Lullaby
by Chuck Palahniuk
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Book Summary Information
Author: Chuck PalahniukEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2002-07-29
ISBN: 0385722192
Number of pages: 272
Publisher: Anchor
Product features:
- ISBN13: 9780385722193
- Condition: New
- Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!
Book Reviews of Lullaby
Book Review: Savannah Austin's Review
Summary: 3 Stars
Review on Lullaby by Chuck Palahniuk
Imagine if you had the power to kill someone by just thinking about it. In the novel Lullaby, by Chuck Palahniuk also the author who wrote Fight Club and Choke, has introduced this dark humorous story what is called a culling spell. This spell originated from Africa found in Poems and Rhymes from Around the World which was sung to give a painless death to the elderly or someone who was dying. The main character in the book manages to get a hold of this cursed poem and reaps the consequences by accidentally murdering his child and wife.
Reporter, ex husband and father Carl Streator devotes his life in finding all copies every made of the poem and destroying them. On his way in a cross-country journey he meets two people who share the same power and join him in the mission for they also have lost loved ones and know about the spell. To Streator's horror, he finds that by reciting and even thinking about the culling song becomes lethal to others lives. Through out the book he comes in contact with people he deeply dislikes and deserves the culling song. Ironically he can restrain himself with those he hates rather than innocent people he encounters. Streator has lost himself in his observations of others and their stories; he forgets to worry about his own. This is used as a metaphor for the problem of information overloaded in society today and how we become distracted watching others lives within the media, advertising, and ect..that we forget to watch our own lives. He eventually learns how to control this power. However some characters that he is with who also share the power urn to have the power and use it for their own needs weather it being used for evil or good.
Helen Hoover Boyle, a real estate broker, spends her time trying to sell haunted houses to buyers, continually confuses you through out the novel of weather or not she is bad or good. She uses other spells that they find in the Book of Shadows to control Mr. Streator and uses him to get what she wants. They end up having a sort of love affair even though Mona Sabbat, a soft-spoken Wiccan who works for Helen, thinks that Helen has put love spells on Mr. Streator to keep him distracted with her and not on the poem. On the way in their mission to destroy the poem they stumble upon a grimoire, which contains the original poem, and other spells as well that hold different kinds of powers. Whether the grimoire should be destroyed or put to good use is a question, which they have not reached consensus.
The author uses a lot of reference to society and human behavior and good references to this we find throughout the novel; " Think of all the generations of women who looked in that mirror,..They took it home. They aged in that mirror. They died, all those beautiful young women, but here's the host. A big fat predator looking for its next meal." (52). In this passage the women who have looked into the mirror have been judging themselves because they are convinced by the mirror, who is the `predator' which represents society, that this is how you are suppose to look. In the materialistic society that we live in, the media manipulates the public's perception on women's image and what is socially accepted.
Palahniuk effectively examines patterns of human behavior with the characters and their relationship with the world; "All that work and love and effort and time, my life, wasted. Everything I hoped would outlive me I've ruined...And sitting here, I've run out of parts. All the walls and roofs and handrails. And what's glued to the floor in front of me is a bloody mess. It's nothing perfect or complete, but this is what I've made of my life. Right or wrong, it follows no great master plan. All you can do is hope for a pattern to emerge, and sometimes it never does. Still, with a plan, you only get the best you can imagine. I'd always hoped for something better than that. In this passage the character refers to this playhouse he has unsuccessfully built as a symbol of his unfinished and failed life. The expectations for the house was suppose to go to his now dead daughter and outlive generations to come. Left with this incomplete and broken house, he feels lost and unsure of what is left for him to save or fulfill in the world. There is no turning back after spending all that hardship and time into something you have destroyed and destroys you.
I think the clear message in this story that the author is getting across is from an Anthropological view of why humans act the way they do and why we are so useless at fulfilling our own lives. Other than a few part of the novel it can become twisted and visual, but all round it was an excellent book of choice. I would recommend for everyone to read in some point in his or her life. It is extremely intriguing and makes you thinking differently about life, death, humanity, and existence itself. There is a lot more to this darkly humorous book then you think.
Savannah 5/9/07
Summary of Lullaby
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.
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
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