Chuck Palahniuk has a cult following of teenaged and twenty-something men that rivals the obsessed fans of boy bands at their peak. If you ever come close to seeing raised lighters and crowd surfings at a book reading, this is it.

Palahniuk is most famous for his book Fight Club, which was subsequently made into a movie starring Brad Pitt. An underground classic, the book is now being taught in college classes to examine modern masculinity. Like Harry Potter for a whole different group of people, Fight Club turned nonreaders into book lovers.

Palahniuk’s latest book is called Rant: An Oral Biography of Buster Casey. It’s bizarre, twisted, creepy and not for everyone (including me), but die-hard Palahniuk fans will rip through it. All the telltale Palahniuk signs are there: raw violence, rapid-fire prose and a shocking twist for an ending.

Rant tries to piece together the confused life story of one Buster “Rant” Casey, a disgusting person if there ever was one. Rant has a penchant for violence that takes an unusual form: He allows himself to get bitten by rabid animals and then transmits the disease to his peers through oral sex. Oh, and he likes poisonous spiders to bite him for the instant erection they induce.

This serial killer from a young age escapes the small town he was born in for the city of Middleton. In this city (set in a futuristic world), the population is divided into Daytimers and Nighttimers, who, rather uncreatively, stand for normal morality and the disturbed, respectively.

Rant, of course, falls in with the Nighttimers and becomes leader of a group of people who like to crash cars — that they’re driving — into one another to feel more alive. These people, collectively called the Party Crashers, mark their cars with special signals like Just Married signs or coffee mugs on the top of cars.

It is in one of these crashes that Rant dies spectacularly, which accounts for the format of the novel. Rant’s story is told as an oral biography. A group of creepy people obsessed with Rant — a woman he gave rabies to, for example – try to piece together Rant’s destructive past. This means readers never get to hear Rant’s voice, we just learn about him through other characters. This format makes Rant immensely readable because it is broken down into such small segments as different characters speak.

The ending falls into the “read it for yourself and then you’ll believe it” category. Two hints: it involves time travel and a resurrection story so similar to Jesus’ that it’s impossible not to draw a biblical connection.

Readers of interested in this novel should consider themselves forewarned – Palahniuk writes with grotesque abandon, sparing no senses. If you can’t stomach gore or extreme deviance, then Rant is not for you. If, however, you are already a Palahniuk fan, you’ll love this one.