Ralph Lauren Chainsaw Massacre. (American Psycho - Bret Easton Ellis)

Member Name: lordted

Product:	American Psycho - Bret Easton Ellis
Date:	27/05/04 (64 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Original, Author's personal best, Darkly funny

Disadvantages: Pretty shocking!

You see, you may not get it. You may be so mainstream that you feel a book has to have a beginning, middle and end - how quaint. This book, more than any other by the author and certainly by the benchmark of modern authors, casts aside the dull and restricive notion of the novel structure. Thank God!

This book starts in the middle, has a middle bit in the middle and ends in the middle - in so far as it does not really end. Clear?

Pick it up and start reading it, you will see what I mean. But if that is too much trouble and you would prefer to read the reviewer's thoughts rather than the great work that dwarfs my humble scribbling, so be it...

American Psycho is superb - ground breaking novel style, very black comedy, utterly readable for possibly all the wrong reasons and of course the ultimate artistic prostitution: super hardcore high glamour homocidal porn-fest. Go on, read it, you'll see what I mean.

Believe me, I am in no way a prude but this book - the first and second time that I read it - really made me stop and think "Oh my God, this is shocking/disgusting/distasteful (even by my standards) but I am loving it". You will too, believe me.

A lot has been written about this snapshot of ultra-yuppie existence in New York at the end of the eighties. Patrick Bateman, son to old money, smooths his way through the incredibly shallow world of the "those that have" in an age when having is everything.

The cut of your suit, the restaurant that you ate in last night and whether or not you have tickets to 'that' show is all that matters. Everybody looks good in this world, though emotional/intellectual integrity and a shred of morality are not required in order to participate.

All of this vividly recreated hedonistic environment is bleakly contrasted with the shudderingly ugly world that exists in Patrick's head and his apartment. Men and woment are struck dow
n in a number of ghastly ways by Patrick - it has to be said the men are simply killed whereas the women endure Pat's wildest fantasies, sometimes drug assisted, en route to gruesome deaths.

From a staid and cynical standing start, the book shows you how far a creation like Patrick can go (or does it, because some of the novel is so strange that it implies the 'reality' is actually Pat's perception of the world rather than the facts) in a totally materialistic and hollow existence.

But when you read it, see the humour, see the sarcasm and above all, see the originality of this book. If you read any other books by this author, then read them before American Psycho, because this novel is far superior to anything that he has done before and since.

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