Lullaby is a horror-satire novel by Chuck Palahniuk. It is the story of Carl Streator, a newspaper reporter who has been assigned to write articles on a series of cases of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome that have been happening recently. During his investigations into the cases, he finds that a copy of a book called Poems and Rhymes Around the World was at the scene of each death. In each case, the book was open to a page that contained an old African chant, or "culling song" as the novel often refers to it. As Streator learns, the culling song has the power to kill anyone it is spoken to or even thought in the direction of. After learning of it, Streator has it stuck in his mind, and as a result of his constant thinking of it he involuntarily becomes a serial killer. He then turns to Helen Hoover Boyle, a real estate agent who has confronted the culling song in the past and knows of its destructive power. While she is unable to help him stop using the culling song, she is willing to help him stop anyone else from being able to use it again. The two of them decide to go on a road trip across the country to find all remaining copies of the book and remove and destroy the page containing the song. However, there is some danger in their trip. Along for the ride with them is Helen's assistant, Mona Sabbat, and Mona's boyfriend, an eco-terrorist named Oyster. Streator now must not only deal with the dangers of the culling song, but the risk of it falling into the hands of Oyster, who may want to use it for sinister purposes.
Like all other Palahniuk novels, Lullaby has a meaning to it that revolves around social criticism. With Lullaby, Palahniuk criticises our modern society's use of culture as a means of profit or instant gratification without regard for the deeper meaning behind it.
