Everyone has heard about the Fight Club because the first rule of the Fight Club is… You don’t talk about Fight Club.

Fight Club is a book by an American journalist and novelist Chuck Palahniuk. It was first printed in 1996 and was an instant success. Already in 1999 a film was made starring such stars as Edward Norton, Brad Pitt, Jared Leto and Helena Bonham Carter.

This book has been on my list for a very long time. I had no idea what it is about (despite seeing film years and years ago), which was a bit scary, because of the title and how it seems to be a cult film. It’s definitely a pressure to take up and read something that you know most of the world loves. Well… I liked it. Is that good enough?

Fight club is a book about an insomniac, an office worker who lives a life he doesn’t love. He is looking for a way to change his life, when meets Tyler Durdan and Marla Singer. Soon though he finds a new way of letting everything out, he forms an underground fight club together with Tyler which meets in the dark and evolves in something much more then expected.

I usually don’t like these types of books. But this was surprisingly easy to read and the writing was good. I admit that it’s a good book, and I see why it is so popular, but I failed to connect with it or any of its characters on a deep emotional level. I didn’t care for the main heroes because they were made in that way (which is typical for these ‘deep but kind of hip’ books, where the characters are careless and deep but kind of hip).

The story was light and reading it was easy, which is quite the surprise, because I was expecting either something very serious or overdone fake deepness (you know, the one that stops making sense at some point), but no, this was actually pretty good. I liked some of the ideas expressed in this book and I must admit – thought that I should remember one or two things I had never thought about in my life.

But I didn’t love the book although I admit it is a good book. I continuously failed to be impressed by the events or plot twists, I failed to like any of the characters to the level I would care about them and generally had a constant feeling of ‘meh’, but with the slight twists that I didn’t regret sitting and reading it.

I had no ‘inside’ information about the story or the book. I have seen the film very long time ago and I am pretty sure that even if I tried, I wasn’t able to appreciate all the details in it and I also have zero memories of it (I didn’t even know who plays Marla), which was kind of cool, because I didn’t know anything at all about what is going to happen. Which created the second first experience for me.

Anyway, I am definitely going to watch the film again, because I feel like it might translate better to the screen and be one of those rare works of art, where you can say that the film was better than the book. I love Edward Norton, so I expect to be happy to watch him perform.

This book received two stars from me on my goodreads page and I would say that adults should read it, but I am not so sure about the angry teens who sometimes already feel like they’re above the law.

Let me know your thoughts on this world famous book and film and share your favourite scenes, so I could look out for them, when I watch the film. Cheerio!