Chuck Palahniuk can be sort of gross. Most people who read his books already pretty much know this, but this was the first book of his that got reviewed pretty much as it was coming off the presses and so may be getting attention from people who only know that he wrote the movie Fight Club. And that may be trouble because this book is sort of icky, like his other books. That doesn’t mean I didn’t like it. I did, very much. But I knew what to expect -- dead babies, necrophilia, raw infected wounds, deeply damaged human beings. Palahniuk writes these things like no one else, except maybe David Foster Wallace, who I’ve always suspected was a bit mean-spirited about it all.

This story reads more like his other book Survivor. It’s about a lullaby that kills kids and the messed-up guy who discovers this, and what he does about it. When you have the power to kill people with your mind, not always on purpose, is that a skill you want to lose? This book goes into all to gory details onvolved in answering that question.