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I'm going to be honest, I'm starting to become less and less impressed with Palahniuk's work in general-- and it saddens me to admit this. I've read five of his books now (one non-fiction; one too plodding to even finish), and it's becoming too obvious that every character voice is exactly the same. They are all written the same, they all have the same delivery of speech and thought patterns, they are all perfectly one-dimensional. Blank, emotionless, cruel, somewhat hateful. Disenchanted with the world, anti- and asocial. There's no depth of feeling; even when Palahniuk attempts to create a characteristic turn-around, it falters and falls short (with the singular exception of Fight Club). The "hero" always knows a handful of miscellaneous facts that loosely relate to the content enough to serve as cynical metaphor (how to make soap, how to clean up evidence of violence, etc.); this miscellany is always interspersed with social commentary and scraps of dialogue, absolutely routine by now. It works for one book, creating such a by-the-book nihilistic protagonist through disjointed prose, but when every. single. character. is a misanthropic maggot, it gets old.

The writing is still "sharp," if you want to call it that, but completely formulaic. Disappointing to discover this about Palahniuk's style.

That said, this one is at least holding my attention a little more than Diary, so I'll probably finish it.