Lullaby

The first thing I was thinking when I finish reading "Lullaby" is I have to lent the book to Lowina!!!~~~~ As usual, Chuck's book are dark, subtle and ironic. The question the book has set up was "what is "real" in our world nowadays?". All information we received nowadays have been processed. Everything we assumed to be truth are from researches and published with reasons. We are being "trainned" to think in the way small groups of people think we should (or they what they think are truth). Even our feeling, we are not sure if it true. We throught we love, maybe we are not really love. What can be asured? What can we believe? What do we actually need? The mass media, are like witches, speak out the spells to control our mind. It is just the sorrow of the world we live in. Or maybe it is the sorrow they tell us we should think about.... umm... actually the story is a bit supernatural, which are not my faviour. But the message behind is really something we should think about~~ (at least in my age, it is something I am still thinking of.)

below are some other reviews on the book~~

Review 1
Don’t let the title fool you: Lullaby is a heavy metal screech of a book that will blow up your eardrums as you clamor to increase the volume — you know it’s not good for you, but you can’t stop. "Imagine a plague you catch through your ears," says Carl, making Lullaby the perfect candidate for an audio book. Narrator Richard Poe is completely seductive and oddly impassioned while retaining the aloof detachment of the character as he brings Palahniuk’s weird, creepy, twisted and blatantly brilliant words to freaky life. Probably the most horror-like of Palahniuk’s books, Lullaby tackles everything from ghosts, to necrophilia, to dead babies, to body-hopping soul-switchers. And, get this: At its core, it's a touching and heartfelt love story.

Review 2
Lullaby - by Chuck Palahniuk
(Jonathan Cape, £10.00, paperback, 272 pages, 5 September 2002; ISBN: 0224063014.)
Chuck Palahniuk's first four novels -- from the notoriously transgressive Fight Club to the hilariously extreme Choke -- have all been bizarre. And yet, despite their unlikely characters and entertainingly preposterous plot twists, they have always stayed just this side of possible.

With his fifth novel, Lullaby, Palahniuk steps firmly and boldly into the realm of the impossible. Lullaby is a modern-day dark fantasy featuring haunted houses, witches, dangerous spells, pagan rituals, and the like.

Independently of each other, Helen Hoover Boyle, a corrupt real-estate agent who deals in haunted houses, and Carl Streator, a journalist assigned to investigate Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, discover that a child's poem is in reality an ancient culling spell, lethal to any to whom it is recited.

Joined by the twenty-something Wiccans Mona and Oyster, the forty-something Carl and Helen embark on a cross-country journey to destroy all copies of the book that contains the lethal verse. In the process, the quartet becomes a twisted version of the American nuclear family, where deep-rooted power imbalances create tense and complex conflicts.

Like all of Palahniuk's novels, Lullaby is a first-person narrative from the point of view of a dysfunctional antihero; in this case, Carl, who, despite his wish to rid the world of the deadly spell, casually becomes a supernatural serial killer.

The beginning of the novel is a bit clumsy; the prologue is unnecessary, and chapter 1 isn't as tight and focused as Palahniuk usually is right from page one. But from chapter 2 onwards, Lullaby is otherwise flawless: darkly sardonic and filled with wild invention, penetrating quips, subversive ideas, and relentless energy.