Review of Doomed by Chuck Palahniuk

Devil horns! /0/

Title: Doomed

Author: Chuck Palahniuk

Editorial: Anchor Books

Genre: Fiction

Country of origin: United States

Pages: 247

Days to finish it: 5

Year of publication: 2011

Personal score: 3/5

Preview: Hope… in hell

Is it possible to have hope in hell? I mean, you´re screwed, damned, fucked; in fact you are totally doomed. But is it possible to have a little bit of hope? I´m supposing that is possible. Hope is the last thing that dies, even when you´ve tried something one hundred times.  My point…the point is: what else can you do? If hell really exists, it doesn´t matter if you have hope or not, theoretically you will be there forever.

I guess my panorama of hell is sort of twisted, at least if you compare it with the normal (and red) panorama that everyone has. My own hell is a cold and blue place, just like a cave, where your own mistakes are repeated one thousand times… and the worst mistake is the most repeated one. And for you, which could be the worst possible hell? With flames? With demons? With a lot of food and without tongue? With a lot of girls but all with STD´s?

How did I get it?

Again someone lent it to me, someone from the job. Well… when I had one.

A little bit of the author…

I know that I promised to read "Fantasmas" of him, sooner, but this one, just implied before the other one. And then I was there reading about the hell and the eternal punishment…

Review

Madison Spencer is dead. Apparently due to an overdose of marijuana, so now she´s damned and sent to hell to accomplish eternal sentence. At first sight, hell doesn’t look so bad, yup, the fire is over there, also the demons and the air is filled with sulfur, but at least she´s more free than in the earth.

Soon she makes friends: a couple of young people that also are damned to live in hell forever. They will make a travel around the sights and more contemplative places of hell. Suddenly she begins to remember her last days on earth, her parents, her brother and the way she really died.

Through the view of a thirteen-year-old girl describing the panorama of hell, "Damned" is presented. Could Madison remember the last moment of her day and how horrid it was? Could she escape from hell or will she be damned forever?

Opinion

I didn´t really enjoyed a lot this book. I think hell is something enormous to describe, and Palahniuk could not describe it so precisely, but at least he did his best effort with all those odd facts and names. I mean, describing thousands of demons and dead people is not a fairly job for only one person.

Fuck the second part, I don´t want to read it, but maybe one day I should read it. My curiosity is much bigger than my ego. I guess if Madison tells the history of her death and her life in the earth the book would be much more interesting, I know the book is about hell, but I think it is poorly described.

I had a favorite part, and was the job in hell, all the damned persons work in a sort of call center that calls automatically at the dinner time, and the persons in earth must answer a boring poll. It´s correct, the book had some interesting and funny parts, but also a lot of disgusting things… cuz it´s Palahniuk.

It´s the same Palahniuk, with the repetitive phrases, the disgusting parts and the zero taboo. Also he had the typical plot twist. It is totally Palahniuk.

Will everybody be damned or just doomed?

Quotes

"Being dead is the very essence of traveling light, Being dead-dead means nonstop, 24/7, forever."

"If you ask me, people in hell just scream to hear their own voice and to pass the time."

"The problem is, in Hell there is no hope."

"I´m not sure to which I was more addicted: hope or Xanax."

"We look for Satan with the same intensity that my parents looked for god."

"Everybody alive feels so superior to the dead, even homosexuals and American Indians."

"But on a larger scale, to be brutally honest, the dead miss everything."

"If you don´t know what comes next, take a good long look at what came before."