Reporter Carl Streator has been
assigned to investigating Sudden Infant Death Syndrome for his
newspaper, and notices a pattern in all the scenes he's been called
to see. At every single one of them, a poetry anthology is, or has
been, open at page 27 on an old African culling song. To confirm this
theory, he reads the poem to his editor, who fails to come in to work
the following day. However, we discover that this is also a very
personal quest for Streator – he accidentally caused the death of
his own wife and child 20 years earlier by reading them the very same
poem.
Occult real estate agent Helen Hoover
Boyle (who specialises in selling haunted houses and profiting by the
frequent sales commissions as clients are keen to get rid of them
again very quickly), has come to the same conclusion as Streator
through her own investigations. The pair, along with Helen's
secretary Mona and Mona's hippie boyfriend Oyster, race to destroy
the remaining 200 copies of a limited edition print, before the poem
becomes public knowledge.
Lullaby
is at once disturbing, gripping and surprisingly funny in a bizarre,
cynical kind of way. Palahniuk explores the different temptations for
people with an inhuman power, the power to kill anyone they want to,
instantly, with no more than a thought or a few words. How it changes
the characters and the ways they cope with it forms a fascinating part
of the story.
The
brusque, matter-of-fact narrative tone lends a poignancy to grief, and a
sense of detachment to several rather gory scenes, and the characters
are colourful and eccentric in a manner more usually found in
comedic novels.
Lullaby
is a fascinating, dark but sometimes very funny exploration of the
power of language and of the corruption of power. Very much worth
reading, and I can guarantee you'll never have read anything like it
before.
Next up: Furiously
Happy by Jenny Lawson
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