With the full-length novel, though, as a compilation of the horror stories - I found myself believing Palahniuk was just trying to see how far he could take the reader just for the sake of it. That feeling took me out of the book several times. It's still an entertaining read, especially for Palahniuk fans but 'Lullaby' and 'Invisible Monsters' are much better horror works.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Weird but interesting
Comment: There are a LOT of characters in this book, which might be a little overwhelming to some readers. Each character is introduced not by their real names, but by nicknames (EX: Earl Of Slander, Director Denial, Comrade Snarky.)
They each tell a story, and through these stories you learn a little bit more about them, and most of these are things you might not want to have ever known. A lot of the stories are actually very interesting and shocking, though there was one or two that bored me so I skipped them.
"Haunted" is an okay book. It's got its good moments, and then it has its bad moments. But mostly it's just weird. And unbelievable. I mean, would YOU cut off a part of your body to make a good scene for a movie or show? Here's a hint, the characters in this story are more than willing to. I guess you could say they all lost their mind.
Customer Rating:
Summary: An elaborate "Tales From The Crypt" for an apocalyptic age
Comment: I'd never really heard of Chuck Palahniuk until seeing the film adaptation of "Fight Club," which I though was an absolutely brilliant movie. After learning a little of the author's cultlike status and reading a review of "Haunted," I borrowed it from the library and began reading ... and put it down after 30 pages or so; it just didn't seem like my cup of tea. Very recently I read his new novel "Snuff," and while it was a rather pungent look into the porn industry, I thought maybe Palahniuk might have done better work. So I tried giving "Haunted" another try, and ended up enjoying it a lot more the second time around. It's been described as a satirical take on the "Reality TV" phenomenom ... but as I read it, I couldn't help thinking that at some point in his past Palahniuk might have been familiar with the movie and/or novelization of "Tales From The Crypt," because "Haunted" seems a lot like that, only more elaborate and MUCH more graphic. There's a lot of tragedy here, some wicked and ghastly humor, and healthy doses of nasty stuff involving the human body. What more can I say? After seeing "Fight Club" and reading "Snuff" and "Haunted," I can see where Chuck Palahniuk is coming from, what sort of worldview he has. And it's not for everyone. Hell, it's not for MOST people. But it's certainly different.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A fantastic reading experience!
Comment: I LOVED this book. The writing is excellent. The author managed to bring out a different voice for each story. There was not a false moment in the narration--it all rang true. By the end I felt like I knew these characters. In our "reality show" culture where there are so many vivid examples of how group think/survival situations can bring out the worst in people this novel is great social commentary. FANTASTIC!
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