Lullaby A Novel

Chuck Palahniuk

Not for the faint of heart, this cleverly-written black comedy piece tells the story of how the...more

Not for the faint of heart, this cleverly-written black comedy piece tells the story of how the Culling Song--a poem that, when read out loud, or even thought silently, can bring a target person to a painless death--affects a chosen few who, with the knowledge of its consequences, attempt to put a stop to all circulating copies. The poem's intent is to lull a person who is suffering illness, or injury, but the characters in which this story involves realize the power it grants them as they travel across the U.S. Lullaby begins with Carl Streator, a news reporter researching Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) who initially discovers the poem at the scenes of a series of crib deaths. From this beginning, he tries to piece together any connections, which, as he discovers, leads him to meeting others on a like-minded quest for power as well as to burn all reported copies in existence. One particularly interesting chapter details the what-if scenarios if the poem were to gain momentum. Example hypotheses include the population's fear of sound/noise and the fear of speech, both in which the song can be embedded like a subliminal message. The result would be a minimalizing of the two, as in Orwell's 1984, which Lullaby frequently refers to the eminence that is Big Brother. Another point of interest for me was when one of the characters who knows a lot about the natural environment, described instances of natural selection where population is controlled by some weedlike species, which coincided sweetly with the "population control" tactics of Carl Streator and his killer Bonnie of a partner, Helen Hoover Boyle. Take the shuffled up storytelling of a Tarantino film that whips you in the end when you piece it all together, and you have the finale brain-fuck of endings. Lullaby is short, easy to read, creatively written, and it has a knack for making you ponder the mysteries inherent in common living that you never considered. I say you should give it a try.   hide

The fact that this man can get away with writing the same book over and over again and maintain his...more

The fact that this man can get away with writing the same book over and over again and maintain his devoted (cult) fanbase is something of a mystery to me. The book that he continues to write over and over again isn't even a very good book...its fair at best. If the key to getting American teenagers to read a novel is short sentances and profanity i'm actually surprised there aren't more of these sorts of things. I'll admit to enjoying his novels as a teenager, but when this came out and was basically the same thing as all his other novels i swore off his work forever. Wake me up when he writes a new novel.   hide

i enjoyed it, a great story regarding the worth of life and death as well as issues of power. but i...more

i enjoyed it, a great story regarding the worth of life and death as well as issues of power. but i think that's trying to be a little too profound for what, in the end, was an interesting story about a rag-tag family trying to end sudden infant death syndrome. i suppose DREW CASPER would analyze the story as a fairy tale featuring the alternative family so often present in postmodern fiction and our search for the family unit. a man searching for meaning in the world must leave his home and comfort zone on a journey wherein he meets a variety of characters, some friends, some foes. and somewhere along the line, he grows as a man and learns to deal with his new self.   hide

'Lullaby' was a big disappointment from Palahniuk. The author takes you on a jaunt through the...more

'Lullaby' was a big disappointment from Palahniuk. The author takes you on a jaunt through the inner turmoil that usually defines his protagonists, while leaving many key points of the main plot mired in obscurity. In the end the reader finds themself, after having again delved into the nihilistic psyche of Palahniuk, left bewildered and fatigued neither at the beginning or near any conceivable sight of an adequate resolution. Chuck's attempt on subject matter more complex than 'Choke' or 'Fight Club' fails, mainly due to his shocking anecdotes and contraversial ideology taking up more of the book than the main plot, and transforms the story into a brooding opinionated diatribe. Oh, and something about a poem.   hide

This book is another in the growing list of great reads by Chuck Palaniuk. A somewhat standard...more

This book is another in the growing list of great reads by Chuck Palaniuk. A somewhat standard novel for C.P. plot-wise; seeing as how the story doesn't really climax until the last three or four chapters of the book. That being said, this book had an amazing ending. The story is filled with an amazing amount of facts, some of which I had to Google to see is they were real. When it really comes down to it: Good story, great ideas, but personally I liked Survivor better.   hide