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Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54 EAN: 9780385722193 ISBN: 0385722192 Label: Anchor Manufacturer: Anchor Number Of Items: 1 Number Of Pages: 272 Publication Date: July 29, 2002 Publisher: Anchor Release Date: July 29, 2003 Studio: Anchor Editorial Review: Product Description: Ever heard of a culling song? It’s a lullaby sung in Africa to give a painless death to the old or infirm. The lyrics of a culling song kill, whether spoken or even just thought. You can find one on page 27 of Poems and Rhymes from Around the World, an anthology that is sitting on the shelves of libraries across the country, waiting to be picked up by unsuspecting readers. Reporter Carl Streator discovers the song’s lethal nature while researching Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, and before he knows it, he’s reciting the poem to anyone who bothers him. As the body count rises, Streator glimpses the potential catastrophe if someone truly malicious finds out about the song. The only answer is to find and destroy every copy of the book in the country. Accompanied by a shady real-estate agent, her Wiccan assistant, and the assistant’s truly annoying ecoterrorist boyfriend, Streator begins a desperate cross-country quest to put the culling song to rest. Written with a style and imagination that could only come from Chuck Palahniuk, Lullaby is the latest outrage from one of our most exciting writers at work today. Amazon.com Review: The consequences of media saturation are the basis for an urban nightmare in Lullaby, Chuck Palahniuk's darkly comic and often dazzling thriller. Assigned to write a series of feature articles investigating SIDS, troubled newspaper reporter Carl Streator begins to notice a pattern among the cases he encounters: each child was read the same poem prior to his or her death. His research and a tip from a necrophilic paramedic lead him to Helen Hoover Boyle, a real estate agent who sells 'distressed' (demonized) homes, assured of their instant turnover. Boyle and Streator have both lost children to 'crib death,' and she confirms Streator's suspicions: the poem is an ancient lullaby or 'culling song' that is lethal if spoken--or even thought--in a victim's direction. The misanthropic Streator, now armed with a deadly and uncontrollably catchy tune, goes on a minor killing spree until he recognizes his crimes and the song's devastating potential. Lullaby then turns into something of a road trip narrative, with Streator, Boyle, her empty-headed Wiccan secretary Mona, and Mona's vigilante boyfriend Oyster setting out across the U.S. to track down and destroy all copies of the poem. In his previous works, including the cult favorite Fight Club, Palahniuk has demonstrated a fondness for making statements about the condition of humanity, and he uses Lullaby like a blunt object to repeatedly overstate his generally dim view. Such dogmatic venom undermines the persuasiveness of his thesis about mass communication and free will, but thankfully, Palahniuk offers some respite here by allowing for sympathy and love, as well as through his razor-sharp humor, such as his mock listings for Helen's possessed properties: 'six bedrooms, four baths, pine-paneled entryway, and blood running down the kitchen walls....' At such moments, Lullaby casts a powerful spell. --Ross Doll Related Items:      see moreAverage Rating:
 Rating:  - as good as fightclubi admit it.. chuck palahniuk is not for everyone, but for those who can stomach him .. he is brilliant.. borderline sick but over the board genius... lulaby is as good as fight club if not better.. the plot is brilliant, it is fast paced and entertaining with its fair share of the Palahniuk wisdom .. and although the plot is full of clues and giveaways, at least i myself did not see the surprises coming.. and the make perfect sense.. and although lulaby is based on a stretch of fiction, chuck palahniuk makes it very believable... don't read other people's summary of the plot it will ruin it for you.. if you liked fightclub the movie or the book, you will love lullaby Rating:  - Not sure about this one.....I don't think much of this book. It is a little scattered. One thing will be going on and then the next it's something different. It's very hard to follow. It was one of those books I thought was never going to end. It was very hard to stay focused and finish reading this book. Rating:  - excrement on stiltsStrong words, perhaps, but having seen Fight Club, I believe neither Chuck nor his readers are pansies and can take it And I'm counting 1, and I'm counting 2, and 3, This, above, is what passes for showing rising anger in the book. The main character, Carl, stumbles upon an ancient song that kills people. Parents who read this lullaby to their babies kill them, and Carl is determined to find all the copies of the book and destroy them. On the way, he meets a real estate agent who assassinates people from a distance (using the song) in her spare time, a Wiccan, and a nature-loving, human-hating, power-hungry hunk named Oyster (oh and did I mention that Carl has anger management issues and a traumatic past?) So there you have it: take something horrible, like the death of babies in their cribs, add a weird twist: lethal lullabies!, strange characters, freewheeling prose, miracles, psychopathic killers, environmental destruction... and write in a frenetic, hip way, so as to paper over the fact that you don't have a story, or a plot, or any idea what you want to do with this material and I'm counting to 4, to 5, and to 6.... hey, I think i'll write a riff on modernity using that formula and no plot... do you think they'll publish me? maybe i'll also recycle that idea of hating humans and of wishing the earth covered in vines, and men returning to the good ol' days of hunting and gathering...rarrr... when we were in harmony with nature, and the neighbor's TV didn't drive us to homicidal anger this review, if it seems a little disjointed, I apologize (by the way, this is the kind of syntax Chuck uses sometimes)... it's a mirror held to the work, so what it reflects is just the truth The thing that i liked is that Chuck used some interesting factoids about alien species colonizing America (starlings, carp, etc.) and driving out or sickening the native species; this stuff was just thrown out, though, meant to shock you into hating modern humans and their careless, cruel ways Final thought: mental killing, in a novel, is an interesting idea that looks good on paper but doesn't really work; first of all, it's not developed; second, once you remove limits from what people can do, things become boring... killing from a distance, yeah, levitation, yeah, occupying other bodies, yeah, whatever... it' the equivalent of saying, i like everybody, all men and women, regardless, and I can sleep with anyone... really, a story needs limits and a sense of the possible and impossible; otherwise it's just an extended 'what if', like when stoners talk... Sorry for the ramble. Gonna go have a chicken sandwich. Rating: - By the balls This book grabbed me by the balls until I was done. I normally take a few months to get through a book, like Choke, but this was about a week. I would have only liked more main characters to die. Rating: - Unexpected dark humor... how can you resist?This my first time reading Palahniuk. To say that he's unique is an understatement. "Lullaby" starts with normal characters but rapidly unfolds into the strangest world imaginable. The pages turn quickly to build a unique place with strange events. Dark humor seeps unexpectedly from aberrant places. The reality presented becomes distorted and twisted, molded into a strange, mystical actuality. At times, as other reviewers mentioned, I felt that I was not be getting the full dramatic effect out of my reading, as if I couldn't grasp what was occurring. Although, by completion, the novel spoke to me with a depth and intensity I have not experienced before. For those who have read the Amazon review, I agree that Chuck Palahniuk expresses potent themes on human control and nature through "Lullaby". I recommend this novel to those seeking impact and an ending you will reflect on. Thank you for reading, C.K. |
