I chose this book because I still need to fulfill my centennial challenge, so I can finally start another one. Maybe I otherwise would never have chose this one. That's the reason though, that I like doing this kind of challenges. I get to read books that otherwise would never be on my radar, some of them being jewels, others not so much.
Diary was a little of both. When I was little, just turned 10 years, I got a diary as a birthday present. I started recollecting every thing that mattered to me which bounced between boring as hell (which songs I liked, what I had for dinner) to quite interesting (the books I took home from the library and especially the boys I liked, all the ups and downs of growing up). I managed to keep on writing until my early twenties, when I pulled the plug.
Having said this, I have a good eye for excavating the true meaning between the ramblings diaries usually consist of. This being a novel doesn't change the fact that most of it is just page filler and what is actually happening has to be read between the lines.
Misty Wilmot has had it. Once a promising young artist, she’s now stuck on an island ruined by tourism, drinking too much and working as a waitress in a hotel. Her husband, a contractor, is in a coma after a suicide attempt, but that doesn’t stop his clients from threatening Misty with lawsuits over a series of vile messages they’ve found on the walls of houses he remodeled.
Suddenly, though, Misty finds her artistic talent returning as she begins a period of compulsive painting. Inspired but confused by this burst of creativity, she soon finds herself a pawn in a larger conspiracy that threatens to cost hundreds of lives. (Goodreads)
Misty is an artist, but she doesn't know it yet. And she's part of something dark and mischievous that wants to harvest her talents for their own good.
All of it starts with her husband trying to commit suicide and residing in a comatose condition as a result of that. One horrific event after the other enters Misty's life and she finds herself painting in a way she couldn't have foreseen.
I've read better books than this one, but I did like the black humor of Misty's reflections in the diary she was writing for her husband Peter. It's for him she's writing down what's happening, so he can catch up once he gets out of his coma. She's vindictive, angry and desperate in trying to escape her situation and yet a sense of uncontrolled giddiness overshadows all she writes, as if she's on drugs. She's heading for disaster and while the reader knows it, she herself doesn't see the writing on the wall.
So, between the lines is hidden truth. Palahniuk is able to pack a punch when he's philosophizing and it are these lines, words, sentences that keep lingering on, after you've finished the novel.
