Please understand that I am a huge fan of Chuck Palahniuk. I live in the Portland area and never miss him when I have a chance to go and see him talk and sign, and I have read all of his books. My favorites are Fight Club, Survivor, Fugitives And Refugees and Lullaby...I'm not a huge fan of Invisible Monsters or Choke but they both have their unique charms and are entirely readable. He's a talented writer and an all-around great guy, but if this book had been his first then nobody would know who he was. In fact, I would go so far as to say he never would have been published.

This book, from start to finish, is BARELY readable. Just to make it as straightforward as possible, I'll organize my major problems with the book point by point...(It's worth noting that the remainder of this review contains very minor spoilers...I'll keep them as light as possible)

-The book is really poorly organized. While I do appreciate an author's need to try different things and push the boundaries of their craft, Diary turns out to be a case study in why your Fiction Writing 101 teacher told you to never, ever change perspective mid-story. Once you have a perspective established, you stick to it. From sentence to sentence (for the first 3/4 of the book, anyway, a point at which Chuck seems to forget about what he was trying to do or just stops caring, and switches almost entirely to 3rd person), perspective changes back and forth...often, statements are repeated to the point of redundancy from different perspectives. It makes for a fairly jarring (and boring) reading experience.

-I got the impression several times that Chuck was trying to tell two stories at the same time, and the result is a confusing mess. On the one hand, we have the very genuine mourning and depression of Misty Marie, who is trying to recover from some very serious traumatic events that happened off-stage before the start of the book. On the other, we have the absolutely ridiculous "fairy tale" aspect of Waytansea island. The theme of both of these stories clashes horribly, never really meshing and never really working.

-Speaking of the fairy tale bits...these tend to dominate the latter half of the book. Chuck stretches way, way beyond reasonable expectations for the reader to suspend disbelief. When you finally get to the point of the book when the revelations begin to trickle down, and the protagonist tries desperately to fight against what's happening to her, you'll be saying "Give me a break!" more often than you'd probably like. Virtually everything that happens once we get into the climax doesn't make any sense at all. I am sorely tempted to point out specific examples, so ridiculous, unbelievable and poorly constructed/thought-out are the climactic events of the book, but I hate heavy spoilers in reviews so I'll restrain myself.

-The ending. THE ENDING. The last five or ten pages of this book, ESPECIALLY the last page, has got to be the dumbest, most derivative ending I've ever sat through. What a COP-OUT!!! I'll just say this: if you DO pick up this book, you're going to go through it hoping that, on some level, Palahniuk is going to deliver at some point...turn things around. All you will feel after reading that incredibly stupid final page will be disappointment, frustration and anger at yourself for sticking with it for no reason. There ain't no pay-off, folks!

What isn't a confusing mess or a bizarre and stupid "curse" story is paint-by-numbers Palahniuk that any one of his fans could throw together without any help from the author. You've got your heavily repeated statements to drive his point home. His over-eagerness to share useless trivia he acquired while researching the book. His fragmented sentences and overly short chapter breaks. All things that are charming and amusing in his other books, but here they feel forced and pointless. It's almost as though Palahniuk is satirizing himself.

In short, what we have here is easily the worst of Palahniuk books, and also one of the lamest ducks in modern American literature. If you're a Palahniuk fan, you've probably already read it and drawn your conclusions. If you've never read him before, or you aren't a fan of the man's entire catalog, avoid at all costs! ANY of Palahniuk's other work stands head and shoulders above this drudgery!


THE SURVIVAL OF WAYTANSEA ISLAND   September 16, 2003
 17 out of 28 found this review helpful

While Misty's husband lies in a coma after a failed suicide attempt she writes a diary. But this isn't any ordinary diary of mundane daily events; it is rather a plunge into Palahniuk's world of fantasy, science fiction, and horror. This diary details the struggle of Misty's understanding of the unworldly events surrounding Waytansea Island. It is a world were everyone is telling her lies to keep her in the dark, but she knows something is fishy. Rich tourists are invading the island and making the locals dependent on their money. The tourists bring all the ills of society with them: pollution, corporate advertising, and a general decline in the standard of living. Misty finds out that her husband had been living a life of vandalism and violence directed towards the tourists that she was unaware. Rooms inside houses have suddenly disappeared and violent messages have been spray-painted along the walls. As Misty attempts to uncover the truth she realizes that she is in the center of the entire conspiracy.

DIARY is full of Palahniuk's signature style of social commentary. This time his literary guns are being directed towards the waste and destruction of upper class society. This is what his readers have come to expect. But unlike his other books, the prose in DIARY suffers from repetition that fails to add any anything to the plot. Palahniuk's constant usage of verbiage such as, "just for the record" and "the weather today is..." was distracting and a tad annoying. While the plot had some interesting aspects, its general nature appears to be outworn and old.

This book was far from being addictive, and I have enjoyed other Palahniuk's books better than DIARY.


This is Their Shared Coma   November 16, 2005
 13 out of 18 found this review helpful

Chuck Palahniuk has a knack for exploring the dark, dirty secrets of supposedly regular folks. This book is not as scary as its cover blurb would have you believe, but it definitely carries a pretty disturbing undercurrent of social paranoia and creeping madness. Washed-up housewife Misty Marie, once a promising artist, is doomed to live out the tortured destiny that has been decided for her by others. Her artistic talent is a tool in a strange supernatural game played out by the so-called upscale residents of a closeted community called Waytansea Island, who every hundred years or so conspire to rid their town of tourists and restore their old money status, through an evil game of mass murder and recrimination. The book is constructed as a diary supposedly written by Misty Marie, but maybe it is really the diary of her predecessor victim from a hundred years ago, while Misty tries to escape this prescribed destiny. This is a mostly fascinating and disturbing story, but Palahniuk's utilization of creeping dread and paranoia in the narrative gets coarse and monotonous as the book goes along, while he leaves the supernatural roots of the Waytansea conspiracy vague and pretty unsatisfying for the reader. Meanwhile, his motif of inbred human evil, lurking beneath a lovely small town, was done to death by Stephen King a couple of decades ago. This is still a good read, but it's not quite a landmark for horror or for Palahniuk. [~doomsdayer520~]


Chuck, Chuck Palahniuk, Wrote a Book and It Did S*ck   July 10, 2006
 13 out of 16 found this review helpful

July 9

Today, the reader from Harrisburg finished Chuck's novel "Diary." The novel that never really convinced him was a diary, as it never stooped to that convention of writing in the first person. He read the awkward switching from third person to second person in Chuck's novel.

Your novel, Chuck.

Apparently, you are in some sort of ironic writer's coma. He is. You are. See how disconcerting this can be, carried out over 250 plus pages of his novel?

Your novel, Chuck?

If you removed all the third-to-second person clarification prose, this job drops an easy 50 pages. Take out all the adipose ramblings of subcutaneous fat and musculataure, which begin cute and end tedious, maybe we're down to a tight novella, Chuck. You are. He is.

In the middle, his novel picks up something resembling dramatic steam. He stayed the impulse to throw the book aside, half-read, Chuck. Your reader, the guy from Harrisburg. But nothing too awfully surprising happens on Waytansea Island. He, your reader, just waits and sees that you have some clever almost Nietzschean idea of eternal return and artistic hell. Did he, I mean you, Chuck, the writer of this poorly executed novel, intend some statement about artistic sacrifice? Or did he, you, I mean, intend just a good read? Because on the latter you failed, and on the former, you failed, and about the best I can summon is that you meant well, and you aren't Danielle Steele or that basic ilk.

My impression was that in picking up a Palahniuk novel, my first Palahniuk novel, his first Palahniuk novel -- your novel, Chuck -- I'd find crisp writing, challenging plot developments, and a refreshing, even bracing worldview.

Instead, he found a tendency to repeat phrases about "What you don't understand you can make mean anything" and suchlike drivel. Why didn't he simply say "What I couldn't write, maybe you can just go think up and attribute to me?"

Why didn't you, Chuck?

Because his characters never come alive. They seem like exercises best left in notebooks.

Your characters, Chuck. Misty, Peter, Tabbi, Grace. Harrow. Angel. Oh, I can name them, but ask me again in a week. Ask him again, and he'll have forgotten them. He will. I will. Me. The reader. Remember the reader, Chuck? Chuck, that rhymes with "buck," that comes from movie rights to half-hearted attempts to replicate the vigor of "Fight Club?"

Caveat emptor. No more will I read his novels. Your novels, Chuck. Even if you awake from your coma to read my diary of your "Diary." His "Diary." Your sloppily written, flimsy dreck that should only garner one Amazon star but for the fact that worse writing does exist, sadly.

When he finished your book, Chuck, the reader from Harrisburg threw it aside and took a nap. The nap was good, at least. Later, he wrote a review on Amazon. About your book. I did. About your book. Blecch.


Could've been so beautiful...   October 14, 2005
 12 out of 17 found this review helpful

Based on my enjoyment level of the movie "Fight Club", I have now...endured isn't the right word, suffered definitely isn't the right word, but 'been thoroughly enraptured' does not apply either...read two other books by Palahniuk that fell a bit short of my expectations ("Lullaby" being the other one). "Diary" is kind of an interesting concept, but it's borderline cheesy, to the point where I wouldn't be surprised if Paris Hilton played a supporting role in the film version.

So, getting to the actual story. What we have here is basically a haunted island. This Misty Marie chick is the "chosen one" to save the inhabitants, who are basically a country club version of a voodoo cannibalistic/animalist primitive society. Chuck does a good job of revealing the plot slowly and thereby building some suspense. And it's got just a pinch of believability, so that's kind of fun. BUT, he totally kills off the good vibe with his repetetive story-telling style that is intended to be fresh/different, but really just makes you wish you could punch him.

So, it's saying alot that I liked the book enough to give it three stars despite the fact that I imagined punching the author approximately 247 times throughout the course of this book. "The weather today is..." annoying (despite the promise of sunshine later).