Diary by Chuck Palahniuk
Misty Mary Kleinman, an art prodigy, used to paint picture-perfect islands and homes on canvas and dreamt of better times. She left her trailer home and difficult life behind after she met Peter Wilmot, who charmed her with jewels and his strong belief in her talent, and followed him back to his home where they got married and had a daughter, at the seemingly perfect Waytansea Island. One day, Misty found Peter unconscious after attempting suicide. To support their only child and mother-in-law, she worked as a waitress, all the while Peter is in comatose. Misty started gaining weight, became alcoholic,and her passion for art disappears. The tourism industry in Waytansea got out of hand when islanders had to work labor and sacrifice their properties, just so businesses on that island could flourish. The islanders depended on Misty to save them and bring riches to the island back through her immaculate drawings. Slowly, the mystery unravels when Misty found strange messages written on the walls of houses that Peter remodeled, warning her to be careful of the islanders. What results is a bizarre story involving suffering, art, life and sacrifices. Diary is written in dated entries by Misty Wilmot as an outlet to vent her misery and frustration, and it is directed to Peter to remind him of what had actually happened, if he ever woke up from his coma.
Here’s another piece of Palahniuk that got me slightly creeped and mind-boggled. This brought about a rollercoaster of emotional sorts for me - anxious at one moment, disgusted and spooked in the next, and then a mix of confusion, shock and bewilderment. It leaves you doubtless with an unexpected palahniuk-esque twist at the end. I felt that it was somewhat reminiscent of the movie “Shutter Island” - where everything is told from the protagonist’s point of view, so we are compelled to believe the one-sided supposedly accurate view of the protagonist which makes us think that the other characters are mental, when in the end it is revealed that the protagonist is probably the mad one.
I personally preferred Fight Club to Diary, mainly because Diary’s plot seems to fall quite flat, its characters not profoundly developed, and the story simply more freakishly illusory. The line that resonates throughout the book, “what you don’t understand, you can make mean anything”, is probably the basis of understanding the book itself - the indeterminacy of what actually happened in the story, is open to individual interpretation. It’s a smart, satisfactory read; unexpected and gets your cerebral gears turning, but as always, get ready to be mindfunked.
Another classic example of Palahniuk’s full of angst and deeply unsettling art. Recommended for fans of Palahniuk or transgressional fiction in general.
