Book Review: THE INVENTION OF SOUND by Chuck Palahniuk

THE INVENTION OF SOUND by Chuck Palahniuk (Grand Central Publishing, September 2020) Hardcover, 240 pages. ISBN # 1538718006 / 9781538718001  

Summary on the Goodreads website . . . . .

A father's decades-long search for his missing daughter.

A young woman about to engineer the perfect scream.

The most dangerous secret Hollywood has ever kept.

Gates Foster lost his daughter, Lucy, seventeen years ago. He's never stopped searching. Suddenly, a shocking new development provides Foster with his first major lead in over a decade, and he may finally be on the verge of discovering the awful truth.

Meanwhile, Mitzi Ives has carved out a space among the Foley artists creating the immersive sounds giving Hollywood films their authenticity. Using the same secret techniques as her father before her, she's become an industry-leading expert in the sound of violence and horror, creating screams so bone-chilling, they may as well be real.

Soon Foster and Ives find themselves on a collision course that threatens to expose the violence hidden beneath Hollywood's glamorous façade. A grim and disturbing reflection on the commodification of suffering and the dangerous power of art, THE INVENTION OF SOUND is Chuck Palahniuk at the peak of his literary powers—his most suspenseful, most daring, and most genre-defying work yet. 

My Three-Star Review on the Goodreads website . . . . .

     This is neither brilliant nor terrible, hence the three-star rating. If you enjoy the inventiveness and writing style (and themes) of Chuck Palahniuk then you will want to read this. It did keep me engaged throughout and turning the pages. 

     Palahniuk turns his satirical eye to Hollywood in this mystery/horror hybrid of a novel. The one main idea is a good one: a recorded scream so powerful that it makes whoever hears it to scream in unison enough to bring buildings down if a crowd/audience is involved. It reminds of the "The Funniest Joke In The World", a Monty Python sketch with a joke so funny that whoever hears it dies laughing. 

     THE INVENTION OF SOUND is peppered throughout with the eccentric, twisted characters that Palahniuk is known for - - existing in the fringes and inhabiting the dark places of society, often obsessed with a single theory or motivation that makes them a little crazy. The problem I had with the story, and the reason I'm not rating it higher, is that I did not care for a single character. The only exception is the deceased daughter of Gates Foster, Lucinda, and she's only present in the story through his brief memories of her. 

      The book promotional blurbs call this "a grim and disturbing reflection on the commodification of suffering and the dangerous power of art." It does indeed focus on suffering in a big way. However, I did not take this story seriously enough to be disturbed by it. And the notion that art is dangerous is purely fabricated, perhaps the result of some overzealous advertising copy. The only danger about art here is the one that Palahniuk invented. So glad that it's not possible.