Damned -Chuck P

I finished it!

Not my favorite Palahniuk by far. Fight Club and Invisible Monsters will always be my top two, but even Snuff and Choke beat this one out, in my opinion. There was some super interesting theology on death/hell, and you can tell he has way too much twisted fun writing it (in hell, the landscape is all kinds of eff'd up- there's a lake of partial birth abortions, a sea of insects, a desert of toenail clippings...you get it)

Anyway, the basic premise is this 13 year old girl that gets sent to hell after her step-brother accidentally strangles her. She works at a call center that does surveys (always at dinner time), and eventually ends up taking over all of hell through a series of identity crisis-- she was always the smart girl, but in hell you realize you only get one life, so why identify with one archetype. She turns into an assertive warrior and basically takes over. She deals with bureaucracy in hell with candy bars, which is the currency. She defeats demons, and Hitler, and makes friends with people that always lie about why they're in hell (jaywalking, burping in front of company, etc) who you then later find out their true stories, in total Palahniuk fashion. She uses her job at the call center to convince the living that hell isn't so bad, and tells them to look her up when they get there. All the while, she's waiting on her paperwork to process to find out if she really belongs in hell, or if she will be sent back to Earth or to heaven.

Like I said, it wouldn't probably be my first recomendation, but I also wouldn't discourage anyone from reading it. It's easy and fun, and makes for some interesting reflections.

“Hope is something really tough and tenacious you have to give up. It’s an addiction to break.”

“I can become someone else, not out of pressure and desperation, but merely because a new life sounds fun or interesting or joyful.”

It's my petty fear of personal rejection that allows so many true evils to exist. My cowardice enables atrocities.”

“What makes the earth feel like hell is our expectation that it ought to feel like heaven. Earth is earth. Hell is hell. Now, stop with the whining and caterwauling.”

I believe “The greatest weapon any warrior can carry into battle is absolute certainty of her eternal soul.”