Pygmy (Hardcover) -- signed or inscribed

Booklist, *Starred Review*

In a time of justifiable concern about terrorism, Palahniuk has written a hilarious novel about an unlikely terrorist cell: foreign-exchange students who arrive at a midwestern city, bent on unleashing Operation Havoc. The story unfolds in a series of dispatches from an unnamed 13-year-old agent, dubbed Pygmy by the locals. (That his reports are in broken English makes no sense, but the prose provides terrific opportunities for humor even if, at book length, it requires some effort.)

Despite Pygmy's command of the deadly arts, he is still a 13-year-old, prone to unwanted erections, and he is not the coolest kid in the cadre, either. The frisson around his internal, target-acquiring narrative, the locals unwitting perception of him, and his outsiders view of the routine humiliations inflicted upon high-school youth is so spot-on it produces a sense of deja vu: surely someone would have thought of this before. (Dispatch Sixth, treating Junior Swing Choir, is laugh-out-loud funny.)

Palahniuk leaps over the line of good taste and lands squarely on his feet. (Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2009, American Library Association.)