Snapshot Book Review: Diary

Diary by Chuck Palahniuk

My review

rating: 3 of 5 stars

Like all of Palahniuk’s other work, Diary is vivid, disturbing, grotesque, and a bit supernatural. If his descriptions don’t leave you feeling at least somewhat squeamish, then you must have no imagination whatsoever. He is like a painter who makes the simplest object look hideously grotesque, who can look at a common scene and envision it in the twisted way only a serial killer might. Only, the serial killers in his novels don’t kill for pleasure; they kill for reasons much more creative than that.

Palahniuk is nothing if not creative. Diary is written as a diary from the point of view of the protagonist, Misty, in the fashion of a long letter written to her comatose husband Peter. However, because she is writing to him directly, she refers to “you,” who also happens to be the reader, creating a number of identity overlaps. Moreover, the narrative habit of referring to oneself as “you” when writing in a diary comes up a number of times, because it would be equally applicable as referring to Peter or the reader as “you.” And none of this even begins to brush the surface of the story, which involves Misty’s allegedly supernatural artistic abilities, her inexplicable attraction to Peter’s shiny junk jewelry (which he pinned through his own scabby skin), and the creepy warnings she finds inside sealed-off rooms of buildings Peter remodeled before he tried to kill himself.

Invisible Monsters will always be my favorite Palahniuk novel, and Fight Club will always be the most famous. Haunted might very well be the most disturbing. But Diary pays homage to what Palahniuk does best: turn a common story and a common story form into a extraordinary and very unsettling tale.


View all my reviews.