A Review of Beautiful You By Chuck Palahniuk

I actually thought I might stop reading this book after the opening rape scene. Some times I find it hard not to finish a book once I've started. Beautiful You came out last fall, so it's a much fresher Palahnuik than his 1999 work Survivor was. It also seems like he is trying to up the shock value. Penny Harrigan, the protagonist of this novel, is an unfortunately one dimensional character. She seems to only be there so we can see her sexually gratified by men, women, coworkers, a billionaire, a homeless rapists, a Nepalese guru, and the list goes on. It's almost as if Palahnuik had written some sex scenes he really liked and decided to throw a plot around it. The arc wherein her billionaire lover enslaves 97% of the women in the industrialized world using nanites injected from the sex toys one of his companies, Beautiful You, sells and forces them to buy all the products his other companies produce is nearly as unbelievable as the flatness of Penny's character. The president and the queen of England are his former lovers who he controls with a little black remote control in his hand? Yes, it is overblown and ridiculous.

In the end Penny (fitting her name is an object, because Palahnuik objectifies her completely) fails completely to resist her lust for the billionaire Maxwell. He only dies by accidental impalement. Penny is still under his sway though and her final act is to solidify the enslavement of women worldwide and then retreat into a fantasy where she will likely die.