Review | Fight Club’s Chuck Palahniuk takes unsubtle aim at Trump’s America in first novel for four years

Adjustment Day
by Chuck Palahniuk (read by Christopher Ragland)
Random House Audiobooks

3/5 stars

Chuck Palahniuk is best known for Fight Club (1996), which inspired the 1999 film starring Ed Norton and Brad Pitt. His relish for provoking and unsettling readers has made him a genuine star. Sadly, a fraudulent account at his literary agency has reduced him to near penury.

Agents, money, deception and movies swirl about in Adjustment Day, Palahniuk’s first novel in four years. An actor is all over the television promoting the killing of pointless public figures in response to an ongoing political crisis. Angry young men are drafted in by an ageing, self-serving senator to fight an unwinnable war in the Middle East. Subtle, this ain’t. Christopher Ragland sounds almost too reasonable for this hacking of Trump’s America and can’t elevate this above the best modern dystopias. James Kidd

Give People Money
by (and read by) Annie Lowrey
Random House Audio