Choke: A Novel

Chuck Palahniuk

Jul 2002 · Sold by Anchor

About this ebook

Victor Mancini, a medical-school dropout, is an antihero for our deranged times. Needing to pay elder care for his mother, Victor has devised an ingenious scam: he pretends to choke on pieces of food while dining in upscale restaurants. He then allows himself to be “saved” by fellow patrons who, feeling responsible for Victor’s life, go on to send checks to support him. When he’s not pulling this stunt, Victor cruises sexual addiction recovery workshops for action, visits his addled mom, and spends his days working at a colonial theme park. His creator, Chuck Palahniuk, is the visionary we need and the satirist we deserve.

Ratings and reviews

This is an audiobook that I just popped into my computer and played. Read by Chuck P., it just flowed.The shocking story of an abused kid who somehow finds his way out of the thick swamp of his mother's drug-addicted fantasies, and multiple foster-homes.We meet "Victor" in his late thirties, now caring for his mother in a nursing home. Her continuous "huffing" of industrial solvents-via a nose-inhaler, and the onslaught of age, have combined to send her to a nursing home. Victor, her son, feeds her on his visits-although he is unrecognizable to her.She is nearly-terminal. Having given up his medical career, he works at a colonial theme park. It is a stoner's way-station.Victor is a sex-addict. What a surprise. And so on, and so on. And so on. Victor sees people now not as people but as diagnoses. This is a continuing motif. This is a light-hearted comedy, despite the relentless dysfunction of the characters involved. Superficially, this is a black and bleak tragedy. More fundamentally, this book keeps slogging along towards a kind of "Victory". It feels like good writing. It feels right.Listen to this audiobook and know a fine writer, Chuck Palahniuk.

It was an ok book. I read it because it was suggested to me. The best character was the mom; I loved her. I liked him in the end after he let loose in the police station and was found out by the heros. Not really my style of book. It wasn't so horrible that I just couldn't finish reading. It ended as expected for me, with character in slightly better predicament than he started out.

The movie depraves all intended meaning, I can't help but notice the review below me was made by someone typically outside of his target audience. Can really hit home with his monologues describing the backwards reasoning, that many are familiar with. Definitely my favorite Palahniuk, not his most graphic (Snuff takes that medal). The point of view perfectly expresses his self-loathing protagonist caught in the mouse trap of immediate gratification as purpose has escaped him. Quick, smut keeps you in it constantly, and the mom makes Amy Winehouse look like a Saint.

About the author

CHUCK PALAHNIUK is the author of fourteen novels—Beautiful You, Doomed, Damned, Tell-All, Pygmy, Snuff, Rant, Haunted, Diary, Lullaby, Choke, Invisible Monsters, Survivor, and Fight Club—which have sold more than five million copies altogether in the United States. He is also the author of Fugitives and Refugees, published as part of the Crown Journey Series, and the nonfiction collection Stranger Than Fiction. He lives in the Pacific Northwest. Visit him on the web at chuckpalahniuk.net.