Lullaby [Paperback]

Churck Palahniuk (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: anchor; 4th edition (2003)
• ASIN: B001E1GTHW
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (301 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,451,114 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Palahniuk's Best Yet!, September 18, 2002

By 

Tribe (Toledo, Ohio United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Lullaby: A Novel (Hardcover)

Chuck Palahniuk has a knack for capturing the pressures of modern life, and the resulting angst and alienation of the people who inhabit it. To that extent, Lullaby is no different from Choke or Fight Club. This really isn't a twist on the horror story as some of the media reviews have made it out to be.

There's the emotionally scarred main protagonist with a dark past secret waiting to be dredged up who surrounds him or herself with a surrogate family. There's the rants against modernity and consumerism and their resulting compulsions. There's the quest on which the main characters embark that culminates in an anarchic free for all. There's the identity switches between characters. And, of course, there's Palahniuk's wisecracks, smart-[aleck] asides, and spare, almost hard-boiled writing style.

Palahniuk does all this so well, so uniquely, that his fans are not going to be disappointed with Lullaby.

What makes Lullaby different from what has come before, and what makes Lullaby his best novel, is that he seems to tackle his usual themes a bit more thoroughly and directly than he has before. And for the first time, Palahniuk introduces the notion of modern access to information as something to really worry about, rather than accept as something that will liberate society. The device he uses here is an ancient African culling spell. A magical spell that poses as a deadly information virus.

If there is anything that is unsatisfying it's the ending, which in typical Palahniuk fashion, resolves the fate in an anarchic free for all of outlandishness. It seems like Palahniuk plots his novels into dead ends, leaving him no way out to end his novels, and he has to resort to, well, what happens in Lullaby.

But that doesn't make Lullaby an unsatisfying novel. And, in the strange world that Palahniuk's characters inhabit, which is still identifiably the world we live in today, the way Palahniuk unravels it all seems to make the only sense in light of what's come before in the novel.

So far, Palahniuk can do no wrong.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Our Hero, September 5, 2003

By 

Robby Nichols (Chicago, IL USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Lullaby (Paperback)

Lullaby finds Chuck Palahniuk in a transitional phase. Chances are the Portland author won't be competing with the likes of Stephen King any time soon. And his fans should be thankful.

As a horror novel, Lullaby is anything but a traditional entry in the heavily commercialized genre. Palahniuk's sinister sense of humor prevents the author's fourth novel from achieving a significant scare factor. Or at least the typical horror type of fright.

Our hero is Helen Hoover Boyle. She is a real estate agent with an eye for "distressed" property. The kind of homes where the only permanent residents are not exactly of this world. Helen Hoover Boyle sells haunted houses. She sells them to normal families who seem happy enough, until blood starts running down the walls. After that, the buyers will scramble out of there before they even start unpacking their boxes. Easy money for a realtor who knows where to look. And with the help of a police scanner and a practitioner slash secretary named Mona, Helen Hoover Boyle is very good at what she does.

Our narrator is Carl Streator. A newspaper reporter who, while doing a story on sudden infant death syndrome, comes across a book of poems. More like a can of worms actually.

If words could kill.

The discovery of the infamous "culling song" lights the fuse of Lullaby's plot which eventually intersects the lives of our hero and our narrator, spiraling the book into a constantly building power struggle all the way until the bitter ending. With plenty of Palahniuk's signature quirks, Lullaby will surely satisfy Chuck's rapidly growing fan base.

It is the story just below the surface, however, that will get the wheels turning. Lullaby was inspired by the tragic killing of Palahniuk's own father. The murderer was eventually apprehended and convicted. During sentencing, Chuck had to testify as to whether he believed in the death penalty. Keep these facts (not included in the book) in mind, as they will provide a better appreciation of the novel.

Otherwise, Lullaby may prove just too darn entertaining for the average reader to even notice the deeper message. It is truly a page-turning, hilarious ride. Take the horror sticker off and, in my mind, the brilliantly constructed third chapter is reason enough to buy this one today.

21 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A song of horror, fear, and death., October 24, 2003

By 

girldiver "Enjoy!" (tangled up in blue.) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Lullaby (Paperback)

Carl Streator is a journalist working on a story about SIDS (sudden infant death syndrome). He is going on emergency calls to the homes of parents who have just lost their children and researching past SIDS cases looking for clues and a story. He arranges to meet Helen Boyle, premier realtor for distressed haunted houses, a parent who lost a child to SIDS almost 20 years ago.

Carl Streators' journey is a twisted maze of supernatural, paranormal, pagan ritual, truth, discovery, and even love.

Chuck Palahnuik begins your journey into 'Lullaby' in a chilling account of paranormal haunting and when your good and scared he taps into your maternal/paternal needs of protecting children by detailing the deaths of infants. I found the prologue and first couple of chapters difficult to read due to the images he evokes.

If your looking for eloquent prose of beauty and light you need to get a different book. 'Lullaby' is full of gritty descriptions, unusual characters, and a very dry dark sense of humor. You will laugh in this book but in the oddest places.

I did enjoy this book but my biggest criticism is he had great insights about the media that was lost in the side plots and characters in this book. The book asks the questions what if you had the power to kill? What if the media told you how to feel, can you control yourself? Does the end justify the means? Does power corrupt?

You will be surprised by the outragous and unusual events that only Chuck Palahnuik could dream up for us. This is a departure from books like 'Choke' and 'Survivor' that were self discoveries and a step toward the genre of Horror. If you like gritty tell it like it is style you'll like this book.

I liked it and would recommend it.