Palahniuk’s fable of fervid masculinity fails to fully convince

Genre might allow the plot’s total implausibility to be forgiven, but there are a good many other elements of the story that fail to inspire

Fiction: Adjustment Day, By Chuck Palahniuk, Jonathan Cape, €17.95

At the outset of this new novel from Chuck Palahniuk, the US is about to declare war with the Middle East, and male students at a university campus in Oregon are on the edge of losing it. In one class, a biology lecturer plays a video of newly-hatched chicks having their gender checked at a poultry farm. Baby hens are fed and watered under ...