Tell All is the latest novel by author Chuck Palahniuk, the mastermind behind such books as Fight Club and Choke among many more.  Tell All is a sort of twisted satiric take on old Hollywood and the kind of gossipy books written about it.  It’s written in the first person with Hazie Coogan, the woman who has no title (she often tells us what she is not) but pretty much runs the life of fading starlet Katherine Kenton.  She’s telling us the story in a unique manner, almost as if pitching us a script complete with shots.

Like all of Palahniuk’s books this one has it’s own style befitting of the story it’s telling.  This one is much more straightforward than some of his other attempts to challenge his readers by taking them out of the norm.  The style here is half movie, half name dropping.  There’s the movie feel in that Hazie lays out descriptions of what’s going on by describing the scene in the manner you might read in a screenplay, using terms like “medium shot”, “insert on”, etc.  For someone who works with shot names this made things crystal clear, but even if you’re not familiar with this sort of parlance, he never uses anything that you wouldn’t be able to figure out.  There’s also the way the chapters are laid out in a 3 act structure.  The name dropping part consists of, well, name dropping.  Famous names are everywhere and all in bold.  Now I admit I’m not an old Hollywood fan so a lot of these names were lost on me but if you are you’ll probably get a much higher appreciation of the book.

Anyway as for the story itself it moves fast.  Once you open this up you’re gonna not want to put it down until it’s over.  It grabs you and pulls you in, especially once you hit the second act and you’re treated to ever increasingly funny death scenarios.  Like a lot of Palahniuk’s books this one does carry a twist towards the end, but it’s one you can see coming a mile away.

One thing here though, and it’s in a lot of Palahniuk’s work, but due to the nature of some of his books and their styles there isn’t always room, the language here is a work of art.  He really bends the words into a vivid picture of not only a scene but of very specific feelings.

Overall I recommend this to anyone who’s a Palahniuk fan and everyone else, who really should be.  You can get the audio version over at Audible or check it out from Amazon: