Year of Publication: 2020
Length: 228 pages
Genre: Horror, satire
Foster Gates has spent seventeen years trawling the very darkest corners of the internet searching for his missing daughter, and revenge on those who took her. His quest leads him to Hollywood foley artist Mitzi Ives. Mitzi specialises in providing screams for horror and action films. She is the best in the business because her screams are so real, in fact they are harvested from people who are brutally murdered just for their death screams. Mitzi realises that she has inadvertently come across the perfect scream, one so powerful that it could have potentially deadly consequences.
Since his 1996 debut novel Fight Club, which was made into the classic 1999 film, Chuck Palahniuk has explored the darkest excesses of our modern world in shocking and savage funny novels, comics, journalism and adult colouring books. The Invention of Sound may not be Palahniuk's best book, but it is a well-written, disturbing and bleakly funny novel, which takes as it's basis one of the most ubiquitous but frequently overlooked aspects of filmmaking, the foley, which is basically creating ordinary sound effects for film and television. The novel moves between Foster Gates' dark quest for his daughter, the story of possible serial killer Mitzi Ives, and the experiences of former horror star Blush Gentry, who is kidnapped during a Comic Con. It's written in a fragmented, staccato prose, and is always readable, although it may be too bleak for some readers. Palahniuk over-eggs the pudding somewhat, piling twist upon twist, particularly at the end, with the introduction of a shadowy conspiracy.
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