Classic Palahniuk presents puzzles

The most recent product of the twisted mind of Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club, Survivor) employs the sense of the fast-paced, yet purposeful insanity that Palahniuk utilizes in each of his unique novels. Tell All embraces its author-mandated requirement to be utterly off-the-wall by exploring vintage Hollywood through the eyes of an image obsessed assistant/housekeeper/confidante to fading star Katherine Kenton.

This narrator, Hazie Coogan, watches as her boss faces divorces, a dying career and plastic surgery. However, it?s not until Webster Carlton Westwood III becomes the new man in Katherine?s life that Hazie must take action to prevent an illicit tell-all book from causing her boss? death.

What makes Tell All?s storyline so engrossing, however, isn?t this outlandish plot focus, but the massive volume of early Hollywood references found within the relatively short novel. These allusions, always bolded in the text, make sense of Hazie?s thoughts through culture-laden analogies. The real challenge for the reader becomes identifying these references, which range from obvious (Katherine Hepburn, Jesus or Este? Lauder) to obscure (Huey Long, Darvocet or the Seige of Atlanta). Embracing this challenge is essential to enjoying Tell All?s unique oddity; those who are not culturally-savvy will quickly find the amount of background knowledge needed to understand the novel incredibly grating.

However, for loyal Palahniuk fans, Fight Club devotees or film history junkies, Tell All is a brief, quirky opportunity to see a borderline realistic world through Palahniuk?s distinctive viewpoint; there?s a reason why the tagline reads ?it?s vintage Chuck.?