American Psycho - Bret Easton Ellis

Being one of those odd people who is truly fascinated by violent crime and people's motives for it (mainly because I can't possibly imagine anything motivating me to commit a violent crime...), I thought I'd really enjoy reading American Psycho. Hailed as a literary masterpiece by many, an unnecessarily gory romp by others, it seemed to contain all the ingredients to become one of my all-time favourite books. I was wrong. I shall never judge a book by its cover, or indeed its hype, again. I have a very strong stomach. It takes an awful lot to make me feel even remotely sick. I regularly watch the goriest of gory horror films for a giggle and have ...

Author: Bret Easton Elllis Publish Date: April 1991 Number of Pages: 399 Age Suitability: Strictly for adults with strong stomachs RRP: £7.99 Amazon Price: from £3.15 I, like most was aware of the stigma that followed American Psycho before I decided to read it. Perhaps the stigma and warnings of graphic violence and vulgar descriptions was part of what tempted me to buy it. I wanted to know if this book could really be as horrific and gut-wrenching as it sounded; whether the book had more going for it than just shock value horror. I wanted see for myself if this book really was a great contemporary classic novel to be celebrated, and ...

Ten years ago, when I was sixteen, all my friends were reading 'rubbish' like Sweet Valley High and Mizz magazine. But I was, and always have been, a huge fan of literature - good, bold literature - and I studied it at college in depth. I enjoyed deep tomes like Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar, and American Psycho, by Bret Easton Ellis, was recommended to me by a tutor who thought I'd like how it was 'deep and macabre'. He was right. The book, in my eyes, is nothing short of a masterpiece. It is so easy to look at horror or gore books as just that - one-dimensional, and only aiming for the shock factor, but this book has so many levels that it needs more than one ...