This was the third book I read on vacation, and it was the best of the three. I picked it up because I liked Fight Club and wanted to see what else Palahniuk had. That framing probably set me up for exactly the reaction I had, which is that Choke feels like Fight Club running at a slightly lower wattage. That is not a complaint. It's still good.
The setup is this: Victor Mancini is a sex addict who works at a colonial history theme park and pays his mother's nursing home bills by going to restaurants, pretending to choke on his food, and then milking the people who save him for money and emotional support. His mother is losing her mind, his best friend is a chronic masturbator trying to quit, and Victor keeps sleeping with women from his sex addiction meetings. It sounds chaotic on paper and it is, but Palahniuk keeps it moving and the jokes land more than they miss.
What it is really doing, underneath all of that, is poking at what it means to be a white male in America right now. Victor is adrift, dependent, performing helplessness to get what he needs, and completely unable to connect with anyone in a real way. Palahniuk is not subtle about any of this, but he is funny about it, and funny covers a lot of ground.
If you have already read Fight Club, you will probably feel the similarity. The voice is close, the structure is close, the themes overlap. But I did not find that annoying. I found it readable and sharp and worth the time I spent on it.
Worth a look.
