HAUNTED by Chuck Palahniuk

HAUNTED by Chuck Palahniuk
By Darlene Laws

If you look at the author photo on the dust jacket for Haunted, you’d think Chuck Palahniuk looks like a fairly normal guy. There’s just nothing there to prepare you for the acid-trip journeys he takes his readers on. Haunted is no exception. A loosely connected series of short stories and poems woven into a narrative about a group of people lured into a “writer’s retreat” that turns out to be a trap, Haunted is a horror story worthy of Stephen King. Except…except that in Stephen King’s stories, the characters are more realistically drawn. Love them or hate them, they feel real. Unfortunately, none of the characters in Haunted do. There are no innocents here---each character carries a secret and a compelling reason to retreat from the world, at least until the heat dies down. They are so unlikable, in general, that when they begin to turn on one another, it’s hard to know whom to root for. Maybe that’s the real horror of the book---that this motley crew of jaded, cynical, world-weary, selfish, even dangerous characters might represent the average reality-TV watching citizen. Now that would be scary.

Ultimately, Haunted disappoints. It feels too disjointed, as if the author is trying too hard to shoehorn a bunch of stories that might fare better on their own into some sort of coherent whole. Still, the worst Chuck P. book is still better than 90% of the other dreck out there. Read it. Enjoy (just not while you’re eating dinner). You’ll never feel the same way about carrot cake again.