Okay, it's Summer 2001 and Chuck Palahniuk, the author of Fight Club, is back with a new novel (his fourth). If you read just one book this year, read Choke.

Much like Palahniuk's other novels, this one concerns the plight of a dysfunctional, psychologically disturbed anti-hero. Victor Mancini is a medical school dropout and sex addict with oedipal conflicts who works as a servant in a tourist trap modeled after an authentic colonial village. He spends the rest of his day cruising encounter groups for female sex addicts, and pretending to choke in restaurants. Yes, that's right - he pretends to choke so that someone will save him. The scam is that these "heroes" will feel responsible for Victor's well-being and, also, will want to reconnect with the emotional high they felt saving his life and give him the money he desperately needs to pay for his mother's nursing home where she lays dying from Alzheimer's. Sounds like a trip, doesn't it? Add to this scenario, a mad woman doctor who wants Victor to impregnate her, and the possibility that Victor may be the second coming of Christ and you have what may well be the most imaginative works of fiction to come out this year by a writer who is possibly the only real literary genius spawned by Generation X.

reviewed by JCE