I didn't start Tell-All off right. I started it on the bus whilst being tired on my way to work. I usually don't fall asleep when I'm reading anything, but I succumbed to the temptation and found myself falling asleep. I was still able to finish some of the sentences. No lie, I read a bunch of lines over and over. And at one point I was sitting on the bus, eyes closed with an open book in my lap. Picture that! (LOL) As I procrastinated on, thinking I had enough time to finish before I left for California, I let a week, two weeks pass by without me reading another page. Then I sat down and finished the whole thing in about two hours. It took me far too long to read Tell-All, but I finished it (my second book of Summer 2012, might I add)!!!
Tell-All by Chuck Palahniuk wasn't my favorite Palahniuk novel. Not exactly my favorite, but Tell-All was just my cup of tea because of the theme and focus of the book. It's a satire novel about pop culture, focusing on movie stars. The Old Hollywood theme was right up my alley and I liked that Palaniuk bolded the names of all the old Hollywood stars. It was a bit confusing following the narrator though; there's a lot of layers in Tell-All. She reminded of the unnamed narrator from Diary, the first Palahniuk novel I read. I really liked the writing style of Tell-All because it was a book written like a screenplay, but with all the details of a narrative. The writing style also reminded me of the format of a play. Tell-All also felt similar to the style of writing of Mr. Bret Easton Ellis, my favorite author. So that was another plus.
I found that Tell-All didn't have that jaw dropping twist that I've come to expect from Chuck. It was a bit predictable by the end. At one point I misread something and thought that was the jaw dropping twist, but that was quickly squashed. It's hard to explain without giving anything way, but I didn't exactly see the ending coming and on the other hand I did sort of see it coming. I'll just say it involves the three main characters: Hazie Coogan, Katherine Kenton and Webster Carlton Westward III. I did, however, like the way Tell-All turned out, I was very satisfied.
If I read Tell-All in a different state of mind and at a better pace, I might have followed it better. But I got all the jokes, recognized the satire and understood everything that happened.
There were also some parts of the dialogue that I found hilarious. Page 95 lines 4 and 10 from the bottom and page 96 line 2 from the top, are the first instances of HILARITY. The way Palahniuk describes the "love making" between Kenton and Westward is so eloquent and I've never seen it done like that before, I don't exactly know how to process it, so I laugh. His intention was to probably make people laugh at that part. Mission accomplished.
I may have contradicted myself a few times in this review, but let it be known that I did like Tell-All by Chuck Palahniuk; it just wasn't my favorite.
I do recommend Tell-All by Chuck Palahniuk although it's very genre specific. It's probably the simplest Palahniuk novel to follow and that I've read so far. I picked it to read before I left for California because it's only one hundred and seventy-nine pages; a nice, light read. (Not to mention the movie star theme).
I can't wait to read more Palahniuk novels!!!
"Every word he's written about me is a lie, including 'and' and 'the'."
-An Unnamed Source
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