Choke

by Chuck Palahniuk

Book Overview

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... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0385720920
• Release Date: June 2002
• Publisher: Anchor
• Length: 304 Pages
• Weight: 0.54 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.0" x 0.7" x 5.2"

Customer Reviews

It starts strong. gets weird.

confusing narrative. would not recommend

Not What I Thought

This book was not what I expected. Three chapters in, I had to quit reading it because it was so raunchy. I kept trying to push through, thinking the plot would eventually thicken but it did not. Super disappointed in this book.

Thank you.

Love the book. Thank you!

Good Read

Choke was a good read and pretty easy to get through. I was recommended it by a few people and I am glade I finally went about reading it

"I just want the days of my life to add up to something."

Victor Mancini is having a crisis. He's dropped out of medical school, he's broke, and his mother will die unless he can make some more money to get her the care she needs in her nursing home. He's also a perpetual addict who cruises sexaholic meetings for pick-ups and frequently makes extra cash by allowing himself to choke in fancy restaurants, then exploiting the sympathies of the Good Samaritan that comes to his rescue. He also has something of a messiah complex. And, oh yeah, he's clinically depressed. Let the rollercoaster ride begin ... Palahniuk is a visceral writer, and the faint of heart will be quickly turned off by the explicit details of Mancini's life - so be warned. For those of you with the stomach, "Choke" is an often brilliant but occasionally overburdened novel that is worth the strain on your gag reflex. The flaw is that Palahniuk dangerously toes the line of excess, cramming in more and more where he didn't necessarily need it (if you want to be funny about it, you could say that "Choke" bites off more than it can chew). At its heart, however, is a darkly amusing tale of a desperate man trying to figure things out, and if Palahniuk's ranting style can sometimes get abstruse it is also, often, grimly poetic. There are a lot of great philosophical lines for quote enthusiasts like myself, which by itself makes the book worth recommending for me. "It seemed ... that you had to risk your life to get love. You had to get right to the edge of death to ever be saved." That, in a nutshell, is Victor Mancini's quest in "Choke," and you may just find yourself rooting for him despite your better instincts. Grade: A-

My first Palahniuk book.

I actually picked this book up in the "How To" section of my local bookstore. No lie. I could spend hours trying to decipher the accidental or intended implications of such a placement, which stinks of either conspiracy or revolution, I can't tell which.Anyway, seeing as Fight Club is my all time favorite movie, it only seems logical that I'd gravitate towards ol' Chucks work. Why it took me so long I can't say. Having read none of his other books, I can't really compare them. I can say that I will be purchasing them shortly. Choke is brilliant and extremely funny. It's not often that a novel can make me laugh hysterically in public, but this one did. The premise of the book and one of it's strengths is the theory that if you make someone else into a hero, they'll love you forever. The protagonist repeatedly fakes choking to death in restaurants to pay his dying mothers hospital bills, but at the same time, he demonstrates that even the most ordinary people have the capacity for the extraordinary. It's sick and beautiful at the same time. Peppered with addiction, sex, insanity, medical references, urban legends, and a ton of Oedipus issues; Choke is about confronting your past, or being consumed by it. Like Fight Club (the movie that is. I know, I blaspheme.) it's about tearing down who you think you are to find out who you really are. It's about rebirth and redemption, perception and illusion. It's about all that stuff and more, but bottom line, it's just a blast to read. If you like Vonnegut, Irving Welsh or David Foster Wallace, chances are this book is for you. It will probably make you laugh, it might even make you think, but it will definitely entertain you.

Brilliant isn't the right word...

...but it's the first that comes to mind.The problem with Chuck Palahniuk novels is that they do not lend themselves well to reviews. Reveal too much information, and the fragile twists and turns of the plot are destroyed, robbing the reader of the thrill one receives upon discovering these intricacies for themselves the first time. Reveal too little, and a coherent review is almost impossible, leaving the reader with a false impression of complexities and tangles which are insurmountable.Choke is the fourth novel written by Palahniuk, a master at angry, adult male angst. Our narrator is one Mr. Victor Mancini, a med-school drop out with a mother suffering from Alzheimer's disease, and an addiction to sex. Like other novels such as Fight Club and Survivor, we are exposed to the dirty underbelly of a society we don't want to acknowledge exists - from prisoners who go to sexaholic meetings for sex and kinky masturbation tips to the problems bending over in the stocks of a colonial theme park creates. However, unlike the dry sarcasm of Fight Club or the biting satire of Survivor, Choke returns to the humorous yet heart-felt writing of Invisible Monsters, and exposes us to a more humorous side of Palahniuk's nature. From Tanya and her string of plastic balls to Gwen, who insists Victor wouldn't know how to rape a woman if he tried, Palahniuk presents us with incredibly memorable characters and scenes that will have you laughing long after you've closed the book." `Why do I do this? Why do I always pick the guy who wants to be nice and conventional? The next thing you'll want to do is marry me.' She says, `Just one time, I'd like to have an abusive relationship. Just once!' " (Page 175)Humor is not the only factor in the story of a man who is led to believe his origin is divine. Victor is most likely one of Palahniuk's most complex characters today, a man who is trying to be anything he is not, who is rebelling against a psychotic mother's abuse while he drops out of law school and takes a job at a Colonial Williamsburg-like village in order to pay for the necessary care and treatment of his ailing mother. A man who believes strangers saving him from choking in a restaurant is not only a financial resource but an expression of love and sainthood, Victor is wonderfully human and am incredibly sympathetic character. While we may not be able to validated all of his choices, his is a character we can understand and perhaps even respect.Palahniuk manages to dazzle and amaze with his ability to turn pithy little quotes into personal mantras and catch phrases, which once read, cannot be burned, pushed, hammered, or flooded out of one's short term memory banks. The same way you will always remember that the first rule of fight club is you do not talk about fight club, you will remember that "this" or "that" isn't the right word, but it's the first word that comes to mind.The martyrdom of Saint Me.What would Jesus not do?However, Palahniuk's novels are about m

What would Chuck Palahniuk NOT write about?

If you would like to have your belief structures and social conventions challenged by one of the best new voices around, I highly recommend this book. If you want to be spoon-fed conventional blubber, stick with the bestseller list. By his fourth novel, Choke, Palahniuk further refines themes suggested in his earlier books, while employing new (and to an extent previously taboo) subjects as the context within which his slightly-off characters frolic and suffer to our delight. Vincent Mancini, the protagonist of Choke, wrestles with such of life's little complications as sexual addiction, Alzheimer's Disease, and the emotional need for validation, salvation and personal transformation. Those who enjoyed Invisible Monsters, Fight Club and/or Survivor will find familiar comfort in Palahniuk's sound-bite linguistic style, which frantically drives the book toward whatever conclusion is in store. I read the book in two sittings, insatiably curious as to how (and if) the pieces fit together. My thanks to Chuck Palahniuk for making life a little more . . . err . . . interesting. Here's to hoping that he is presently scheming away at a new novel.

"Because nothing is as perfect as you imagine it,"

"We spend our lives letting the world tell us who we are. Sane or Insane. Saints or sex addicts. Heros or victims. Letting history tell us how good or bad we are. Letting our past decide our future. Or we can decide for ourselves. And maybe its our job to invent something better." Palahniuk never ceases to inspire. Behind all the satire. Behind his often hillirous look at life and the little things that make us human, or at least the views that he portrays in his unforgetable characters, Palahniuk, never stops to apologize, and there no reason to because he writes the truth in it most crulest of ways. "People sit home and watch Friends, because they have no Friends." I dare you to read any Palahniuk book, be it, Fight Club, Survivior, IM, or Choke, and not be inspired to do something better with yourself. Improve yourself. Create something. Destroy something. Do Something with yourself other than sit in front of a mind-numbing television set, and dream about the life you could have, get off your "" and do something! At least that's what I get out of Palahniuk work. Since the first time I picked up Fight Club, I was hooked, his words are like heroin to me. I've lost track how many times I've read that book, and Survivor. IM about four times. There are many messages in Chuck's work, some hidden, some in your face, some crammed down your throat, and forced into the pit of your stomach. The most important message, in seemingly all his works, is do something with yourself other than waste away precious brain cells in this repetitive world as we know it, we all have a talent for something, find yours, and make it happen, for yourself, and nobody else. I predict that Chuck will be a household name after his next book Lullabye comes out, and after the movie adaptation of Survivor comes out, and possibly an Invisible Monsters movie. Everybody will know who Chuck is, good or bad, that I don't know. Loved or hated, probably both, but do yourself a favor and read his works now while he's got his little cult following, this way a few years down the road, when everybodies on the literary band wagon, you can laugh and tell everyone, "I TOLD YOU SO." Buy this book, read it more than once. Save yourself, and find your place. "Because nothing is as perfect as you imagine it," I'll shut up now.