Survivor

Written by Chuck Palahniuk

Narrated by Paul Garcia and Paul Michael Garcia

Tender Branson, last surviving member of the so-called Creedish Death Cult, is dictating his life story into the flight recorder of Flight 2039, which will shortly crash. But before it does, he will unfold the tale of his journey from obedient Creedish child and humble domestic servant to ultra-buffed media messiah.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Blackstone Audio
• Release date: Jan 1, 2006
• ISBN: 9780786146208

Chuck Palahniuk

Chuck Palahniuk’s fourteen novels include the bestselling Snuff; Rant; Haunted; Lullaby; Fight Club, which was made into a film by director David Fincher; Diary; Survivor; Invisible Monsters; and Choke, which was made into a film by director Clark Gregg. He is also the author of the nonfiction profile of Portland, Fugitives and Refugees, and the nonfiction collection Stranger Than Fiction. His story collection Make Something Up was a widely banned bestseller. His graphic novel Fight Club II hit #1 on the New York Times list. He’s also the author of Fight Club III and the coloring books Bait and Legacy, as well as the writing guide Consider This. He lives in the Pacific Northwest.

Reviews for Survivor

[cassielm_2 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Reminded me a lot of Fight Club, but a little bit less crazy, kind of.

[crunky_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Survivor is a fast, interesting read. It maintains a consistent tone and style throughout—sort of good-naturedly nihilistic. Fully half the paragraphs in the book are one-sentence, creating the sense of a fractured but sincere narrative. The book is structured as a confession, although not of a religious sort, as the last survivor of the Creedish church tells his story to the black box of a doomed aircraft. The cover of the book pitches it as funny and comic, but I mostly found the satire to be consistently doleful and thoughtful. (The final "miracle", however, was hilarious.) Tender Branson, the narrator of Survivor, has almost the exact opposite attitude as the narrator of Ellison’s Invisible Man—he’s perfectly willing to obey (without illusion) whoever will tell him what to do as he perversely subsumes his identity to whatever is most convenient at the moment: church, employer, media agency, clairvoyant love interest. His main shame is that he hasn’t committed suicide the way he was supposed to. Although one can argue that his failure to commit suicide is a decision to live, Tender’s choice to live (although how little he takes advantage of his life is an issue) creates an ironic existential crisis that comments on subjects including religion, mortality, blind obedience, sex, marketing, and self-imprisonment.Survivor didn’t knock me over (somehow it didn't offend me as much as I kept hoping it would?), but it’s an intelligent satire in the mode of Vonnegut, and I can easily recommend it.

[pondlife_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The style is unmistakably Chuck Palahniuk.This book starts well, but I felt that it lost its way about half-way through when Tender Branson became a star. For some reason I didn't find the story very engaging after that point, and didn't really care what happened to the characters.This is my fourth Chuck Palahniuk novel, previously having read Fight Club, Rant and Choke. Although I liked Fight Club and Rant, I've not liked the last two as much. Perhaps I need to give his novels a break for a while.

[acannon92 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Brilliantly written plot and non-difficult yet sophisticated writing style... I've never read a book with a premise quite like this one. It held my attention from sentence 1 through the last word. I highly recommend it. It was so good that I read it in like 2 days... I wish it was longer!

[senorag163 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Enjoyable while a bit depressing. I kind of felt bad laughing at parts but it was funny!

[carlosmcrey_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Some people think this is Palahniuk's best book, possibly even better than Fight Club. And for the first chapter of the novel, I seriously believed that might be true. As is made clear from the outset, the narrator of the story is the protagonist, and he is telling his story into the recorder of a jet liner which is soon to crash. The pages are even numbered backwards to add to the sense of impending doom, of a limited amount of time before the inevitable end. Seriously, that's a great way to build some suspense right from the start.And then, the second chapter. First of all, if a lot of the tension is built up around the way the story is being told (narrated into the flight recorder of a doomed jet), well, breaking it up into chapters is not a good idea. After all, this is basically a suicide note (or at least an Apocalyptic Log), and I'm pretty sure nobody has ever divided their own suicide note into chapters. Also, how did that work? Does he actually say "Chapter 2" into the recorder? Additionally, the tense immediately changes into the present to describe something the narrator was doing several months back. Again, nobody writes a suicide note or narrates their life like that. Perhaps Palahniuk was trying to call attention to the artificiality of the narrative, but it felt like a betrayal of the reader's suspension of disbelief. Well, I wasn't going to make that mistake again.Perhaps if I hadn't felt let down from the beginning, what follows might have kept me engaged. It seemed like mostly blunt satire on the usual bugaboos: religion! celebrity! cosmetic surgery! hypocrisy! And then the message at the end seems to be that if you want to be free, you should have sex. Real cutting edge sort of stuff.

[sturlington_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A very weird but fascinating read. The story concerns the last surviving member of a strange religious cult that sends all but its eldest children out into the world to work as menial laborers, who then send back their wages to make the cult rich. When the scam is discovered, all members of the cult – both in the colony and working out in the world – kill themselves, except for the narrator. His notoriety as the last survivor of the cult takes him on an incredible journey as a celebrity evangelist, with his twin brother pursuing him, and aided by a girl who knows everything that’s going to happen to him and everybody else. The book swept me along fairly well until the very end, when things pretty much fell apart. But up until then, it was well worth the trip.

[jayne_charles_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Wow. Just wow. What a brilliant read this was. Right from the start, where the protagonist announces that he's hijacked a plane and plans to allow it to crash it's time to fasten your seatbelts and hang on for a bumpy ride.We learn that he was brought up in a repressive religious cult and didn't see the 'outside world' until he was 17. How he arrived at that moment on that plane is a tragi-comic story that had me reading into the small hours.I liked the humour, the quirkiness of it all (not least the backwards page numbering) and the way the early chapters appear to be about one thing and then turn out to be about something subtly different. All this and a shedload of housekeeping tips: it's got to be worth a read!

[avhacker · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

really good but not the best love the twist ending!

[lindseyrivers · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This is so far my favorite Pahlaniuk. As is typical it is dark and a bit strange, but the way you relate to the sad cast of characters will have you wondering about your own sanity.

[ginerbia · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Survivor is a very twisted, dark, mind blowing book. I'm so glad I found it.It's about this guy who was born and raised in a religious cult and how he deals with life after the mass suicide of his fellow cult members. His story is forever saved in the "black box" of the airplane that he highjacked. He made everyone get off the plane and had the pilot take off, set the autopilot, and then parachute out of the plane. Alone in the plane, he tells his life story while he waits for the plane to run out of gas and crash land.This was an audiobook that I downloaded from Overdrive. The narrator was terrific and really brought the story to life.I've never read (or listened to, as was the case) anything by Chuck Palahniuk before and after Survivor, I will pick up more by him. I really enjoyed it.

[divydovy · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

One of Palahniuk's better ones IMHO. Twisted, dark, visionary and beautiful, yet accessible and more flowing, more succinct than others I've read. Like :)

[aethercowboy · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Survivor tells the story of a man, the last surviving member of a suicide cult reminiscent of of just about every single backwards, wacko religion out there. This status makes him a pop icon, which elevates his status from lowly second-son to religious symbol.The story is told backwards, of sorts. The pages are numbered backwards, the chapters are numbered backwards, and the book starts at the end, aboard an airplane, destined to crash. Tender Branson dictates his life story into the black box, chronicling his rise to and fall from the public eye.Like any other Palahniuk novel, each character presented is more complex than they seem, and several twists and turns, some lightly humorous, while others are more akin to black comedy, all the wile, taking us through the crazy life of one member of the Creedish cult.Like any author’s second novel, it is best read after the first, and before the third. And that is exactly the reading order I suggest for this book.

[kaionvin · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

 Despite all the bad rap that Chuck Palahniuk gets, I sort of do like the other two novels I've read by him (Lullaby slightly more than Fight Club). For better or for worse, he has a very recognizable style, and in Survivor I find lesser returns just from how unfocused it is.There's simply too many targets... lampooning how *not* to live (instead of real points about how you should live). The only one that gets the full treatment here is the theme of 'fame', and honestly I'm not sure anybody requires a lesson how how fame is fake. That's about how insightful it gets here, and ultimately I couldn't find anything particularly/applicably relatable to struggle of living a fulfilling modern life.I think I want more editing? Survivor throws lots of things out there, and Palahniuk combines them and tries to shock often, without any point really congealing in the mess.

[ngeunit1_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Simply said, this is among my favorite novels I have ever read and I think it is the best of Chuck Palahniuk's works (at least up to 2010). In what has become fairly commonplace among Chuck novels, we begin the novel by getting a glimpse at the end before really understanding what is actually going on and why. This does a great job of really establishing a tone for the story and sparking an intial flair to get the reader really interested early on. Set up as Tender Branson giving his account of his life, trying to give some meaning and justification to it to the black box recorder or an airplane he is setting out to crash, the narrator does a great job of walking us through his life and giving us a real good understanding of what has drove him to this point. While Palahniuk is never really subtle about the themes he is setting out to explore in his novels, I think he really does a great job in this novel of discussing free will, especially though interactions with Fertility. The relationship between Tender and Fertility is overall very interesting and does a good job of really showcasing the changes that each of the characters goes through as the novel progresses. By giving us a glimpse into the future before stepping back to explain the past, it gives the reader a chance to really analyze the events throughout the story relative to what we know is eventually going to happen. I think while this is sometimes overused and used ineffectively, it works remarkably well here. Palahniuk also does a great job in this novel as always of interjecting some really witty and cleaver sections of the novel that really keep it overall entertaining and enjoyable while being so dark at the same time. Overall, this is a great book, and I would recommend it anyone that is looking for a something just a little bit different or someone that is looking to give Chuck Palahniuk a shot.

[teharhynn · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I think this was excellent. From the first page, I knew that I was reading a Chuck Palahniuk book. I can see that I'm going to quickly become a hard-core fan. I'm excited to have enjoyed another unique book by him.

[tybaltcapulet · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

After Fight Club, this is my favorite book by Palahniuk.A cult goes awry, and all members are instructed to kill themselves, and they all do except for a couple of the members living outside the commune. Then one by one, they die, leaving only Tender Branson.All of the members who aren't the first-born work outside of the commune and are named Tender, like money. They are the supply of cash for the commune, and the commune does nothing for them.The last member of a strange suicide cult becomes a religious leader, gets blamed for murder, hijacks a 747. That's where the story begins.

[okrysmastree · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This was not my favorite of Palahniuk's books. I don't expect his characters to be likable, but I usually end up identifying with them on some level anyway--not so with Survivor. I found every character repulsive and generally obnoxious, and reading with the kind of detachment I developed was unpleasant. I can't say I'd recommend this book to anyone but a Palahniuk superfan.

[tybeet_1 · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

I didn't enjoy reading this novel at all. I'm such a voracious fan of the dark humour/ satire/ social criticism combination which Vonnegut produces that I've hunted down nearly every novel he's written.Still, I was put onto Palahniuk by a comparison to Vonnegut, and I have to say that don't see the similarity at all except for their use of lists and repetition as comedic schtick, and then, the schtick isn't what interests me in the first place.As an author, Palahniuk strikes me as lacking the very depth that he criticizes society for lacking, and while this could be spun around as being a "satiric" or "ironic" element of his story, it rubbed me the wrong way as I found myself bored and completely uninspired by the story and the way the personalities of the characters were explored. I mean really, Survivor was about some pretty heavy themes: suicide, death, faith (and brainwashing), fame, and mainstream pop-culture society. Yet, the only theme that was really explored was the fame aspect which is what all of the rave reviews on the back of my copy praise him for exposing. All of the characters felt flat and two-dimensional, and even the humor felt very derivative - most of it involved making pop culture references to our prescription drug culture, pornography, or consumerism at various circumstances.For anyone who has thought about the nature of society and culture, and the mainstream on their own time this novel will just bore you to death.

[mrbookface · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Young guy from religous cult goes and - hang on, I've forgotten. Better go back and re-read before I say anymore. Still, I do remember enjoying this book very much.

[shanjan_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Survivor was not what I expected, but I liked it. The story of a man who survives a religious cult, slavery, and fame does not seem a likely forum for dark humor, but that is what Palahniuk delivers. The first half of this book moved along quickly and Palahniuk's wit had me laughing out loud. He unwinds the story as a confession of a man who has "hijacked"an airplane (I'm not giving anything away here that wasn't revealed in the first chapter). Both the storyline and Palahniuks humor are gripping. I felt like the second half was a bit slow and repetitive, but overall the novel was enjoyable.

[liberuno · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

This book is, in my opinion, the worst book I have ever read. It was the second book by Chuck Palahnuk I read, after Invisible Monsters (which I enjoyed).I could not get into the story at all and it has turned me off of reading anymore Palahniuk books for a while.

[takeitorleaveit_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

probably my favorite chuck palahniuk. his least sexual, most story based. a crazy story at that. they were going to make a movie out of it but then 9/11 happened. an excellent read in the strangest of fashions only palahniuk can pull off.

[meggo_2 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Many, if not all, of Palahniuk's books are rather "sex-heavy", and this book is no exception. But, unlike some of his other works, the sex doesn't get in the way of this one. The story - a group of apocalypse cult members who are trained in housekeeping and suicide - is engaging, and difficult to put down. The main character was likable for all his faults, and even though you knew he was about to meet his untimely death, you still wished somehow that the story would end happily. A delightful touch - the book starts at page 289 and ends with page 1.

[benjaminhahn · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Another great Palahniuk book, with more of a religious twist. Here again, I think he touches on the concept of belief and fanaticism. The death cult which the protagonist belongs to, is not so far from the reality we sometimes see on the news. One of the classic Palahnuik mechanics he throws in here is the cruising around the country in modular home pieces. He seems to always have this element of bizarre acts that is somewhat revolutionary (politically or at least behaviorally), somewhat like in Choke where the protagonist goes around the fancy suburban backyards sipping the beer left out in dishes for slugs. Those settings for conversations are always something I could never come up with, but after your 5th Palahnuik book, they are expected.

[cwicker27 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Survivor is a novel through which Chuck Palahniuk demonstrates his discontent with the media and consumerism. In this satire, Tender Branson, who is a former member of the Creedish religious cult, dictates his life story into the black box of a plane that he hijacked. The novel begins at the end of the story, thus giving the reader an interesting perspective on what they are to expect for the rest of the novel. Branson’s lifestyle transformed from humble to vain and self-centered when he went from being a servant to the Creedish community to being a religious icon. This book relates to utopias and dystopias because in it, Palahniuk creates two dystopias. While heavily criticizing the world that Tender Branson becomes absorbed in, he also does not recommend the opposite extreme, which is represented by the dystopian Creedish lifestyle. As Branson became a superstar, he became dependent on the culture of modern media, which was a bad thing because the entire time it had been leading to his demise. On the other hand, Palahniuk created the Creedish culture which is a lifestyle in which people have little identity, and what they say, do, learn and think are all controlled by a higher power. Branson’s confinement to this kind of world is what led him to immerse himself so heavily into the world of consumerism. This book is one that engages the reader completely and forces them to think about things that may have never crossed their mind. It challenges the reader to inspect the world that we live in today and how we personally fit into all of that. I enjoyed this book because it was comical while still being able to convey the message that Palahniuk is sending. It is a good book that people should read so that they can view the world of media and consumerism from a critical, outside perspective rather than that of a consumer.

[lildrafire · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This story isn't going to turn out to be what you expect by reading the blurb on the back cover--no, the story isn't about a survivor of a plane crash, but the survivor of a religious cult who goes from being a slave to his religious ideology to being the slave of another kind of ideology. Palahniuk takes us along for the bump, painful ride with Tender Branson, painting a bleak commentary about religion, fame, and society.

[sirroger · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Wow. In my book this is second-best after "Fight Club" out of Palahniuk's novels. It really kept me guessing. It doesn't feel too "preachy," either.

[tandu_2 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

It was good. Not my usual fare, but it kept me entertained.

[hvymetalmg · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is one of my favorite books. The author of Fight Club pens an outrageous tale that once again knocks religion, sex and comercialism. I don't want to give anything away, but needless to say it has a unique voice with a little darkness blended with some sarcasm.