| |  | Books : Choke |  | | | | | | | | | |
List Price:$14.95
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Availability:Usually ships in 24 hours
Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780307388926
ISBN: 0307388921
Label: Anchor
Manufacturer: Anchor
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 304
Publication Date: August 26, 2008
Publisher: Anchor
Release Date: August 26, 2008
Sales Rank: 1295
Studio: Anchor
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Editorial Review:
Product Description:
Victor Mancini's a medical school dropout with a problem. He needs to pay for elder care for his mother, who's got Alzheimer's. So he comes up with the perfect scam: pretending to choke in upscale restaurants and getting “saved” by fellow diners who, feeling responsible for Victor's life, offer him financial support.
Meanwhile, he cruises sexual addiction recovery workshops and spends his days working at Colonial Dunsboro, where his stoner colleagues are sentenced to the stocks for any deviation from the colonial lifestyle. Oh, yeah, and he's desperate to find the truth of his paternity, which his addled mother suggests may be divine.
Amazon.com Review:
Victor Mancini is a ruthless con artist. Victor Mancini is a med-schooldropout who's taken a job playing an Irish indentured servant in acolonial-era theme park in order to help care for his Alzheimer's-afflictedmother. Victor Mancini is a sex addict. Victor Mancini is a directdescendant of Jesus Christ. All of these statements about the protagonistof Choke are more or less true. Welcome, once again, to the world ofChuck Palahniuk.
'Art never comes from happiness.' So says Mancini's mother only a few pagesinto the novel. Given her own dicey and melodramatic style of parenting,you would think that her son's life would be chock-full of nothing but art.Alas, that's not the case. In the fine tradition of Oedipus, StephenDedalus, and Anthony Soprano, Victor hasn't quite reconciled his issueswith his mother. Instead, he's trawling sexual-addiction recovery meetingsfor dates and purposely choking in restaurants for a few moments ofattention. Longing for a hug, in other words, he's settling for theHeimlich.
Thematically, this is pretty familiar Palahniuk territory. It would be apity to disclose the surprises of the plot, but suffice it to say that whatwe have here is a little bit of Tom Robbins's Another RoadsideAttraction, a little bit of Don DeLillo's The Day Room, and, well, alittle bit of FightClub. Just as with Fight Club and the other two novels underPalahniuk's belt, we get a smattering of gloriously unflinching sound bites,including this skeptical bit on prayer chains: 'A spiritual pyramid scheme.As if you can gang up on God. Bully him around.'
Whether this is the novel that will break Palahniuk into the mainstream ishard to say. For a fourth book, in fact, the ratio of iffy,'dude'-intensive dialogue to interesting and insightful passages is alittle higher than we might wish. In the end, though, the author's nerveand daring pull the whole thing off--just barely. And what's next forVictor Mancini's creator? Leave the last word to him, declaring as he doesin the final pages: 'Maybe it's our job to invent something better.... Whatit's going to be, I don't know.'--Bob Michaels
Customer Reviews Average Rating: 
Rating: - Well...THAT was graphic.
Graphic and entertaining. In a good way, of course.
I found the main character absolutely intriguing, and was delighted to read small excerpts from his past every once in a while. The rest of the characters all had a certain charm to them. The first-person narrative was great, and never exasperating.
However, the book seemed to take too much time describing Victor's many sexual encounters, and not enough on his choking experiences.
I knew the main character was a sex ... Read More
Rating:  - "Dude" this book blows...
So maybe I made the mistake of watching the film before I read the book, but I expected the book to be better--and it wasn't. In fact, the book enlightened me to the fact that the author attempts to be evocative, erotic & intellectual with this wannabe-doctor self-made genius of a man. The film, I think, was better because it took out some unnecessary "metaphors" of philosophical proportions. The dialogue seemed artificial, and yes--the book is as inflated as my review appears before you. It was ... Read More
Rating: - Great Ideas
Well, I didn't this book was that funny and written so smartly, a lot of jokes not only sexual jokes, but those about death are awesome... this is a great book for people who likes jokes and are not afraid of laughing at death, addictions and oder human abilities....
Rating: - Gutsy readers only--this is not for the faint-hearted
(First published in 2001, this book has been re-released because of the upcoming movie.)
Choke tells the tale of Victor Mancini, a recovering sex-addict and medical school dropout. A story filled with piercing social commentary accented by creative storytelling. Palahniuk presents the personality of Mancini by way of disgusting, yet thought-provoking parallels and phrases in the same vein as a Physician's Desk Reference. A drug-addicted, baby-boomer mother, an overly dependent best friend, ... Read More
Rating:  - "Trying too hard" isn't the right phrase, but it's the one that comes to mind.
I think Chuck Palahniuk has more funny ideas than he really knows what to do with."Choke" is so stuffed full of them that none of them have a chance to breathe.A protagonist who pretends to be choking in restaurants so that strangers -- check.A group of stoners and losers who work in a strict mock-Colonial village -- check. Seeing the world through the jaundiced eye of a medical school dropout -- check.All of these elements appear in "Choke" and none of them are as funny or effective in combination ... Read More
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