Synopses & Reviews
Misty Wilmot has had it. Once a promising young artist, she's now stuck on an island ruined by tourism, drinking too much and working as a waitress in a hotel. Her husband, a contractor, is in a coma after a suicide attempt, but that doesn't stop his clients from threatening Misty with lawsuits over a series of vile messages they've found on the walls of houses he remodeled.
Suddenly, though, Misty finds her artistic talent returning as she begins a period of compulsive painting. Inspired but confused by this burst of creativity, she soon finds herself a pawn in a larger conspiracy that threatens to cost hundreds of lives. What unfolds is a dark, hilarious story from America's most inventive nihilist, and Palahniuk's most impressive work to date.
Review
"[R]emarkable....Palahniuk restrains his more comic voice to deliver moving passages on inspiration, art, and suffering as a driving force....A loose-limbed nightmare both vaporous and all-enveloping: awe-inspiring." Kirkus Reviews
Review
"This is Palahniuk at the height of his style....Diary may be trying to be too many things at once, but when it's on, it's on, and it could be Chuck Palahniuk's most ambitious novel to date, certainly the most ambitious since Fight Club." Marc Nesbitt, The Washington Post Book World
Review
"Though absurd and darkly humorous at times, Diary is no joke. Palahniuk has had great success with dangerously madcap characters and situations. This novel taps a similarly wild vein..." Douglas Levin, The Oregonian
Synopsis
Diary takes the form of a 'coma diary' kept by one Misty Tracy Wilmot as her husband lies senseless in hospital after a suicide attempt. Once she was an art student dreaming of creativity and freedom; now, after marrying Peter at art school and being brought back to once quaint, now tourist-overrun Waytansea Island, she's been reduced to the condition of a resort hotel maid. Peter, it turns out, has been hiding rooms in houses he's refurbished and scrawling vile messages all over the walls. Angry homeowners are suing, and Misty's dreams of artistic greatness are in ashes. But then, as if possessed by the spirit of Maura Kinkaid, a fabled Waytansea artist of the nineteenth century, Misty begins painting again, compulsively. The canvases are taken away by her mother-in-law and her doctor, who seem to have a plan for Misty - and for all those annoying tourists...