Staff Pick
Aging porn queen Cassie Wright plans to retire on a high note by having sex, on film, with 600 men. Yes, the title is Snuff, but it's not what you think. Not for the faint of heart, the graphic content is raunchy, bizarre, and shocking, but also hysterically funny. While Palahniuk can be an acquired taste, he is at his very best here. Recommended By Dianah H., Powells.com
Synopses & Reviews
From the master of literary mayhem and provocation, a full-frontal Triple X novel that goes where no American work of fiction has gone before...
Cassie Wright, porn priestess, intends to cap her legendary career by breaking the world record for serial fornication. On camera. With six hundred men. Snuff unfolds from the perspectives of Mr. 72, Mr. 137, and Mr. 600, who await their turn on camera in a very crowded green room. This wild, lethally funny, and thoroughly researched novel brings the huge yet underacknowledged presence of pornography in contemporary life into the realm of literary fiction at last.
Who else but Chuck Palahniuk would dare do such a thing? Who else could do it so well, so unflinchingly, and with such an incendiary (you might say) climax?
Review
"Snuff is unavoidably distasteful at times but ultimately hard to resist. (Grade: A-)" Entertainment Weekly
Review
"Only Palahniuk would devise this off-putting premise; only he, too, could manage to build it into an entertaining and suspenseful dark comedy....Snuff isn't for everyone...but readers who can stomach its subject matter will find striking characters, sharp parody, and a tight plot....Highly recommended." Library Journal
Review
"[O]ften biting, often hilarious, often awful, but always compelling....Palahniuk has crafted a world of sex devoid of titillation, where human suffering is shelved for a few moments when the cameras begin to roll..." Los Angeles Times
Review
"[A] spare and effective one-act play; a refreshingly simple tale told start to finish by a writer who often piles on the mind games and reverse chronologies." Minneapolis Star Tribune
Review
"[T]he author has greatsport inventing porn-film titles (To Drill a Mockingbird, Chitty Chitty Gang Bang). The sordidness might appeal to Palahniuk's cult following, but it won't extend it." Kirkus Reviews
Review
"[Palahniuk's] an original, and there is something heady about the risks he takes as a writer. But, ultimately, his ideas are more interesting than his writing some readers are bound to ask why they're hanging around someone who keeps beating them up." Booklist
Review
"Suffice it to say the humor here is as bitter as week-old Starbucks' dregs....Palahniuk makes reading this book about making porn flicks as un-arousing as possible." Hartford Courant
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About the Author
Chuck Palahniuk's eight previous novels are the bestselling Rant, Haunted, Lullaby, Diary, Choke which was made into a 2008 film by director Clark Gregg, starring Sam Rockwell and Anjelica Huston Survivor, Invisible Monsters, and Fight Club, which was made into a film by director David Fincher. He is also the author of the nonfiction profile of Portland, Oregon, Fugitives and Refugees, published as part of the Crown Journeys series, and the nonfiction collection Stranger Than Fiction. He lives in the Pacific Northwest.