Carl Streator is a reporter assigned a story on Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. What he discovers will literally put the world in danger. Streator discovers that many of the babies died after their parents read to them a certain poem from a world anthology of poems and songs. When Streator finds that he's memorized the poem, he accidentally begins killing people.
With a fast-paced thrill of a plot like this, there is no doubt that Chuck Palahniuk's Lullaby will suck you in and keep you intrigued until the final word.
Streator realizes that to stop this lullaby from killing others, and to keep it out of the hands of people who will misuse it, he must find and destroy every copy of the book every printed.
Along his quest, he meets up with Helen Hoover Boyle, a quite unscrupulous real estate agent whose child also succumbed to the evil powers of the lullaby.
But Boyle has her own reasons for wanting to find and destroy all copies of the book. Boyle is actually in search of the original lullaby, which is an African "culling song" meant to invoke rebirth. If a person is not already dead, the song kills them. Boyle believes the song is from a book of spells that may include a way to bring her son back.
When Streator and Boyle team up, readers will need to suspend all desire for logic or reality as Palahniuk takes his characters into ever more bizarre, yet wholly entertaining, situations.
Throw in a coven of pagan nudists and you've got one heck of a wacky ride.
