\u201cAre you there, Satan? It\u2019s me, Madison,\u201d declares the whip-tongued 13-year-old narrator of\u00a0Damned<\/i>, Chuck Palahniuk\u2019s subversive new work of fiction.<\/p>\n
The daughter of a narcissistic film star and a billionaire, Madison is abandoned at her Swiss boarding school over Christmas, while her parents are off touting their new projects and adopting more orphans. She dies over the holiday of a mari\u00adjuana overdose – and the next thing she knows, she\u2019s in Hell.<\/p>\n
Madison shares her cell with a motley crew of young sinners that is almost too good to be true: a cheerleader, a jock, a nerd, and a punk rocker, united by fate to form the six-feet-under version of everyone\u2019s favorite detention movie. Madison and her pals trek across the Dandruff Desert and climb the treacherous Mountain of Toenail Clippings to confront Satan in his citadel. All the popcorn balls and wax lips that serve as the currency of Hell won\u2019t buy them off.<\/p>\n
This is the afterlife as only Chuck Palahniuk could imagine it: a twisted inferno where\u00a0The English Patient<\/i>\u00a0plays on end\u00adless repeat, roaming demons devour sinners limb by limb, and the damned interrupt your dinner from their sweltering call center to hard-sell you Hell. He makes eternal torment, well, simply divine.<\/p>\n