Well, I only got halfway through it before I decided this book was not worth me reading it, so my views may not be totally fair, but:
- I'd been spoiled for the twist as to Tyler's identity, so that took a lot of the drama out of it - I couldn't sympathise or identify at all with the narrator or with... Marla, was it? The girl whom he met at the cancer support group? I kept thinking 'you're whining so much about how dull and meaningless your lives are and yet you have nice places to live, a career, and an active sex life. Just shut up and stop complaining!' I guess I couldn't believe in their angst. Also I thought the petty, spiteful things the narrator did (like putting porn footage in the movies, or sabotaging the food in the hotel) were just really horrible - I hate characters like that and I felt like I was being expected to sympathise and understand and I just didn't. - I found the idea of the fight club itself pretty interesting, and wanted more focus on that, but from what I remember, the first half of the book didn't touch on it as much as I'd expected, but went off on random tangents. I have a vague memory that the author said the book grew from a series of short stories, but I may be mixing it up with 'Trainspotting', which is similar to it in some ways. (Personally I enjoyed 'Trainspotting' in a 'yarrrgh' way, but I think that was because a) I accepted it as a series of vignettes b) the characters had a lot more to legitimately complain about c) quite a few of them had some nice qualities and were sympathetic.) Anyway, yeah, the plotting felt kind of hazy and I didn't get much of a sense of anything building up. This may have been because I'd been spoiled, of course. - I found the book depressing and it made me feel sick, so I was biased against it. I accept this doesn't make it a bad book, but it made me a lot more keen to find flaws in it so I could argue that PEOPLE ARE NOT THAT BAD, DAMMIT.
*cough* Yeah. Why didn't you like it? Did you just find it dull? And is the movie better?
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2008-07-19 09:47 am (UTC)- I'd been spoiled for the twist as to Tyler's identity, so that took a lot of the drama out of it
- I couldn't sympathise or identify at all with the narrator or with... Marla, was it? The girl whom he met at the cancer support group? I kept thinking 'you're whining so much about how dull and meaningless your lives are and yet you have nice places to live, a career, and an active sex life. Just shut up and stop complaining!' I guess I couldn't believe in their angst. Also I thought the petty, spiteful things the narrator did (like putting porn footage in the movies, or sabotaging the food in the hotel) were just really horrible - I hate characters like that and I felt like I was being expected to sympathise and understand and I just didn't.
- I found the idea of the fight club itself pretty interesting, and wanted more focus on that, but from what I remember, the first half of the book didn't touch on it as much as I'd expected, but went off on random tangents. I have a vague memory that the author said the book grew from a series of short stories, but I may be mixing it up with 'Trainspotting', which is similar to it in some ways. (Personally I enjoyed 'Trainspotting' in a 'yarrrgh' way, but I think that was because a) I accepted it as a series of vignettes b) the characters had a lot more to legitimately complain about c) quite a few of them had some nice qualities and were sympathetic.) Anyway, yeah, the plotting felt kind of hazy and I didn't get much of a sense of anything building up. This may have been because I'd been spoiled, of course.
- I found the book depressing and it made me feel sick, so I was biased against it. I accept this doesn't make it a bad book, but it made me a lot more keen to find flaws in it so I could argue that PEOPLE ARE NOT THAT BAD, DAMMIT.
*cough* Yeah. Why didn't you like it? Did you just find it dull? And is the movie better?