Beautiful You Paperback – July 21, 2015

After just finishing Chuck Palahniuk's Beautiful You: A Novel, I can't help but think that this may be Palahniuk's return to form. Many fans may argue that some of his latest books don't quite match up to his early work, and with books like Snuff and Tell All, I agree. Beautiful You feels like Palahniuk has been released from some shackles and is now exploring human sexuality, consumption, consumerism, and gratification in a way he hasn't done in years. Reading through it, I couldn't help but think that this book has been floating around in his mind for years, and that only now has he "been given permission" to write Beautiful You.Beautiful You often feels like an amalgamation of a lot of his earlier works. There is Fight Club anti consumerism, a weird, almost dystopian future you would find in Rant, the perverseness and uneasy "wrongness" that he wrote about in Haunted and Choke. Yet, he tells an entirely new story about a young 20 something female fresh out of law school trying to find her meaning in life. He hits on some of old stomping grounds in which every thing has already been done and accomplished, and what do you do when you have no clue what you want to do? He takes you on a ride barely lasting 136 days, making you question what your world would be like if suddenly roles were reversed.Be forewarned, this book is highly sexual, and I believe is meant to be a parody of the adult erotica novels "50 Shades of Grey". It feels like almost half of the book concerns women discovering their bodies for the first time. At best, it can be erotic, and forces you to think about sexuality in ways you haven't before. At worst, it's uncomfortable and disturbing (which is great if you like reading Palahniuk). I can't recommend it to beginner Chuck Palahniuk readers, as it may turn you off forever, but those that enjoyed Choke or Haunted should also enjoy Beautiful You.

I’m a long-time reader of Palahniuk’s work, and I’ve rarely found anything disappointing in his writing. Beautiful You, I’m happy to say, was no exception. As always, his unique literary voice and cadence shine through, while still managing to avoid seeming repetitive or tired.This novel introduces us to Penny Harrigan, a woman whose life seems to be an unending series of disappointments, whether it’s her career or her love life. All of that changes when tech billionaire C. Linus Maxwell takes an interest in her. She’s as surprised as everyone else, as she lives out a Cinderella fantasy that most girls would only dream of. Unfortunately, the dream is quickly revealed to be more of a nightmare, as she begins to feel less like a romantic partner and more like a guinea pig. Maxwell is not the man the tabloids make him out to be, perhaps because he secretly owns them.As this intensely sexual tryst continues, Penny silently watches the clock ticking down to the inevitable conclusion that awaits all of Maxwell’s romantic partners. And when that end arrives, it’s as jarring and disorienting as the beginning was.It’s soon revealed that Maxwell has his eyes set on an objective with global repercussions, and Penny has been ignorantly complicit in the horrors that await the women of the world. By the time she realizes what’s going on, is it too late to get anyone to hear her?As she struggles to put a stop to the plan already in motion, she’s hammered with revelations that force her to question her life, her identity, and the extreme limits of human sexuality.As sexually explicit as Beautiful You happens to be, there’s nothing remotely erotic about it. That’s the magic of Palahniuk’s writing. He was able to approach a topic so steeped in sexual content without making it feel smutty or even remotely sexy. He takes us right to the verge and then turns away…like literary edging. There’s a perversity in the clinical detachment of it all, and the sense of impending awfulness that the reader or listener is impossible to dismiss. In a sense, it makes us feel superior to the characters, because we see the trap that awaits and convince ourselves we could escape it. It forces you to wonder if we’d succumb to the same terrible outcome if this sequence of events played out in the real world.The moral of the story, I suppose, is that men need to focus more on the pleasure their partners are experiencing…otherwise, the Beautiful You line of products might just take our place.Carol Monda’s narration definitely captures the initially neurotic and out-of-her-depth qualities of Penny’s character as well as who she becomes as the events of the story transform her.

RahmanI love Chuck Palahniuk a lot he is my favorite Author so I will not bash this book for my love for the guy. With that said, honesty is the best policy, transgressive fiction is outrageous story about topics that people do not want talk about, I look at them as study pieces from a world we so called normal people act like don't exist, Invisible Monster deals with transexuality and self hate and depression told in road trip I like the fact that the sister and brother had the same afflictions even though they we're living in different worlds before reconnecting (sort of). The story was outrageous, but not the premise. This book is fun to read, but I must admit the premise is absolutely ridiculous, before they get into why the women are so obsessive over the product it comes off very offensive to women. Women want orgasm, but saying women would give up there careers, husbands and family and be obsessive over having the greatest orgasm ever is a little much and I know the author is about being a little much. Then there is the villain he was a little flat in my opinion. I have always been able to connect with the antagonist in the novels I have read by chuck. This guy was lame. Penny and baby grey beard ( aka yoda) save this book from being disaster. The twist falls so flat on its face readers will be disappointed. The book is entertaining and well written but he should stuck with the first person narrative.