| | |  | Security Cameras | Home » » Damned | | | | | | | Description: | | “Are you there, Satan? It’s me, Madison,” declares the whip-tongued thirteen-year-old narrator of Damned, Chuck Palahniuk’s subversive new work of fiction. The daughter of a narcissistic film star and a billionaire, Madison is abandoned at her Swiss boarding school over Christmas, while her parents are off touting their new projects and adopting more orphans. She dies over the holiday of a marijuana overdose—and the next thing she knows, she’s in Hell. Madison shares her cell with a motley crew of young sinners that is almost too good to be true: a cheerleader, a jock, a nerd, and a punk rocker, united by fate to form the six-feet-under version of everyone’s favorite detention movie. Madison and her pals trek across the Dandruff Desert and climb the treacherous Mountain of Toenail Clippings to confront Satan in his citadel. All the popcorn balls and wax lips that serve as the currency of Hell won’t buy them off.
This is the afterlife as only Chuck Palahniuk could imagine it: a twisted inferno where The English Patient plays on endless repeat, roaming demons devour sinners limb by limb, and the damned interrupt your dinner from their sweltering call center to hard-sell you Hell. He makes eternal torment, well, simply divine. | | | Product Details: | | | Author:
| Chuck Palahniuk | | Hardcover:
| 256 pages | | Publisher:
| Doubleday | | Publication Date:
| October 18, 2011 | | Language:
| English | | ISBN:
| 0385533020 | | Product Length:
| 5.8 inches | | Product Width:
| 1.04 inches | | Product Height:
| 8.57 inches | | Product Weight:
| 0.88 pounds | | Package Length:
| 8.2 inches | | Package Width:
| 6.0 inches | | Package Height:
| 1.1 inches | | Package Weight:
| 0.85 pounds | | Average Customer Rating:
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| | | | Customer Reviews: | |
Average Customer Review:
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45 of 48 found the following review helpful:
 A Stroll Through HellOct 18, 2011
By William Kennedy
Chuck Palahniuk's books just keep getting weirder and weirder. I read and enjoy all of his novels, some more than others. "Pygmy" was a strange experiment, but unique and compelling nonetheless. "Tell-All" was a fun and enjoyable romp through the golden age of Hollywood, although it never quite became what it could have been.
And now, here is "Damned," a journey through hell (literally) with a sharp tongued and lovable young woman named Madison who died from...you'll have to read to find out, and it's not a marijuana overdose.
Frankly, this book is about as strange and bizarre as they come. The underworld is depicted as a place of grotesque monsters with lakes of sperm and mountains of toenail clippings. There were times when I thought this book was completely unclassifiable in any genre, forcing a new one to be invented. Afterlife Black Comedy.
"Damned," at its core, is a satire, and Chuck is at his best in skewering the affluent Hollywood lifestyle. Madison's parents are a movie star and a real estate mogul/business man who adopt children from war torn countries for the PR.
More importantly, in my opinion, is the writing, and Chuck breaks free from whatever has bound him over the last couple years and writes with an eloquence not seen since...well, maybe ever. Palahniuk has a very distinctive voice in his writing, all of his fans have gotten used to it, and look forward to it with each new book. But with "Damned," there is something more, a careful attention paid to craft more than story. The sentences flow artfully in Madison's voice and bring her to life with all her hopefulness and intelligence.
"Damned," is not a great book in the sense that it's a new classic, but I think it is a step in the right direction for Chuck. The story is just weird, but the way he tells it is what makes it such a fun read.
It's okay for books to be both fun and well written.
8 of 8 found the following review helpful:
Much better than his last few books.Nov 08, 2011
By strwbrrystar
Maybe it's because my expectations of Palahniuk's work have been lowered so much after reading Snuff and Pygmy (didn't even bother with Tell All), but I consider this a decent book. Not his best, but I enjoyed it more than most parts of Haunted. I would give it 3.5 stars. Won't be throwing this one away, at least.
10 of 11 found the following review helpful:
 stick with the older booksNov 03, 2011
By jc9
With each new release from Palaniuk, I keep hoping from something great but end up disappointed. Tell-all was the first Palahniuk book that I did not finish. I just found it to be too boring. When I heard about Damned, and its premise, I thought it sounded like a pretty decent story. While it certainly was better than Tell all and Pygmy, its still lacking something. I can't put my finger on what though, perhaps it's the emotional reactions that I would have from his earlier novels. I recall laughing/being shocked/surprised when reading his earlier works. Damned had moments that seemed as though the reader was supposed to be shocked/surprised, but it just came across as forced.
If you're new to the author, stick to the earlier works.
5 of 5 found the following review helpful:
Better than his past three books, but still not his best... (3.5 stars)Nov 21, 2011
By Josh Gaines
The story is told by 13-year-old Madison Spencer, the chubby, unattractive daughter of billionaire parents who has found herself in Hell under the impression that she died from an overdose of marijuana. In the manner of Judy Blume, each chapter begins with a short 'prayer' or journal entry that always begins: "Are you there, Satan? It's me, Madison." In her trek through the Underworld, she meets a group of other eccentric stereotype-ish teens; a Jock, a Nerd, a Hot-Girl and a Punk (think 'The Breakfast Club').
As the book went on, I realized that this is the first of Palahniuk's books to follow a sort of 'adventure' narrative. While in nearly every chapter Madison relays some part of her history on Earth to the reader, a good deal of the tale is a journey of sorts through the landscape of Hell. And who better to give us a vision of the Valley of the Damned than Mr. Palahniuk? His description of Hell is both disgusting and kind of hilarious, with miles of cages for victims (that are easily broken out of), stale candy and popcorn balls strewn everywhere across the ground, and a geography made of every unpleasant human emission imaginable (huge mounds of fingernail clippings, a desert of dandruff, an ocean of fecal matter, a river of steaming-hot saliva, etc.).
The author also entertainingly peppers the story with famous figures who have been condemned and their activities in the afterlife. Madison runs into more than a few tyrannous leaders, celebrities, serial killers and Presidents, among others. The demons are surprisingly apathetic beings who can be sometimes bribed with candy bars to make one's eternal damnation slightly more manageable. However the pagan gods of the ancient world who also roam the territory are somewhat more troublesome, snatching victims out of a cage and eating them alive limb for limb, the victim only to regenerate and await the next bodily terror to befall them.
One of Palahniuk's more humorous additions is a sort of MVD-of-the-soul where the dead can make an appeal for their eternal state. But of course, it's Hell, so the clerks are demons and the paperwork could literally take forever to process.
Madison is a somewhat flat character and the fact that she is a 13-year-old dead girl is only slightly tapped into as far as her voice. However, the book is entertaining and has a surprising amount of ponderous material regarding life and death and eternity. And as always with Palahniuk, a satisfying amount of heavy satire on the human condition, specifically on the absurdity of Americans and the wealthy. Palahniuk also never fails to 'do his homework' and interweaves a good deal of interesting factual information into his stories, in this case it was mostly regarding famously evil people and the origins of obscure demons and pagan gods. Some may see this as just filler material, but for some reason I always enjoy it, and I think he includes it in a relevant way.
I can say I enjoyed Damned a good deal more than Chuck's past three works, Tell-All, Pygmy and Snuff. This is the closest he's come in a while to 'darker' material, which is what I've felt he's always been best at, with the satire being a complimentary element rather than the focus. And the man no doubt has quite an imagination, even if twisted at times. Even in his lesser works, there are always moments where you're thinking 'Where the heck does he get this stuff?!?'
Overall I'd give it a 3.5 out of 5, and would recommend it if... you're in the mood for something weird and honestly kind of gross.
4 of 4 found the following review helpful:
Makes me want to buy a lot of candy bars.Oct 29, 2011
By Wednesdayschild
I thought this was one of Chuck's better books. I personally enjoyed the sardonic take on religion and popular culture, not that anyone cares. I just felt like coming to the defense of this novel and author, though in the grand scheme of things it doesn't really matter what I think. I read some of the other reviews on this book, and kind of feel like people are taking it too seriously. The way it appears is that he wanted to take a Judy Blume novel and ruin it. Judy Blume wasn't the bastion of talent in the history of artistic literary accomplishments, and it's obvious that reviewers who have not been a teenage girl before might not be able to relate to the perspective from which he writes.
Having had the experience of being a teenage girl at one time and reading copious amounts of Judy Blume as pre-teen, I can say comfortably that he pretty much nailed it. He nailed the disdain, the insecurities, the somewhat preserved innocence of early adolescence. The book WAS ridiculous, and hilarious. just as it was intended to be. In short, if you couldn't laugh at some of the things in Damned, you probably have no sense of humor to begin with. It's an excellent poke at the religious fear and zealotry, and ubiquitous and readily available "sins" that saturate and polarize American culture simultaneously. The perspective was a great and unlikely combination of humor and existentialism. He gave an extreme amount of power to a seemingly unlikely heroine in young Madison Spencer. The irony being that our "pop culture" is driven largely by the consumption proclivities in that particular demographic. Think of the Justin Beiber phenomenon. His rise to fame was because of teenage girls, and the parents of those girls whose wallets vomit out the cash that pays for the records and concerts. They literally took this skinny, mop headed kid and made him a super star. That's incredible power.
I don't think Chuck Palahniuk is trying to be some great literary artist, I think he's just writing whatever he feels like. I admire him for that. He continues to write whatever he wants to, despite the fact that his readers or critics may not like it. You could sit and say that he's not a good writer, or whatever...but hey...you paid for the book. I mean, "good" or "talented" is sort of a subjective consensus anyhow.The other great coincidence is that some of the negative reviews pretty much prove his point that people essentially try to find meaning in things that end up being meaningless. If you don't like him, don't read his material. Simple as that. Or better yet, if you think you could write a better book, get off Amazon with your complaints and start doing it.
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