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NoirNovels.com - A unique repository for all things noir
Lullaby
Reviewed By Rogue Carl Streator is a reporter investigating Sudden Infant Death Syndrome for a soft-news feature. After responding to several calls with paramedics, he notices that all the dead children were read the same poem from the same library book the night before they died. It's a culling song - an ancient African spell for euthanizing sick or old people. Researching it, he meets a woman who killed her own child with it accidentally. Carl's investigation into the mystical culling song leads him into contact with the seemingly merciless realtor Helen Hoover Boyle. Helen sells houses that have been haunted in some way, and when the new owners discover the blood running down the walls, the corpses rising out of the swimming pool, and numerous other paranormal happenings, she happily agrees to sell it on, not mentioning the hideous happenings to the next prospective purchasers. Helen's world has been this way ever since she accidentally killed her own son and husband. Carl himself accidentally killed his own wife and child with the same poem twenty years earlier. But Carl's appearance shakes Helen out of her macabre reverie, and together they agree to find and destroy every copy of the book containing the culling song. Along the way, they are joined by Helen's assistant Mona and her boyfriend, Oyster. As the story unfolds, it becomes clear that the culling song is but one of many poems with mystical powers, all of which came from a book called the Grimoire. To find and uncover the mysteries of this book would give the owner almost unlimited power - the power to kill, the power to resurrect. But can Carl and Helen protect the secret of the culling song and the Grimoire long enough to prevent someone using it to wreak havoc upon the world? Chuck Palahniuk's Lullaby extrapolates the question "What if words could kill?". In doing so, he has created a stunning and vibrant work of fiction that grips from the very first page. Palahniuk reveals just a little of his intention at a time, never letting you guess too far ahead. The narrative is hugely unpredictable and keeps you off balance, right until the last page. Although the idea of magical poems is fantastical, Palahniuk manages to keep Lullaby ground in reality. The story explores many ideas which would normally be considered taboo, or at least in very bad taste, but always gives the reader at least two different perspectives, thus forcing you to take an objective view of your own preconceptions. There are so many different threads to Lullaby that it would be impossible to sum them all up. Add to that each reader's interpretation of the message and you have a book which really does provide a unique experience for every reader. It is darkly funny, but extremely tragic and as gritty as we have come to expect from Chuck. The story, as always, is complex and superbly constructed, but at its heart lays the simple question. What would you do if you could kill by using nothing but the power of thought? |
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