Lullaby (novel)
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Lullaby is a horror-satire novel by American author Chuck Palahniuk, published in 2002. It won the 2003 Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Award, and was nominated for the Bram Stoker Award for Best Novel in 2002. It has since been [adapted into a graphic novel] by comic artist Kissgz, aka Gabor.
History
In 1999, Fred Palahniuk, Chuck's father, started dating a woman named Donna Fontaine. Fontaine had recently put her ex-boyfriend, Dale Shackleford, in prison for sexual abuse. Shackleford had vowed to kill Fontaine as soon as he was released from prison. After his release, Shackleford followed the two of them to Fontaine's home in Kendrick, Idaho after they had gone out for a date. Shackleford then shot them both and dragged their bodies into Fontaine's cabin home, which he set fire to immediately afterwards. In the spring of 2001, Shackleford was found guilty for two counts of murder in the first degree and sentenced to death. In the wake of this event, Palahniuk began working on Lullaby. According to him, he wrote the novel to help him cope with having helped decide to have Shackleford get the death sentence.Plot
Lullaby is the story of Carl Streator, a newspaper reporter who has been assigned to write articles on a series of cases of sudden infant death syndrome that have been happening recently. Ironically, his late child died from this. Streator later realized that his wife and child died immediately after he read them a "culling song," or African chant, from a book entitled, Poems and Rhymes Around the World. As Streator learns, the culling song has the power to kill anyone it is spoken to or even thought in the direction of. During his investigations into other SIDS cases for his article, he finds that a copy of the book was at the scene of each death. In every case, the book was open to a page that contained "culling song." Because of the amount of time he spends on the subject, Streator gets the so-called lullaby stuck in his head, and as a result of this, he semi-voluntarily becomes a serial killer (killing, for example, annoying radio hosts and people who elbow into an elevator when he is late for work). He then turns to Helen Hoover Boyle, a real estate agent who has confronted the culling song in the past in a similar situation to Streator's and knows of its destructive power. While she is unable to help him stop using the culling song, she is willing to help him stop anyone else from being able to use it again. The two of them decide to go on a road trip across the country to find all remaining copies of the book and remove and destroy the page containing the song. However, there is some danger in their trip. Along for the ride with them is Helen's assistant, Mona Sabbat, and Mona's boyfriend, an eco-terrorist named Oyster. Streator now must not only deal with the dangers of the culling song, but with the risk of it falling into the hands of Oyster, who may want to use it for sinister purposes.Subtext
Like other Palahniuk novels, Lullaby's subtext is mainly a form of social criticism, in particular how he perceives modern society's use of culture as a means of profit or instant gratification with scant regard for intrinsic deeper meaning.ISBNs
- ISBN 0385504470 (hardcover, 2002)
- ISBN 0786250984 (hardcover, 2003)
- ISBN 0385722192 (paperback, 2003)
See also
External links
- [The official web site of Lullaby]
- [An excerpt from Lullaby courtesy of Random House]
- [A 96 page online graphic novel adaptation by comic artist Kissgz, aka Gabor.]
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