Bibliofreakblog

Rant by Chuck Palahniuk

Set in a dystopian society, which may or may not be our future, present, or even our past, Rant Casey is picked apart, praised, feared, loved, by those he has left behind after his death, which may have actually been a disappearance due to time travel. 

That’s the set-up.  An oral biography, often contradictory, about some weird-ass kid, with enough information stuck in there to give a complete picture of a world in which class division is so severe, people either live during the night or day, in order to reduce traffic back-ups. 

For fun, kids who live at night combine the age-old pastime of cruising with the physical excitement of a real-live demolition derby.  They call themselves Party-Crashers.  Other forms entertainment include getting “plugged in”, like a virtual reality more brain-deadening than any teacher ever told you TV is.

Rant is patient zero for a rabies epidemic so wide spreading airport screening results in disappearances if passengers so much as have a fever.

That’s one story line.

Here’s another: Rant has super-human smell and taste senses.  He is obsessed as a child with getting bitten by rabid and poisonous creatures.  He believes that get hit with a case of Rabies at the moment of a car crash (easy enough for a Rabies-loving Party-Crasher) is so physically/mentally/spiritually/whatever-ly rattling as to remove one from one’s given point in time. 

Unfortunately for Rant, he is probably too late to save himself from himself.
Buy Rant: The Oral Biography of Buster Casey on Amazon

If you like this book/author, you might like:

(my reviews in blue)

Timequake by Kurt Vonnegut
Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt Vonnegut
World War Z by Max Brooks
Bad Monkeys  by Matt Ruff
American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis
Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk by Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain
Truman Capote: In Which Various Friends, Enemies, Acquaintences and Detractors Recall His Turbulent Career by George Pimpleton
Lexicon Devil: The Fast Times and Short Life of Darby Crash and the Germs by Brendan Mullen
Edie: American Girl by Jean Stein
The Great Influenza: The story of the deadliest pandemic in history by John M Barry
Flight by Sherman Alexie
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger 
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley 
Dismantled by Jennifer McMahon 

Other works by Chuck Palahniuk:

Lullaby
Choke
Stranger Than Fiction: True Stories
Fight Club
Snuff
Pygmy
Haunted
Survivor
Diary
Invisible Monsters
Fugitives and Refugees: A Walk in Portland, Oregon 
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