Damned [Hardcover]

Chuck Palahniuk (Author)

Book Description

Release date: October 18, 2011

“Are you there, Satan? It’s me, Madison,” declares the whip-tongued thirteen-year-old narrator of Damned, Chuck Palahniuk’s subversive new work of fiction. The daughter of a narcissistic film star and a billionaire, Madison is abandoned at her Swiss boarding school over Christmas, while her parents are off touting their new projects and adopting more orphans. She dies over the holiday of a mari­juana overdose—and the next thing she knows, she’s in Hell. Madison shares her cell with a motley crew of young sinners that is almost too good to be true: a cheerleader, a jock, a nerd, and a punk rocker, united by fate to form the six-feet-under version of everyone’s favorite detention movie. Madison and her pals trek across the Dandruff Desert and climb the treacherous Mountain of Toenail Clippings to confront Satan in his citadel. All the popcorn balls and wax lips that serve as the currency of Hell won’t buy them off.

This is the afterlife as only Chuck Palahniuk could imagine it: a twisted inferno where The English Patient plays on end­less repeat, roaming demons devour sinners limb by limb, and the damned interrupt your dinner from their sweltering call center to hard-sell you Hell. He makes eternal torment, well, simply divine.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Praise for Damned:

"Palahniuk's 12th novel is just as gleefully, vividly, hilariously obscene as you'd expect —and it's also a hell of a lot of fun. [He] has always been known for his pitch-dark satire, and it's evident here in his depiction of the underworld.... As a young adult novel, it's surprisingly sweet, hopeful and empowering; as a satire, it's funny, irreverent and hugely entertaining. 'Hell is other people,' mused Sartre. Leave it to Chuck Palahniuk to tell us that might not be such a bad thing after all."—Michael Schaub, NPR


"Damned is as lively as a book about the dead can be....the Judy Blume book from hell, just as Mr. Palahniuk intended."—Janet Maslin, the New York Times


"And now, from the Well, What Did You Expect file: Chuck Palahniuk imagines a great hell.  His matter-of-fact underworld is the charming setting of Damned, a...very funny coming-of-age (after-you're-dead) novel....Palahniuk's descriptions of hell are inspired, crafted with great comic flair and the brilliant satirical stipulation that the Christian fundamentalists are right: Hell is literal, dinosaur bones were faked by Satan and among the unspeakable demons slurping about is Robert Mapplethorpe....[A] winning and funny book, and near the end, when Maddie seems to be ascending toward a sequel (Purgatory, anyone?), you'll likely want to read that one, too."—Jess Walter, Washington Post


"Damned is gross, sick, nasty, silly, all the things you want from the merry madman of American letters, Chuck Palahniuk. How can you not be instantly transfixed by an opening like this?: 'Are you there, Satan? It's me, Madison. I'm just now arrived here, in Hell, but it's not my fault except for maybe dying from an overdose of marijuana.'
And so begins the kind of goofy, but hypnotically endearing tale of a 13-year-old girl who, completely lost in life, finally starts to discover herself in Palahniuk's demented version of the afterlife....With Damned, [he] opens the fire hose to full bore again, stripping away the veneer on American society and showing us the yucky parts we don't want to see."—Chris Talbot, AP


"...[T]horoughly original...satiric and horrifying, enough so you'll want to repent after you read."—Christian DuChateau, CNN


"Some Fight Club trademarks--youthful disaffection, violence, gross-out humor, a dystopic setting, cultural satire as an extreme sport, a decent helping of third-act pathos--can be seen in...Damned.  Even prepubescent Madison Spencer, the protagonist of Damned, has traits that could be seen as Tyler Durden-esque. She's disaffected from society (i.e., those still alive), she kicks serious butt and is a cultural critic who becomes an unlikely leader....It's hard to pitch the broadly satirical Damned as a useful replacement narrative of life after death, but it's a rollicking adventure of Swiftian proportions, a Valleyfair of the Underworld that, incidentally, shows an overweight teenage girl bringing Satan himself down a peg."—Claude Peck, Minneapolis Star-Tribune


"Damned is typical of Palahniuk's work: a scathing satire that is unfiltered, caustic and smart....[His] descriptions of hell are priceless."—Rege Behe, Pittsburgh Tribune Review


"Even just its first few chapters reveal several layers of satiric humor, social commentary, Grand Guignol violence and heartbreaking insight....The narrator's blend of snark, precocious wit and unconcealed vulnerability and need is a combination as refreshing as the book is hard to put down."—Bill O'Driscoll, Pittsburgh City Paper

About the Author

CHUCK PALAHNIUK’s eleven best-selling novels—Tell-All, Pygmy, Snuff, Rant, Haunted, Lullaby, Fight Club, Diary, Survivor, Invisible Monsters, and Choke—have sold more than five million copies in the United States. He is also the author of Fugitives and Refugees, published as part of the Crown Journey Series, and the nonfiction collection Stranger Than Fiction. He lives in the Pacific Northwest.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Doubleday; First Edition edition (October 18, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385533020
• ISBN-13: 978-0385533027
• Product Dimensions: 5.8 x 1 x 8.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (200 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #35,032 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #59 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Genre Fiction > Satire

More About the Author

Chuck Palahniuk's novels are the bestselling Fight Club, which was made into a film by director David Fincher, Diary, Lullaby, Survivor, Haunted, and Invisible Monsters. Portions of Choke have appeared in Playboy, and Palahniuk's nonfiction work has been published by Gear, Black Book, The Stranger, and the Los Angeles Times. He lives in the Pacific Northwest.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

63 of 68 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars A Stroll Through Hell October 18, 2011

By William Kennedy

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

Chuck Palahniuk's books just keep getting weirder and weirder. I read and enjoy all of his novels, some more than others. "Pygmy" was a strange experiment, but unique and compelling nonetheless. "Tell-All" was a fun and enjoyable romp through the golden age of Hollywood, although it never quite became what it could have been.

And now, here is "Damned," a journey through hell (literally) with a sharp tongued and lovable young woman named Madison who died from...you'll have to read to find out, and it's not a marijuana overdose.

Frankly, this book is about as strange and bizarre as they come. The underworld is depicted as a place of grotesque monsters with lakes of sperm and mountains of toenail clippings. There were times when I thought this book was completely unclassifiable in any genre, forcing a new one to be invented. Afterlife Black Comedy.

"Damned," at its core, is a satire, and Chuck is at his best in skewering the affluent Hollywood lifestyle. Madison's parents are a movie star and a real estate mogul/business man who adopt children from war torn countries for the PR.

More importantly, in my opinion, is the writing, and Chuck breaks free from whatever has bound him over the last couple years and writes with an eloquence not seen since...well, maybe ever. Palahniuk has a very distinctive voice in his writing, all of his fans have gotten used to it, and look forward to it with each new book. But with "Damned," there is something more, a careful attention paid to craft more than story. The sentences flow artfully in Madison's voice and bring her to life with all her hopefulness and intelligence.

"Damned," is not a great book in the sense that it's a new classic, but I think it is a step in the right direction for Chuck.... The story is just weird, but the way he tells it is what makes it such a fun read.

It's okay for books to be both fun and well written. Read more ›

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Better than his past three books, but still not his best... (3.5 stars) November 21, 2011

By Josh Gaines

Format:Hardcover

The story is told by 13-year-old Madison Spencer, the chubby, unattractive daughter of billionaire parents who has found herself in Hell under the impression that she died from an overdose of marijuana. In the manner of Judy Blume, each chapter begins with a short 'prayer' or journal entry that always begins: "Are you there, Satan? It's me, Madison." In her trek through the Underworld, she meets a group of other eccentric stereotype-ish teens; a Jock, a Nerd, a Hot-Girl and a Punk (think 'The Breakfast Club').

As the book went on, I realized that this is the first of Palahniuk's books to follow a sort of 'adventure' narrative. While in nearly every chapter Madison relays some part of her history on Earth to the reader, a good deal of the tale is a journey of sorts through the landscape of Hell. And who better to give us a vision of the Valley of the Damned than Mr. Palahniuk? His description of Hell is both disgusting and kind of hilarious, with miles of cages for victims (that are easily broken out of), stale candy and popcorn balls strewn everywhere across the ground, and a geography made of every unpleasant human emission imaginable (huge mounds of fingernail clippings, a desert of dandruff, an ocean of fecal matter, a river of steaming-hot saliva, etc.).

The author also entertainingly peppers the story with famous figures who have been condemned and their activities in the afterlife. Madison runs into more than a few tyrannous leaders, celebrities, serial killers and Presidents, among others. The demons are surprisingly apathetic beings who can be sometimes bribed with candy bars to make one's eternal damnation slightly more manageable.... However the pagan gods of the ancient world who also roam the territory are somewhat more troublesome, snatching victims out of a cage and eating them alive limb for limb, the victim only to regenerate and await the next bodily terror to befall them.

One of Palahniuk's more humorous additions is a sort of MVD-of-the-soul where the dead can make an appeal for their eternal state. But of course, it's Hell, so the clerks are demons and the paperwork could literally take forever to process.

Madison is a somewhat flat character and the fact that she is a 13-year-old dead girl is only slightly tapped into as far as her voice. However, the book is entertaining and has a surprising amount of ponderous material regarding life and death and eternity. And as always with Palahniuk, a satisfying amount of heavy satire on the human condition, specifically on the absurdity of Americans and the wealthy. Palahniuk also never fails to 'do his homework' and interweaves a good deal of interesting factual information into his stories, in this case it was mostly regarding famously evil people and the origins of obscure demons and pagan gods. Some may see this as just filler material, but for some reason I always enjoy it, and I think he includes it in a relevant way.

I can say I enjoyed Damned a good deal more than Chuck's past three works, Tell-All, Pygmy and Snuff. This is the closest he's come in a while to 'darker' material, which is what I've felt he's always been best at, with the satire being a complimentary element rather than the focus. And the man no doubt has quite an imagination, even if twisted at times. Even in his lesser works, there are always moments where you're thinking 'Where the heck does he get this stuff?!?'

Overall I'd give it a 3.5 out of 5, and would recommend it if... you're in the mood for something weird and honestly kind of gross. Read more ›

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Much better than his last few books. November 7, 2011

By strwbrrystar

Format:Hardcover

Maybe it's because my expectations of Palahniuk's work have been lowered so much after reading Snuff and Pygmy (didn't even bother with Tell All), but I consider this a decent book. Not his best, but I enjoyed it more than most parts of Haunted. I would give it 3.5 stars. Won't be throwing this one away, at least.

15 of 20 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars stick with the older books November 2, 2011

By jc9

Format:Hardcover

With each new release from Palaniuk, I keep hoping from something great but end up disappointed. Tell-all was the first Palahniuk book that I did not finish. I just found it to be too boring. When I heard about Damned, and its premise, I thought it sounded like a pretty decent story. While it certainly was better than Tell all and Pygmy, its still lacking something. I can't put my finger on what though, perhaps it's the emotional reactions that I would have from his earlier novels. I recall laughing/being shocked/surprised when reading his earlier works. Damned had moments that seemed as though the reader was supposed to be shocked/surprised, but it just came across as forced.
If you're new to the author, stick to the earlier works.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Damned If He Didn't Do It Again April 3, 2012

By Sue Kuchli

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

Once again, Chuck takes us on an unforgettable journey, this time through the perils of hell. In this Breakfast Club meets Valley of the Dolls novel, a 13 year-old little girl is damned to hell after an accidental overdose on marijuana. Discarded by her parents, unaccepted by her peers, she finds herself an unlikely leader of her fellow heaven-deprived misfits. Darkly hilarious, and always shocking, I'll be Damned if Chuck didn't hit the nail on the head...again.