I’m trying to read a novel a week in 2015. I’ve made it to three.
This book is about a 13-year-old girl, Madison Spencer, who goes to hell. It is the first book in what is meant to be a trilogy. So, you get maybe a hundred pages of The Breakfast Club in Hell. It’s an interesting concept. I almost wish that concept would have come full circle throughout the course of the book. It gets dropped at some point. It would have been interesting to see the hellish prisoners raising back to their cells, trying to get back before some demon caught them out frolicking. But that doesn’t happen.
Instead, Madison becomes a telemarketer. Yes, we find out that dinnertime telemarketing calls comes from the inhabitants of Hell. From there, she has a major run in with Satan himself. Her encounter with Satan will shape the rest of the story as it unfolds in the second volume of the trilogy (Doomed) and the third, which is yet to be released.
There’s some unnecessary vulgarity (vulgarity could probably be in all caps). But you expect that from Palahniuk. I call it unnecessary if it doesn’t advance the plot. And there’s certainly one blatant incident that adds nothing to the plot.
The digs at wealthy modern environmentalists are amusing. For instance,
If there was a Hell, my mom said you’d go there for wearing fur coats or buying a cream rinse tested on baby rabbits by escaped Nazi scientists in France…
There are many, many good little jabs akin to that one. The book also provides some jabs at the over use of anti-depressants. So, if you’re a big-time environmentalist or a big-time user of anti-depressants, this book my provide you with some food for thought, if it doesn’t blind you with rage.
The major refrain of the book is,
No, it’s not fair, but what makes earth feel like Hell is our expectation that it should feel like Heaven. Earth is earth. Dead is dead. You’ll find out for yourself soon enough.
This reminded me of something Chesterton wrote:
It is commonly in a somewhat cynical sense that men have said, ‘Blessed is he that expecteth nothing, for he shall not be disappointed.’ It was in a wholly happy and enthusiastic sense that St. Francis said, ‘Blessed is he who expecteth nothing, for he shall enjoy everything.'(St. Francis of Assisi, p. 87).
This book is nowhere near being as good as Fight Club. That almost goes without saying. Would I recommend it? Only if you meet the two requirements I listed above and were mentally equipped to handle some raunchy stuff.
