Diary by Chuck Palahniuk

Everything is a self-portrait. A diary. Your whole drug history's in a strand of your hair. Your fingernails. The forensic details. The lining of your stomach is a document. The calluses on your hand tell all your secrets. Your teeth give you away. Your accent. The wrinkles around your mouth and your eyes.

-From Diary

In Diary, Palahniuk details the life of Misty Marie Kleinman, a trailer park artist who married into a rich family from Waytansea Island. The book is written in the form of Kleinman's diary written while her husband, Peter, lays comatose in a hospital after a suicide attempt.

People have begun to call Misty complaining of rooms missing in their homes after Peter, who is a carpenter, has finished working on them. Misty explores these rooms along with mystery-man Angel Delaporte and discovers that her husband has built walls closing in certain rooms in the houses he worked on and scrawled strange messages on the inside.

As if lawsuits from people who have had rooms closed off by your husband wasn't enough, Misty also begins to suffer from chronic headaches and other maladies which only seem to go away while she paints. She struggles to deal with the difficult situation her husband has left her in but gets strange reactions from the Waytansea Island residents, including her mother-in-law and her daughter. They all only want her to paint.

Her life descends into chaos as she begins to see odd warnings written under tables and in library books, warnings she is not sure if she should heed or not.

This book is somewhat of a departure for Palahniuk, but his writing style is instantly recognizable. The constant shifting of his prose and cryptic pronouncements are present in this novel in force. His dark view of the artistic process makes this story one of his best to date.

Article Author: Robbie Port

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