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Survivor
by: Chuck Palahniuk

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Availability: Usually dispatched within 24 hours Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN: 9780099282648
ISBN: 009928264X
Label: Vintage
Manufacturer: Vintage
Number Of Pages: 304
Publication Date: August 03, 2000
Publisher: Vintage
Studio: Vintage
Sales Rank: 3282

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Editorial Review:

Amazon.co.uk Review:
Survivor, the second novel by Chuck Palahniuk--whose debut novel The Fight Club was widely received to critical acclaim--is a deranged comedy of nightmares, a groin-kick at Western society's worst excesses. This is satire at its best, and Palahniuk handles it all with a distinct, engaging prose style and with plot devices that keep the pages turning long after your tea break should have finished.

From the very opening of the book Palahniuk lets us know that his narrator, Tender Branson, the last surviving member of a religious death cult, is on a path to self-destruction. The tension in this book lies not in the outcome, because like Tender's soothsaying friend Fertility, we can see it coming 289 pages away, instead it lies in the intricate plot that takes Tender from farm boy to media celebrity and ruin.

This is a novel that examines what happens when religion meets the overindulgences of our consumerist society. In the world that the author envisages, which is all too real in the light of tragedies such as Waco and the Heaven's Gate suicides, the only acceptable religions are those that can be successfully marketed and controlled at a corporate level; the small separatist models of religion are superfluous, and self-destruct. This is also a look at religion itself, at how it can enslave as many people as it appears to liberate. A comic novel that deals with the most serious issues of society, Survivor places Palahniuk among the most daring and technically able writers of his generation.

Adam said the first step most cultures take to making you a slave is to castrate you ... the cultures that don't castrate you to make you a slave, they castrate your mind.

--Iain Robinson

Customer Reviews

Average Rating: out of 5 stars

Rating:

- Survivor mp3 edition
Other reviews here cover the book itself, so I won't bother to repeat what's already been said, suffice to say that I'm a fan of Chuck Palahniuk and along with fight club this is my personal favourite of his books.

I just wanted to say a few words on the audiobook edition. As any fan of audiobooks will know a bad reading can ruin the effect of even the greatest prose, so I'm glad to say that isn't the case here. The performance is subtle and adroit, perfectly complementing the wry humour. Like a good film adaptation, where you can never re-read the novel with picturing a perfectly cast actor, it would be impossible for me to now re-read survivor without hearing it in Paul Michael Garcia's dead-pan delivery.

And given ... Read More:

Rating:

- A near perfect read
After reading Fight Club I was curious about Survivor, but in the end decided to pass based on negative reviews I'd read. What a waste. Survivor is wickedly funny commentary on our societal obsession with fame, fortune and legacy. It was just outrageous enough to be believable, and Palahniuk never shied away from the tougher parts of our protagonist's story. From start to finish a near perfect read... long live Palahniuk!

Rating:

- You WILL survive
Palahniuk's works are so often compared to Sedaris, Christopher Moore, and Jackson McCrae, but I have to disagree even though I like those authors and would recommend their books. Palahniuk's works are very complex and well thought out, and his character of Tender Branson in SURVIVOR is one of my favorites.

The plotline of SURVIVOR is not that complicated---at first. Tender is on a plane with nothing more than a black box. He plans to recite his life story into said box, but as with all C.P novels, things don't go as planned.

The biggest problem with Palahniuk's works is that you can't tell everyone just how great they are without giving away key elements to the story. Everything in his books will come as a surprise and ... Read More:

Rating:

- Dark, disturbing, humorous, engaging
Chuck Palahniuk's "Survivor" takes the reader into the world of Tender Branson, the last surviving member of a suicide cult. As the book opens, Branson, the narrator, has hijacked a Boeing 747 with the intention of crashing it, with himself on board, into the Australian outback. Having emptied the plane of passengers, he proceeds to tell his account of his life - ostensibly as it 'really happened' - into the flight recorder, from his childhood under the repressive authority of the Creedish Church to being propelled years later to media stardom as the last survivor.

The first thing that the reader will notice is that the book begins with Chapter 47 on page 289 and counts its way down to Chapter 1 and page 1 at the end, a device which serves ... Read More:

Rating:

- okish
This book was fairly good until about half way through. The main character and his strange ways are well developed as the book initially progresses and then you hit the middle. At this point the main character is put in touch with an agent looking to make money out of him as the last survivor of a creedish death cult.

The book changes direction and the well developed character becomes a puppet for his agent. I found this section pretty tedious and longed for the main character to break away and do something more interesting. The main character does escape eventually but by this point I had lost interest and was reading the book quickly just to get to the end so I could stick it on the shelf and start something more interesting.

Books : Survivor