Fight Club centers on a nameless narrator whose job it is to determine whether or not recalls are necassary for a major car manufacturer. He's generally unhappy with his life, and with how consumerism has forced him to be exactly like everyone else. His body responds to his mental (maybe spiritual) anguish by inflicting him with a severe case of insomnia, which he discovers he can treat by attending support groups for various fatal/life-changing illnesses or conditions.
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His unique form of therapy is rendered useless when another faker, Marla Singer, starts visiting the same support groups that he does. He finds that with another faker present, he can't release the emotions he needs to release, and thus, can't sleep. They eventually work out a schedule (which is in Marla's favour) so that they don't have to see each other again at the groups.
Eventually the narrator meets Tyler Durden, a free spirit who works low-paying jobs seemingly just for the fun of screwing around while on the clock and getting away with childish pranks. When the narrator's luck takes a turn for the worse, he moves in with Durden. Durden confesses that he's never been in a fight before, and would like to be in one. The narrator obliges, and they beat each other up. Both are surprised at how good it felt, better than therapy. Eventually more men join in in their late-night brawls, and Fight Club is born.
As Fight Club grows and spreads across the country, Durden recruits the most loyal (and mindless) fighters and starts a new group, Project Mayhem. The group's ultimate goal is to eventually do away with consumerism and to initiate the downfall of civilization, a goal which the narrator is aghast at. After several scary encounters with the diehard Project Mayhem and the clearly insane Tyler, the narrator takes it upon himself (with aid from the reluctant Marla) to stop Durden's plans and disband Project Mayhem.
The review of this Book prepared by Colin Kehm
The narrator, an insurance investigator prone to depression and insomnia, finds temporary joy and distraction by attending various support groups. But he keeps running into another support group fraud named Marla, which spoils his fun. Meanwhile, he also meets a free-lance projectionist named Tyler Durden, who splices frames from porn movies into mainstream features and suggests they undermine capitalist society with dangerous pranks and the Fight Club -- a group devoted to bare knuckles, all-out battles between similarly confused and frustrated young males. Someone bombs the narrator's apartment, and he has to move into an abandoned house with Tyler. Eventually clandestine fight clubs spring up all over the country, and our hero finds himself uncomfortably stuck within a passionate triangle between Tyler and Marla. Something's gotta give, but what? Palahniuk's strange, offbeat 1996 debut novel came to a deservedly wider audience when it was made into a movie starring Edward Norton, Brad Pitt, and Helena Bonham Carter.
The review of this Book prepared by David Loftus
Fight Club is amazing book, one i have read again and again and again.. Palahniuk forces breaths to be held from beginning to end, and inspires the reader to think about their own way of life by showing how by simply meeting someone who can make us think, this way can be completely changed. I love this man.
The review of this Book prepared by Kookabara
