Lullaby

Carl Streator is a reporter investigating Sudden Infant Death Syndrome for a soft-news feature. After responding to several calls with paramedics, he notices that all the dead children were read the same poem from the same library book the night before they died. It's a 'culling song' - an ancient African spell for euthanizing sick or old people. Researching it, he meets a woman who killed her own child with it accidentally. He himself accidentally killed his own wife and child with the same poem twenty years earlier. Together, the man and the woman must find and destroy all copies of this book, and try not to kill every rude sonofabitch that gets in their way. Lullaby is a comedy/drama/tragedy. In that order. It may also be Chuck Palahniuk's best book yet.


There are more plot ideas in Chuck Palahniuk’s Lullaby than some writers manage in a whole book, Independent

Palahniuk starts with a throwaway thought - "what if words could hurt?" - and stretches it until it snaps, Arena

A black comic cauldron bubbling with contagious ideas, Time Out

Mr. Palahniuk further refines his ability to create parables that are as substantial as they are off-the-wall, New York Times

This is vintage Palahniuk: weird, creepy, twisted, upsetting, and ultimately a great read, Library Journal