I'm one of those who comes into Palahniuk straight from watching the "Fight Club" movie. Considering the dialog on that is probably one of the things I like the most about it, checking out the source sounds like a reasonably enlightened step to take.

So I picked "Diary" by chance. I have bought "Fight Club" a long while ago but for one reason or another never really started reading it. Now that I've gone through "Diary", I have a hard time making up my mind about Palahniuk. Do I hate the way he writes? Or is he a genius? The thing is, the back cover synopsis kinda misled me. I went expecting one thing and got another. What I expected? A diary of someone at the bedside of her comatose loved one. What I got? A tangled mass of disturbing thoughts and past recollections collected in an unstructured way, like someone pouring her heart out, psychological blood and guts.

"Diary" is disturbing and confusing. I get the sense that confusing the reader is one of Palahniuk's trademarks, I just don't know if I like it. This is definitely no page-turner and in the end it didn't leave a lasting impression on me. Palahniuk's prose reads and sounds like a drone saying a lot of truth, but in a mindless way, like an intravenous pump of very real surrealism.

A confused review from a confused reader of a confusing book.