Invisible Monsters Remix by Chuck Palahniuk

(hb; 1991, 1999, 2012)


From the inside flap:

"It's time to hit the road again with our veiled narrator, pill-popping Brandy Alexander, and their charming and handsome male sidekick.

"Originally inspired as a work that would echo the Vogues he read while going to the laundromat, Chuck Palahniuk had wanted the chapters in Invisible Monsters to break the normally straight line of fiction and bounce around, as did the articles in fashion magazines. He wanted the novel 'to be a little unknowable.' As a new author, he ultimately gave the book a linear structure. Published as his third novel, it was written first.

"In this revised edition, with a new introduction, the reader is invited to jump throughout the book to read the chapters in different arrangements. Intertwined are new chapters: some featuring characters in the book, others recounting events in the author's life. As Palahniuk knows, sometimes truth is stranger than fiction.

"The story remains daringly unpredictable. A fashion model has just about everything: a boyfriend, a career, a loyal best friend. One day she's driving along the freeway when a sudden 'accident' leaves her disfigured and without the ability to speak. From being the beautiful center of attention she becomes an invisible monster, so hideous that no one will acknowledge she exists.

"Enter Brandy Alexander, Queen Supreme, one operation away from becoming a real woman. Brandy will teach her that reinventing yourself means erasing the past and making up something better, that loving and being loved are not mutually exclusive, and that nothing is ever quite what it seems."


Review:

Chatty but mostly entertaining and distinctive novel - not only for its structuring, but for its ideas and "voice" - about the vagaries of love, identity, sexual fluidity, divinity and social norms.

As I noted before, Invisible Monsters Remix runs a bit long in some parts, but it is worth reading, not only for the above elements, but for its dark, deliciously savage humor, borne out by Palahniukian's detail-oriented, trademark writing.

Check this out.

Mary Ann in Autumn, by Armistead Maupin

(hb; 2011: Book Eight in the Tales of the City series)

From the inside flap:

"Twenty years have passed since Mary Ann Singleton left her husband and child in San Francisco to pursue her dream of a television career in New York. Now a pair of personal calamities has driven her back to the city of her youth and into the arms of her oldest friend, Michael 'Mouse' Tolliver, a gardener happily esconced with his much-younger husband.

"Mary Ann finds temporary refuge in the couple's backyard cottage, where, at the unnerving age of fifty-seven, she licks her wounds and takes stock of her mistakes. Soon, with the help of Facebook and a few old friends, she begins to reengage with life, only to confront fresh terrors when her checkered past comes back to haunt her in a way she never could have imagined.

"After the intimate first-person narrative of Maupin's last novel Michael Tolliver Lives, Mary Ann in Autumn marks the author's return to the multicharacter plotlines and darkly comic themes of his earlier work. Among those caught in Mary Ann's orbit are her estranged daughter Shawna, a popular sex blogger; Jake Greenleaf, Michael's transgendered gardening assistant; socialite DeDe Halcyon-Wilson; and the indefatigable Anna Madrigal, Mary Ann's former landlady at 28 Barbary Lane."


Review:

Mary Ann in Autumn is as warm, fresh, joyous, City-centric and charming as the original Tales of the City novel, with a dark mystery element (much like the original novel, More Tales of the City and Further Tales of the City).

The mystery element in this gradual-passing-of-the-torches novel isn't such a mystery (a mild disappointment), but the writing is tight and witty, and the characters still feel like family, as usual, with a welcome return to form - as much as I liked Michael Tolliver Lives, I prefer Maupin's multicharactered storylines, which structure his best novels.

Readers familiar with Maupin's work will probably recognize Gabriel Noone, who gets a mention in Mary Ann. (Noone is the main character in one of Maupin's non-Tales books, The Night Listener - further proof of Maupin's ability to seamlessly bring his otherwise disparate characters together, and making his readers smile.)

I love this book. One of my favorite entries in this series. Worth owning, this.

Followed by The Days of Anna Madrigal.