VOLUME 41, 2014 to retain her individuality, and is intrigued and repelled by the daemon's contending yearning to dissipate all sense of se lf within the safe, brainless conformity of the greater daemon community's hive mind. However, Wooding disassociates himself from Jez long before the half-daemon's internal conflict has manifested properly in the text. The attempt to substitute Jez, the only female lead, with the unlovable urchin Ashua Vode is also painful ly DOOMED transparent. Wooding's handling of this situation makes for a jarring moment in an REVIEWED BY MOLLY HOEY otherwise harmonious text. Doomed (2013) is the second instalment of Th is is the only clumsiness within an Chuck Palahniuk's trilogy on Madison otherwise outstanding novel. The crew of Spencer, who is 13, chubby and dead. With the Ketty Jay are delightfully flawed, and Doomed Palahniuk has maintained his instead of puritanically trying tot urn them dedication to both the romantic and into upstanding citizens, Wooding wittily Menippean folk traditions, offering a ce lebrates their vices, even as they rise tender yet g lib look at our fear and courageous ly to overcome chal len ges. fascination with morality, death and Wooding stays true to his characters' consequence. Damned (2011), the first quirks to the end, and successfully rounds instalment in this trilogy, saw Madison up the series. come to terms with her damnation, conquering Satan and his demonic hordes. The crew of the Ketty Jay tread perilously Doomed is the inevitable revelation that close to destruction, but when the tale is defeating Lucifer was never going to be delivered w ith such panache, you almost that straightforward. don't mind that it's the luck of the draw. In a previous review of Damned I criticised The Ace of Skulls by Wooding, Chris. three area s of Palahniuk's first in sta lment: London: Gollancz, 2013.ISBN 978- it didn't really exp lore any of the ideas it 0575098114· RRP $12·99· pp. 496. dealt with, the narrative voice was "irksome," and it lacked character development. Well I am happy to bow to the fact that perhaps Chuck knows best, and perhaps all creators have a grand scheme in mi nd. 159 tJ~ Reviews Whilst the metafictional nature of the ... and I knew that would not make a story is still undeveloped (though perhaps very entertaining or particularly funny criticism should be held until the last book, so I inverted the situation and instalment?), Madison seems to have made it this very plucky dead child, who grown in confidence, leaving aside her could mourn her parents while they accusatory quips in exchange for more were still on Earth-but still she could reflection and backstory. Upon reading miss them. (Ferguson) this second instalment, those narrative frustrations are revealed to be defensive That is not to say, and this must be character traits and the loopholes are emphasised, that the opinions expressed finally addressed, because now is the right by Madison about her parents are those of time to address them. Palahniuk; few would be that na·ive. I suspect that Madison would point out Authorial intention is dead, long live the that when you're dead, everything is given text. But coming into this book, knowing in retrospect, but it is in the succession of the environment in which it was written analepsis and gesturing between the old gives it a weighty quality that is worth fabula and syuzhet split that will reinvest considering. those readers who baulked at the adolescent hissing and spitting of This book throws light on the often­ Damned. Our interest in Madison increases unacknowledged fact that even though with her exposures and disclosures, and we have known them, quite literally, all our our awareness of the impending lives, we do not really know our parents. In apocalypse is heightened by our new our youths and teenage years we were investment. oblivious of them; in our adult lives we spend more time trying to scale those Whilst these are important elements in a walls. But we must always be confronted reader's potential experience of this text, with the fact that, even though we love there is another, underlying element to the them, and they us, our unassuming and novel that is only hinted at, and is all the bemusing parents have lived experiences more poignant for its quietness. that are impenetrable to us. Palahniuk nursed his mother on her This exploration of parental duties deathbed whilst constructing the plot for manifests itself, quite naturally, by turning this trilogy. This information was public to examine the ultimate unknowable before Damned was released, but it is here parental figure-one who allows rampant in Doomed that its weight is felt. In a 2011 hysterics and forays into secular interview for The Guardian, Palahniuk spiritualism and spirituality and pseudo­ explained: religions. In the world of Doomed it is humanism and common sense that are I needed to express somehow my grief really on the edge of extinction, with at having then lost both of my parents entire populations fleeing willingly into 160 VOLUME 41, 2014 the arms of any man who claims to hold and time and time again humor shows "the answer," and Satan cruising itself to be the ultimate coping unnoticed through the lives of frightened mechanism. It can be lighthearted and everyday people. juvenile but more often than not that glibness is evidence of some quiet. So where is He? weighted trauma that the human animal carriers around. Is He really the xenophobic, anti-feminist homophobe that the angel Festus WORKS CITED: represents? Are He and Satan in cahoots? Akbar, Arifa. "Chuck Palahniuk: 'I shy away from These questions go unanswered because non-consensual violence.'" The Independent. The Palahniuk has depicted the ultimate Independent, 16 June 2012. Web. <http://www. in d epe nd ent.co. u k/ arts- ente rta i n m entl boo ks / absent father as we here on earth know featu res/ ch uck-pa la h n i u k-i -shy-away-fro m­ him best: silent and disinterested. nonconsensual-violence-78S142S. htm I>. Ferguson, Euan. "Chuck Palahniuk: 'I wrote the Doomed is a callback to the tone and feel book while my mother was dying of cancer.'" The of Palahniuk's early work. The character of Guardian. Guardian News and Media Limited, 4 Sept. 2011. Web. <http://www.theguardian.com/ the grandfather brings back the halting boo ks /2011 /se p / 04/ ch u ck -pa la h n i u k-fig ht -cI u b­ silence of Palahniuk's own strain of interview>. American gothic: Doomed by Palahniuk, Chuck. London: 'According to your nana, some body's Jonathan Cape, 2013. ISBN 978- going to die pretty soon.' 0307476548. RRP $18.74. PP.352. Pappadaddy dipped his brush and resumed his work. 'Just so you know to be careful, the one who dies might be you.' (96) Whilst the text's trapped female heroine, who is the key to the apocalypse, calls back to Misty in Diary (2003), Doomed sits closest to Lullaby (2002) in its exploration offamily, loss and identity. Perhaps this is not so surprising, considering that Lullaby was written whilst Palahniuk dealt with the murder of his father in 1999 (Akbar). Palahniuk's characters are locked inside a stream of events that are hurtling faster and faster towards their inevitable close, 161 .