Author Chuck Palahniuk is famous for his novel, Fight Club, which has been turned into a 1999 movie, directed by David Fincher, which stars Edward Norton, Brad Pitt, and Helen Bonham Carter.
Palahniuk is known for his dark, satirical horror stories. His style of writing mimics the way an average person would tell a story: abbreviated sentences and limited vocabulary. Most of his novels also have the main character engaging with the reader in an aside, which offers numerous absurd philosophical opinions and thoughts regarding complex issues of death, mortality, childhood, parenthood, sexuality, and God.
In his 2002 novel, Lullaby, many infants all over instantly died with no cause or logical reasoning. Lullaby is the story of a writer, Carl Streator, whose own infant child died from this “sudden infant death syndrome”, who is assigned to write articles regarding these infant deaths. At every single crime scene, even his own child’s and wife’s, Streator finds that the same book, Poems and Rhymes from Around the World, is present, and it is always opened to the same page.
The page of the culling song.
What is a culling song? A culling song is a lullaby sung in Africa to give a painless death to the old or infirm. Whether spoken of even just thought, it can kill anyone instantly. Carl Streator unintentionally memorizes this poem and unintentionally becomes a serial killer, while investigating the curious case.
Does Carl Streator find a way to end this cruel, yet painless method of killing? And how?
