happyFortunately for her I scored two new novels I'd been waiting for on Sunday at the UW bookstore. Chuck Palahniuk's Diary, and Iain Banks Dead Air. Diary I devoured that afternoon; Dead Air I settled down with last night and am about a third of the way into. Interestingly enough, they both take place about this time of year - DA starts off the day of the WTC disaster...
Diary is good. Full of people I tend to think of as trademark Palahniuk characters, who look 'normal' but who do these ...things - things you might see evidence of, but can't actually imagine anyone actually doing. Except that once or twice, over the course of my life so far, I have known someone like that and felt the strange suspension of 'normal' rules they manage to somehow bend reality into. The kind of people who make outrageous suggestions sound somehow fine and dandy - like writing on the walls in the stairwell of a rental house (the Gutter, if anyone reading this remembers). So between that and my own writing process I think I understand what Palahniuk says when he talks about his characters being based on his friends, on real people...
To get back to the novel, I recommend it. I think I may have to re-read it before I come to any final conclusions about how I think it works structurally, but it was definitely an interesting and hypnotic read.
