Well, I've been staring at a blank screen for about 10 minutes now because it’s hard to know where to start with a book like Chuck Palahniuk’s Invisible Monsters. First, we can get this out of the way: I can’t really discuss this book without covering some spoiler material, and while I’ll try to avoid some of the bigger twists, be forewarned that if you haven’t read this book (and really, it’s been out more than 10 years) there might be content in this review you don’t want to read. With that said, I didn’t like the book. If you haven’t read it and still plan to, I don’t think you’ll be missing much by having a few spoilers ruined. I’ll tell you why in the next few paragraphs.
Invisible Monsters (spoilerific summary in that link) starts with a bang - literally - as Evie (the narrator’s former best friend) shoots Brandy Alexander (the narrator’s current best friend) with a rifle from the scene of a burning house at Evie’s wedding. This is a great scene; it’s gripping, interesting, and it makes you wonder how we got here. Unfortunately, it’s pretty much all downhill from there. As we jump back and forth in time with the narrator to bridge the gap between the beginning of the story and the first scene, I found myself hoping more and more that the aforementioned gunshot wound would end up killing Brandy Alexander. She plays the single, super charismatic eye-of-the-storm that seems to occupy all of Palahniuk’s books, but she’s infinitely less likable than Tyler Durden or any of the others. For that matter the narrator is rather the whiny brat who is content to sulk through whole book while following Brandy.
Characters aside, this book is the sloppiest I've ever read by Palahniuk. It's the most dependent on shock value, yet the least interesting. The shocking aspects are not as shocking as in Fight Club or Choke. It could be simply because I’d already read some of his other books and knew what to expect, but there also a lack of subtlety underscoring it all. Palahniuk is at his best when I’m reading and say “wait, what?” - having to go back and reread the previous sentence. Even the twists that normally push Palahniuk’s books from good to great suffer from bad predictability due to over hinting and unsubtle foreshadowing. For instance, he spends the first third of the book telling you how big Brandy’s hands are, and she does things with her big hands, and her hands are the only thing the plastic surgeons couldn't fix, until surprise! She’s actually a man going through a transgender process.
This is not to say that Invisible Monsters is horrible. There are some legitimately funny moments (though too few) and Palahniuk’s flair for the dramatic turn of phrase is as alive as ever. And even though that’s about all I have to say about it that’s nice, I wouldn’t say this book is completely not worth reading. I was just disappointed. I’m not sure what sequence of events led me to read this book over any of his others, but I’ll chalk this one up to the fact that it’s one of his earliest works (an excuse Fight Club doesn’t need) and explore his other works assuming Invisible Monsters is a fluke.
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