Title: Diary Author: Chuck Palahniuk Publisher: Random House There's little doubt Chuck Palahniuk is one of the best writers in the world right now. After astutely capturing the disintegration of identity and subsequent vacuum in works like Fight Club and Invisible Monsters, he's moved post-US terrorism into narratives of social cohesion and the forces that dissolve them. In his latest, we're presented with a mother whose husband has attempted suicide and who is forced to work as a waitress to nouveau riche out-of-towners in a pre-twentieth century hotel. Fielding calls from irate customers complaining of rooms missing from houses her husband built, she becomes aware of a plot that will position her as saviour to her husband's old money community and protect them once and for all from the evils of tourism and hospitality. Of course the narrative runs much deeper and rawer - Palahniuk, far from being "America's most inventive nihilist" as the book blurb runs, is closer to Camus than Nietzsche, always aware of the personal plots that shape and dictate us, but always reminding us of the choices we make, the relationships into which we enter. Chuck's cognisance of the social pulse is as sharp as ever - what price do we pay for letting others into our town via tourism for the sake of money? What kind of nimbus showering emptiness is stretching out across our lands as everything becomes standardised, as coffee stores turn into lifestyle experiences that can be the same from Baghdad to Berlin? Do communities have the right to say no to Franchise Inc., and not suffer economic death as a result? And finally, is art ever just art or can it be something far more powerful, even explosive? Whilst Diary is perhaps a shift into the middle American terrain, Palahniuk hasn't turned into a literate Stephen King. There are no easy answers here, identities are still resifted after each discovery and you probably won't find Mr King writing about nipples being pierced deliberately with family heirlooms - of such things, love, or what counts in Diary for love, is made. It's only the almost-hokey ending that suggests a shift in Palahniuk's general direction yet it's wielded with a firm hand and a warning, that repetition awaits when similar choices abound. Finally, Diary reinforces one of Chuck's central ideas - we are who we invent ourselves to be.