Foster’s daughter has been missing for years and it’s driven him near crazy. He sees her and her kidnappers everywhere - but he finally has a possible clue of her whereabouts. Mitzi is a foley artist in search of the perfect scream ever to be captured on film. Somehow these two character’s destinies are entwined as they hurtle to their own personal oblivions.
I was a big fan of Chuck Palahniuk’s when I was in high school but I’ve barely read anything new by him in some time. So I decided to see what Chuck’s writing is like these days by picking up his latest novel, The Invention of Sound, and… yeah, it ain’t good. Not even close. (Which makes me wonder if I re-read stuff like Fight Club, Survivor and Choke today whether I’d think they’re still good or not, but I’m not about to go down that rabbit hole!)
I can’t really talk about how crap this novel is without spoilers so SPOILERS here on out. To anyone planning on reading this, wondering what I think and not wanting to be spoiled, I’m definitely not recommending it. Whatever genius Chuck once had, it’s as long lost as his protagonist’s kid!
Elements of Foster’s storyline were sorta interesting. He hires a call girl to pretend to be his daughter (she’d be in her 20s at this point) and then loses his mind and starts hunting her through an empty building with a gun! But then it really goes off the rails afterwards. He kidnaps a movie star called Blush Gentry - who’s in on it - for no reason, then he happens to come across Mitzi for no other reason beyond plot contrivance, before the reveal that his support group were all actors and that he was being set up by the government - what?! Why?! Huh!? Why does the government care what this nobody does? Unless he’s gone completely crackers and that’s the point? I have no idea.
Mitzi’s character and storyline were even more inscrutable. What does her father being a murderer have to do with her being a murderer, “continuing her father’s work”?! She’s not obliged to keep murdering! Ok, it’s a gruesomely fascinating detail that she’s a foley artist who gets genuine-sounding recordings of human suffering because they’re real, but the reason for her getting away with it being something to do with Ambien and a corrupt doctor were not convincing in the least.
And the idea of a perfect scream somehow killing people who hear it, in their thousands, while also demolishing buildings, is utterly silly. How…? And, if that’s true, who was herding hundreds of famous movie people into an Oscar-style awards show to kill them off with the scream and why? Normally with exaggerated story elements like this, it’s because of satirical purposes, but I really don’t know what the point was. Was this just Chuck showing his disdain for Hollywood by enacting some violent fantasy of his?
There is the potential for an interesting story here but the author doesn’t realise it. The storylines descend into inexplicability and gratuitous goriness which is just boring. Baffling and pointless, The Invention of Sound is a plain bad novel. Chuck Palahniuk’s definitely not the writer for me any more but, maybe, those early books are as good as I remember, so, if you’re thinking of checking out this writer, check those out instead of his latter day nonsense.
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