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Choke cover art

Choke

By: Chuck Palahniuk
Narrated by: Chuck Palahniuk
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Publisher's Summary

Victor Mancini, a medical school dropout, is an antihero for our deranged times. Needing to pay elder care for his mother, Victor has devised an ingenious scam: He pretends to choke on pieces of food while dining in upscale restaurants. He then allows himself to be “saved” by fellow patrons who, feeling responsible for Victor’s life, go on to send checks to support him. 

When he’s not pulling this stunt, Victor cruises sexual-addiction-recovery workshops for action, visits his addled mom, and spends his days working at a colonial theme park. 

His creator, Chuck Palahniuk, is the visionary we need and the satirist we deserve. 

©2001 by Chuck Palahniuk
(P)2002 Random House, Inc.
  • Unabridged Audiobook
  • Categories: LGBTQ+

Critic Reviews

"One of the freshest, most intriguing voices to appear in a long time. He rearranges Vonnegut's sly humor, DeLillo's mordant social analysis, and Pynchon's antic surrealism (or is it R. Crumb's?) into a gleaming puzzle palace all its own." (Newsday)
"At times very funny. Also sick and perverted....Readers will love it. Readers will hate it and be offended by it. Must listen to figure out what you think." (AudioFile)
"Displays a Swiftian gift for satire, as well as a knack for crafting mesmerizing sentences that loom with stark, prickly prose and repetitive rhythms." (San Francisco Examiner)

What listeners say about Choke

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Masterpiece

What a masterpiece!!
I read “choke” for the first time when it came out, and since I am Italian and didn’t speak English back then, I purchased it in Italy and read it in my mother tongue.
I believe that was nearly 20 years ago.
Back then I used to read a lot .. now that I have a busier life and struggle to find time to read, I decided to try this “audiobook” experience, and … it was simply incredible.
Choke is my first audiobook ever, and listening to it in English and having it narrated by Chuck Palahniuk himself was surreal, to say the least.
What an incredible experience!
The story is so good, so unpredictable, so rich.
It has so many layers that it just gets better and better as you get deeper into the experience.
I loved and savoured every minute of it.
Thank you Chuck Palahniuk.

I just wish you narrated all of your audiobooks; I would have loved to listen to all the Chuck Palahniuk’s stories I read when I was younger, narrated by the author.

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    3 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars
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Love it or hate it. I’d give it 51/100. A mere pass.

Still not sure how I feel about this book. Any book that takes me a considerable amount of time to read I consider a fail. This has been one. Chuck’s performance is dry. But it does add some grunge to the story. The story is also rather slow, and uninspiring but still interesting in the characters and the taboo of the topics. I found quite a lot of inconsistencies in the characters choices and not in a way that could be justified to elicit a response. Overall I would talk about the book but save anyone the trouble of actually listening to the dry performance and the gritty and fairly banal story.

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