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The Bargain Nexus - Haunted: A Novel
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List Price: $14.95
Our Price: $8.34
Your Save: $ 6.61 ( 44% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Anchor
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9781400032822
ISBN: 1400032822
Label: Anchor
Manufacturer: Anchor
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 432
Publication Date: 2006-04-11
Publisher: Anchor
Release Date: 2006-04-11
Studio: Anchor
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: The WORST book I have ever read
Comment: Hearing the premise of this book I was intrigued to find out more. The idea of authors gathering together to create their master works, and said master works would be included in the text in the form of poetry and short stories had me hooked. But as I read Haunted, I became very disappointed. The pieces, both short stories and poetry, are all derivatives of a single mind. Pahlanick is completely unable to write from variant perspectives. The pieces are all obviously his, and the fact that they are the supposed "master pieces" of the writers involved shows they deserved all of the ridiculous self serving torture they endured.
The storyline is pitiable. The pieces included are trash. And the behavior of the characters involved are beyond ridiculous. There is not a single surprise along the way. This is one long winded piece that can be summed up completely in one sentence: A group of authors, on a retreat in hopes of creating great works torture themselves so their personal stories sound more pathetic so as to gain success.
Customer Rating:
Summary: wow
Comment: I thought that this book was entertaining, novel, and well written. It tells a frame story beautifully, although beautiful is not really the right word at all. Not only was it thought provoking, but it provoked a strong reaction in general, a trait that is losing strength in literature today.
Bravo!
Customer Rating:
Summary: Shock After Tiresome Shock
Comment: First off, if you're looking for a horror story in the general sense of the genre...this ain't it. The title and the cover illustration would suggest a supernatural horror tale but this isn't in that particular genre--unless you respond to graphic descriptions of self-mutilation, cannibalism and the decomposition of dead bodies. Granted, those are elements of a horror story, but the situations in HAUNTED are far from it.
A horror story fan will be left scratching his or her head.
HAUNTED is about a group of amateur writers who agree to "disappear" for three months on what they believe is a writing retreat. Instead, they're locked in building of artificial light, packaged food and zero contact with the outside world until they produce their greatest work. The characters share stories reflecting their nicknames but we're not given anything more about them as they descend into self-delusion, self-mutilation, murder, cannibalism and suicide. This is a book where everyone in it is just...disgusting. You simply do not care about any of them.
This book operates on the level of a teen slasher/torture porn movie. Sometimes you might laugh or shudder (or both), but after a while....
As well as the stories themselves are crafted, the results are gross and unpleasant and even a little tedious with the sick details. Since the stories rarely have much to do with the main plot of the would-be writers destroying themselves, I wondered if it would've hurt the book to just remove the chapters of the Writers Retreat and let the stories stand on their own (the repititious "poems" made it even more trying). I disconnected from the characters when they started lopping off their own fingers and toes about one-third of the way in, and they never won me back.
And after writing these stories that appear to exist just to gross out and disturb the reader, the author closes out the book with a chapter about how he grossed out audience members with these stories at book signings.
I really enjoyed CHOKE, even with that book's nauseating details, but HAUNTED was a far cry away.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Palahniuk Has Guts
Comment: 'Haunted' is my least favorite Palahniuk book. I'm definitely a Palahniuk fan but 'Haunted' just feels self-consciously subversive. I'd read 'Guts' as a short story prior to the release of 'Haunted' so the graphic content was no suprise and didn't bother me. With the full-length novel, though, as a compilation of the horror stories - I found myself believing Palahniuk was just trying to see how far he could take the reader just for the sake of it. That feeling took me out of the book several times. It's still an entertaining read, especially for Palahniuk fans but 'Lullaby' and 'Invisible Monsters' are much better horror works.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Weird but interesting
Comment: There are a LOT of characters in this book, which might be a little overwhelming to some readers. Each character is introduced not by their real names, but by nicknames (EX: Earl Of Slander, Director Denial, Comrade Snarky.)
They each tell a story, and through these stories you learn a little bit more about them, and most of these are things you might not want to have ever known. A lot of the stories are actually very interesting and shocking, though there was one or two that bored me so I skipped them.
"Haunted" is an okay book. It's got its good moments, and then it has its bad moments. But mostly it's just weird. And unbelievable. I mean, would YOU cut off a part of your body to make a good scene for a movie or show? Here's a hint, the characters in this story are more than willing to. I guess you could say they all lost their mind.
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Editorial Reviews:
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Haunted is a novel made up of twenty-three horrifying, hilarious, and stomach-churning stories. They’re told by people who have answered an ad for a writer’s retreat and unwittingly joined a “Survivor”-like scenario where the host withholds heat, power, and food. As the storytellers grow more desperate, their tales become more extreme, and they ruthlessly plot to make themselves the hero of the reality show that will surely be made from their plight. This is one of the most disturbing and outrageous books you’ll ever read, one that could only come from the mind of Chuck Palahniuk.
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