Damned

By: Chuck Palahniuk

Narrated by: Sophie Amoss

Length: 7 hrs and 42 mins

Publisher's summary

“Are you there, Satan? It’s me, Madison,” declares the whip-tongued 13-year-old narrator of Damned, Chuck Palahniuk’s subversive new work of fiction.

The daughter of a narcissistic film star and a billionaire, Madison is abandoned at her Swiss boarding school over Christmas, while her parents are off touting their new projects and adopting more orphans. She dies over the holiday of a mari­juana overdose - and the next thing she knows, she’s in Hell.

Madison shares her cell with a motley crew of young sinners that is almost too good to be true: a cheerleader, a jock, a nerd, and a punk rocker, united by fate to form the six-feet-under version of everyone’s favorite detention movie. Madison and her pals trek across the Dandruff Desert and climb the treacherous Mountain of Toenail Clippings to confront Satan in his citadel. All the popcorn balls and wax lips that serve as the currency of Hell won’t buy them off.

This is the afterlife as only Chuck Palahniuk could imagine it: a twisted inferno where The English Patient plays on end­less repeat, roaming demons devour sinners limb by limb, and the damned interrupt your dinner from their sweltering call center to hard-sell you Hell. He makes eternal torment, well, simply divine.

©2011 Chuck Palahniuk (P)2021 Recorded Books

Great voice acting. Deliciously bizarre story.

If you like Palahniuk, you'll like this. It's gross and weird and heart warming. The reader, Sophie Amoss, was the cherry on top.

something good for once

i loved this story way more than i should. great story telling and imagination. extremely intelligent 13 year old in hell, living her best, hilarious life.

Delightful

One of Chuck's best and a must read/listen if you are a fan of his

Palahniuk Does It Again

The Breakfast Club, in Hell.

Such a brilliant book, with witty writing that'll likely fly over most people's heads. This is another absolute masterpiece by Chuck.

Great book

I recommend this book, Palahniuk is funny yet makes biting comments on us as a society. I like this performer, she is clear in her speech yet shows emotion in her reading.

2 1/2 hours in

If the sad blue girl from inside out were to do the narrative of a dead 13 year old girl trapped in hell it would sound like this.

Big fan of Chuck Palahnuik Survivor being one of my favorites. This book just did not pull me along. If she would have said “yes I know the word…” one more time I don’t think I could have held in the scream of annoyance.

A Young-adult Version of Divine Comedy

I'm not new to the author, so that's not the reason of my rather tough criticism, in the contrary, my knowing his work is the very reason. We are used to novel ideas, styles, and plots from him, to some deep analysis age even philosophical excursions, and I found only very pale shadows of those here. This is very lazy writing, compared to his previous work. No proper research into theology -a main line of thought, if not 'the' main, no decent plot, no solid buildup, paper-thin characters with cinematic development at best, if any, and a hasty Grimm Brothers-like plot. Even the attempted humor came as diluted as YA level, or rather childish.

As much as I was anticipating this work, I am disappointed in how it ended up. The author needs to go back to his desk and read a lot about all religions and understand how deep some of them, like Islam, are, before going on to barely scratch the surface with media-like superficial comments. Literature is not based on Wikipedia. Then he needs to go back to respecting his writing and his readers instead of throwing these weaklings at them, relying only on his reputation.