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Synopsis:

From the bestselling author of Fight Club comes a dark, satirical parable about a string of mysterious high school disappearances, the seedy underbellies of billionaires, and the tough choices we make in the face of an uncertain future. In Shock Induction, the best and brightest students at a seemingly reputable high school are disappearing. Every day it seems another overachiever is lost to an apparent suicide. But something far more sinister is lurking beneath the surface. These kids have been under surveillance since birth, monitored and measured by an online service called “Greener Pastures.” It’s here, in Greener Pastures, that billionaires observe and recruit the next generation of talent. The highest test scores, the best grades, and the most niche extracurriculars just might land these teenagers an enticing offer at auction. A couple billion dollars in exchange for the remainder of your life and intellectual labor sounds like a pretty fair deal—doesn’t it? In a high school only Chuck Palahniuk could imagine, students must choose between the risk of following their dreams or the security of money and a lifetime of servitude to the world’s wealthiest and most elite—but how much of a choice do they truly have?

Review:

The newest novel by Chuck Palahnuik, Shock Induction, is another of his recent novels that feels like another step away from Fight Club, Choke, Haunted, and the type of novels that brought him fame. The story takes place in 2037, where Samantha Deel is a highschooler, a strong student, and a singer, living with her parents and sex offender uncle. She is the perfect recruit for Greener Pastures, a company that auctions talented kids off to the highest bidder. This is the simplest part of the plot. The rest of the novel is the challenge that Chuck Palahnuik is giving his readers, hoping that he can manipulate them.

Richard Powers in a recent interview says that a book is actually a full circle between the reader, the writer, and the things that the book is trying to say. Palahniuk sees this as the way he is going to write. He is not only telling the story, but he is trying to get a reaction out of the reader, a change in perspective. In this case, it is an attempt at a form of hypnotism that comes from trying to keep track of several different stories swirling around one main story. He also slips into sections of other pieces of classic literature, including The Great Gatsby, Moby Dick, Shakespearian plays, Alice in Wonderland, and David Copperfield. (I am sure that I missed some of the references, but these are ones that I caught.) He writes in the very beginning about ERE poisoning and how the government placed drugs on the pages of classic literature to entice people to read it, and keep reading it. Chuck Palahniuk is trying to explain how he feels while reading all of these classic novels, how the words on the pages are like a drug to him, that quickens his heart rate, makes him feel high, and makes him keep turning the pages. He is trying to show the reader that there is value still in those classic stories, and that literature can be hypnotizing and impactful. He is trying to get his readers to follow him.  

There are many elements to this novel that I am sure that I did not catch the first time through. Shock Induction is not only a love letter to reading and to classic literature, but it is a challenge, almost a dare. He is alienating his casual fans and casual readers in general and is doing his best to step away from the person who wrote Fight Club thirty years ago. He has grown as a writer, and he is forcing his readers to grow with him. His last three novels, The Invention of Sound, Not Forever, But for Now, and now Shock Induction is taking him further and further away from his Fight Club origins, and this is something that I have really enjoyed more than some of his other early fans. Maybe his hypnosis is working.

I received this as an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.