This is a strange book. It's a fun read as long as you are in the mood for Palahniuk.

If you're a fan of Palahniuk, then you'll enjoy this book. If you don't know him yet, this book won't make you want to read more. What it has going for it are the number of characters, the background stories (which can be pretty fascinating), and over-arching motifs he employs. However, it's not as riveting as his previous novels.

I have been a Palahniuk fan for years and have enjoyed invisible monsters, choke, diary, lullaby, fight club... although I haven't read ALL of his books yet, this is the first (and hopefully only) book to take me months to read (due to lack of intrest) and was rather dissapointing in the end. Although the end did make the book worth finishing, it was no where close to something I would reccomend.
-There are too many characters to follow, which wouldn't be a problem if the book was sucessful in capturing your attention enough to cause you to read it in one sitting. For me, every time I picked it back up, I would forget who half the characters were.
-The book consists of short stories and poems written by each of the characters along with a running story line. I found the poems rather pointless. Although the running story line was the main purpose of the book, it was probably the least interesting part of it. It just kept on repeating the same basic concept over and over untill the last couple of chapters. The only part that was particularly worth reading were the stories written by the characters, which seemed more Palahniukish.

While I really enjoyed "Fight Club" and "Invisible Monsters," this one was a big disappointment. I read it thinking, "there's got to be a pay off, some way this will work into something worth my time." Yes, Haunted is grotesque, in the sense that it is "fantastically ugly or absurd, bizarre." It didn't work for me for two reasons. First, the back-and-forth between short stories and the common story and the poems that preface the stories just felt contrived. Perhaps a small complaint.

But the second, and more damaging problem is that the savagery and dismemberment didn't ultimately amount to much. I couldn't discern a point or a purpose, a reason for collecting these miniature horrors. It just felt lurid for the sake of being vile. For some, that might be a recommendation, sort of a "can't take your eyes off of it" fascination. I was reading hoping for something to emerge from the chaos and gore. It just never gelled.

Chuck Palahniuk is a fine writer, but this is a lesser effort. The afterward about writing was a fine bit of prose. I still await his next efforts, but I won't be passing this one along.

This book was so shocking and disgusting I couldn't put it down! When I did, I immediately bought 3 more of his books and was not disappointed. Not for the weak stomach. Excellant shock factor.