the feminist librarian reads

Palahniuk has referred to this book as the female “Fight Club,” but in truth, there is no comparison. “Beautiful You” won’t resonate with legions of women the way “Fight Club” did with men. That’s because it doesn’t address a female desire — even though it is, ostensibly, at least at first, about female pleasure. Instead, it is centered — just as with “Fight Club” and most of Palahniuk’s books — around extreme male anxiety. This is his specialty: the neuroses experienced by supposedly feminized, emasculated men in corporate, capitalist and “post-feminist” America.