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Rant: An Oral Biography Of Buster Casey
(http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/images/n41/n209680.jpg)


I just finished this book about 60 seconds ago.

WOW

Rant is a fictional book done in the style of an oral history much like last years World War Z.  It is made up of interviews with characters and they explain their experiences and memories in a sort of documentary style.

The book is about Rant Casey also known as Buster or Buddy.  He was born in a desert town called Middleton, and he's not the average person.  As he grows up, he finds that he can tell almost anything from smell.  He can tell a girl exactly what she has eaten in the last few weeks by ......pleasing her orally.  That's not the only strange thing about Rant.  He also likes to go out in the desert during his free time and get bitten by as many animals as he possibly can.  Skunks, jackrabbits, snakes, spiders, scorpions, etc.

Rant is obsessed with poison.

Once he finishes high school, after a series of strange and hilarious events, he decides to head into the city to start a life.  Once there, he starts participating in a sport called Party Crashing, where nighttimers (people only let out at night) go around and crash into each other.  They take pleasure from the wrecks, and the sport is a catharsis for the players.  Rant finds it exhilarating and soon finds something more powerful in it. 

Also, Rant has rabies.  By the beginning of the book, Rant is dead (possibly) and is considered a "superspreader" by the government.  He sparked a worldwide rabies epidemic.



This sounds confusing doesn't it? 

The reason why it sounds confusing is because it is quite confusing at first.  Palahniuk starts out well after Rant Casey is dead.  The book jumps directly into the material without any type of explanation to get the reader caught up.  At first, this is off-putting but by the first 20 pages or so, I was extremely hooked.  Palahniuk creates a future that is both rooted in reality and yet completely fantastical.  It's a world separated by day and night.  It's a world where time, sex, rabies, and car crashes all come together in an absolutely amazing way.

I'm a huge fan of Palahniuk's previous works, and was psyched when I heard about this book.  If you've read his others, then do seek this one out.  It's by far his best work.  If you haven't read any of Palahniuk's books, then expect something much more different than what you're used to.  This book has my mind going in a million directions, and I'm actually tempted to start it over again right now to see what I can find during my second time around.

10/10!


Also, here is another review of the book which covers much of what I've said, but in a more coherent way:

http://www.aintitcool.com/?q=node/32352 (http://www.aintitcool.com/?q=node/32352)

I'll have to keep an eye out for this one: sounds like my kind of disturbing.

I'm a big fan of Palahniuk's writing style, but haven't read much of his work, only bits here and there, plus, of course, Fight Club.

On top of that I've been finishing World War Z lately, and really enjoyed the format that it had, so this looks like a beauty too.

Oh and I had the infinite pleasure of playing part of an audio recording of Palahniuk reading his short story, Guts, to my surrealism class for a tutorial presentation a couple of years ago.  God that was a great class...  Nothing like showing a clip from a story reknowned for supposedly making people throw up when hearing it read to them!  [and that wasn't even the worst thing someone did for a presentation either!]  :tongueout: