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The Shards
A sensational new novel from the best-selling author of Less Than Zero and Imperial Bedrooms that tracks a group of privileged Los Angeles high school friends as a serial killer strikes across the city.
Bret Easton Ellis's masterful new novel is a story about the end of innocence, and the perilous passage from adolescence into adulthood, set in a vibrantly fictionalized Los Angeles in 1981 as a serial killer begins targeting teenagers throughout the city.
17-year-old Bret is a senior at the exclusive Buckley prep school when a new student arrives with a mysterious past. Robert Mallory is bright, handsome, charismatic, and shielding a secret from Bret and his friends even as he becomes a part of their tightly knit circle. Bret's obsession with Mallory is equaled only by his increasingly unsettling pre-occupation with The Trawler, a serial killer on the loose who seems to be drawing ever closer to Bret and his friends, taunting them--and Bret in particular--with grotesque threats and horrific, sharply local acts of violence. The coincidences are uncanny, but they are also filtered through the imagination of a teenager whose gifts for constructing narrative from the filaments of his own life are about to make him one of the most explosive literary sensations of his generation. Can he trust his friends--or his own mind--to make sense of the danger they appear to be in? Thwarted by the world and by his own innate desires, buffeted by unhealthy fixations, he spirals into paranoia and isolation as the relationship between The Trawler and Robert Mallory hurtles inexorably toward a collision.
Set against the intensely vivid and nostalgic backdrop of pre-Less Than Zero LA, The Shards is a mesmerizing fusing of fact and fiction, the real and the imagined, that brilliantly explores the emotional fabric of Bret's life at 17-sex and jealousy, obsession and murderous rage. Gripping, sly, suspenseful, deeply haunting and often darkly funny, The Shards is Ellis at his inimitable best.
Bret Easton Ellis's masterful new novel is a story about the end of innocence, and the perilous passage from adolescence into adulthood, set in a vibrantly fictionalized Los Angeles in 1981 as a serial killer begins targeting teenagers throughout the city.
17-year-old Bret is a senior at the exclusive Buckley prep school when a new student arrives with a mysterious past. Robert Mallory is bright, handsome, charismatic, and shielding a secret from Bret and his friends even as he becomes a part of their tightly knit circle. Bret's obsession with Mallory is equaled only by his increasingly unsettling pre-occupation with The Trawler, a serial killer on the loose who seems to be drawing ever closer to Bret and his friends, taunting them--and Bret in particular--with grotesque threats and horrific, sharply local acts of violence. The coincidences are uncanny, but they are also filtered through the imagination of a teenager whose gifts for constructing narrative from the filaments of his own life are about to make him one of the most explosive literary sensations of his generation. Can he trust his friends--or his own mind--to make sense of the danger they appear to be in? Thwarted by the world and by his own innate desires, buffeted by unhealthy fixations, he spirals into paranoia and isolation as the relationship between The Trawler and Robert Mallory hurtles inexorably toward a collision.
Set against the intensely vivid and nostalgic backdrop of pre-Less Than Zero LA, The Shards is a mesmerizing fusing of fact and fiction, the real and the imagined, that brilliantly explores the emotional fabric of Bret's life at 17-sex and jealousy, obsession and murderous rage. Gripping, sly, suspenseful, deeply haunting and often darkly funny, The Shards is Ellis at his inimitable best.
595 pages, Hardcover
First published January 17, 2023
About the author
Bret Easton Ellis
35 books11.6k followersBret Easton Ellis is an American author. He is considered to be one of the major Generation X authors and was regarded as one of the so-called literary Brat Pack, which also included Tama Janowitz and Jay McInerney. He has called himself a moralist, although he has often been pegged as a nihilist. His characters are generally young vacuous people, who are aware of their depravity but choose to enjoy it. The novels are also linked by common, recurring characters, and dystopic locales (such as Los Angeles and New York).
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March 5, 2024
bret: i've connected the two dots
me: you din't connect shit
disclaimer : i did not like this book and my review reflects of that. if you loved this book or if you are a diehard ellis fan, skip this review, don't @ me telling me i’m wrong for disagreeing with you or that everything that i didn't like was intentional: you are right, i didn't get it.
still, i was able to form opinions that i will express in the entirely subjective review below which is less a review than a long-winded cathartic rant in the vain of Ellis, so read at your own discretion.
This book had no business being this long. Sure, the first 100 pages or so were intriguing but i was bored by Bret's endless navel-gazing, horniness, and flexing (we get it, you have a gucci backpack and you lift weights) and the constant inane fighting with his 'cohort', which usually follows this formula:
-what are you suggesting?
b. what do you think i am suggesting?
-i think you are suggesting something.
b. why would you think that i was suggesting something?
-i just do
b. why would you say that?
-say what?
b. that i was suggesting something
- because you are.
b. i think robert is a FuCkiNG fREaK.
Banal, polemical, self-indulgent, misogynistic, sensationalist, verbose, and frankly, just all over the place.
Ellis is an edgelord who brought to mind those wannabe auteurs like Sam Levinson whose work is desperately trying way too hard to be transgressive and brilliant. Sure, sometimes you can bring to the table both flash and substance, but sometimes, like in the case of The Shards, your attempts at flashiness are so forced, so ostentatious, so desperate, that you end up stripping your work of any actual substance. At times it seemed that this book was trying to be something like TSH, other times it adopts a true crime quality, but ultimately, it only succeeds in being truly cringe.
I can think of so many works that succeed in exploring obsession, enmity, alienation, and repressed desire, in a way that The Shards just fails to. Titles like Apartment by Teddy Wayne, These Violent Delights by Micah Nemerever, New People by Danzy Senna, Old School by Tobias Wolff, Night Film by Marisha Pessl. There are several films (of dubious quality) that present us with two delusional boys playing mind games, doing something ‘bad’ together, and you are not sure who is lying or who has the upper hand or if they want to kill or fuck each other such as Like Minds, Murder by Numbers, and Super Dark Times, that would probably succeed in being less dull than The Shards.
Before this review devolves into what is likely to be a spoiler-y cathartic rant, I will give you the gist of things:
this is a 700-tome of a book that oozes self-importance but beyond giving us detailed descriptions of everything worn by his peers (i could google ‘what did vanilla rich white teens wear in 1981/82’), providing us with every single street name he drives on (with as much passion as a sat nav), and using the same repetitive imagery and language to describe the bodies of the men around him (we get it, you are a horny teenager), it has nothing to say. Bret’s alienation and emptiness are established in the very first chapters, the rest of the novel doesn’t really elaborate on his malaise further. The true crime angle...it comes across as subpar true crime podcast that wants (but fails) to be something like Zodiac or I'll Be Gone in the Dark There.
I genuinely thought that Ellis’ would have more to say about evil and the nature of evil, about darker instincts, violence, obsession, delusions, normalcy, queerness, about privilege. But it doesn’t. Sure, he succeeds in capturing the essence of a place and moment in time, but he often loses sight of the big picture, so that beyond presenting us with a generic group of rich white American kids whose successful parents are divorced/separated and emotionally distant (i can hear that *violin*), spend their time by the pool, partying, drinking and snorting coke, and the guys’ (whose personalities are variations of the bro/chad figure) exchange puerile wisecracks all the while blissfully unaware of just how privileged an existence they have.
Despite Bret thinking that the story he is recounting is the most shocking story of all time, it was boring, shallow, and stupid even. There, I have said it. I usually don’t stoop to the level of calling a book I didn’t like stupid but The Shards was stupid. Once we passed the 30% mark, I no longer felt affected by the trying-too-hard-to-be suspenseful atmosphere, and neither Bret’s insufferable internal monologue nor his interactions with the obnoxious people around him challenged or inspired me. This book has nothing really to say and I should have heeded ellis' dedication (“for no one”).
There is a long introduction that I did not read with close attention, as it was a lot of waffling and Ellis discussing how beneath his “prince-of-darkness literary persona” there is “an amiable mess, maybe even likable” (sure) and this story which has haunted him for years, and although he planned on writing it, for the longest time, he was unable to. The gist is that the events in The Shards supposedly happened. Still, The Shards is marketed as a work of fiction, so I decided to approach it as such. But, if pressed, in the case that the events in The Shards are truly drawn from Ellis’ own personal real-life experiences, here is what I think: that's questionable. Sure, in some vague capacity, they may have happened but there is a lot of stuff that is...not so credible. Maybe this is due to Ellis’ unrelenting over-dramatizing and his edgy self-fashioning, maybe due to how inane and unlikely certain exchanges between him and his friends were (in that they often seemed either scripted or hollow, like the type of conversations you have come across in media about american high schools), or maybe due him constantly going on about how at that point in time he wasn’t aware of the true narrative of things, in a way that tries to be suspenseful, makes you question who is playing who, but Ellis is so heavy-handed and repetitive in his foreshadowing that it really ends up being counterproductive.
I have read enough mystery novels and a lot of academia-adjacent novels where we follow a clique of friends but someone is a bad egg and someone is cheating on someone else and someone is maybe gay etc., that can’t say that I found the scenes focusing on Bret’s ‘friends’ petty discussions or in-group fighting to be particularly riveting. Especially when Bret tries to tell us that the people in his clique are actually friends, and that he even loves Thom and Susan. Thom, Bret establishes early on, is drop-dead gorgeous and like almost every other young man he is friends with he is invisible compared to a greek statue, and we are reminded time and again that they all are tanned, blond, muscular, and so on. Now, Thom, we are told, has the personality of a golden retriever. And that’s pretty much it. I often forgot about his existence and the generic lines he gives gave me some strong NPC vibes. This is fitting in a way since Bret has a serious case of main character syndrome and occasionally says shit with some very strong red pill vibes. There are the girls, Susan and Debbie, who predictably fall into the Madonna/Whore dichotomy. Susan doesn’t have a personality as such, beyond being beautiful. Time and again, Bret will remind us that she is something else, Not Like Other Girls. Yet, she very much sounds like other girls. She has the most generic personality, her most distinguishing trait is that of being the object of desire of Thom and of Robert. Then there is Bret’s girlfriend…where to begin. The way Bret behaves towards her is disgusting. And I’m not even talking about what happens later on in the novel but from early on. His distaste for her person and her body, his completely denying her a mind, feelings, personality, depth, and so on, was dehumanizing. Bret’s misogyny proves that yes, sometimes, misogynists do come in shapes that are different from your good ol’ standard cis straight man mold. From the careless way, he calls her slutty, to the way he suggests that the way she comports herself is solely to gain male attention, to him being neglectful and dismissive of her, to his feeling more sympathy for Thom (whose parents have divorced) than Debbie (her mother is an alcoholic, and her ‘closeted’ father makes passes to her male friends). The sex scenes with her were a mix of grim (ragazza, file a restraining order) and turgid (of course, making this 'slutty' girl orgasm is easy for bret). Then there are the two boys Bret has flings with, one is the dopey stoner, Matt, and the other one is this Ryan guy who is very much the epitome of the bro. But of course, the true centerpiece in the novel is Robert, the new guy.
Now for the first 100 pages, like I said, I feel almost hypnotized by the fevered quality of Bret’s recollections. In the opening pages time and again Bret says ‘I remember’, and the rhythm created by this repetition is mesmeric. These idyllic last days of summer brim with the promise of youth, yet, these are tainted by Bret’s ominous foreshadowing, as he refers to the danger to come, and that things will never be as they once were between him and his friends. Bret is suspicious of this new guy from the moment he learns about his existence, finding it strange that he would transfer for his senior year and that he was able to get into their exclusive school. We become aware that Bret believes he is playing pretend, a role even, and that once the school year is over he will be able to make a fresh start in college. The night before the first day of school, he happens to see someone sneaking around the school. The morning after, he learns that whoever snuck into the school likely was responsible for a perverse ‘prank’. Bret meets Robert, the new guy, who is nice enough, until Bret realizes that he saw Robert months earlier during a screening of The Shining. He brings this up but Robert denies that it was him. Bret keeps insisting in a way that is guaranteed to give second-hand embarrassment (that’s basically how he behaves throughout the novel). Bret tries to paint Robert as a sinister figure, hinting that on that first day, he was already lying to them about ‘stuff’. And by stuff, I mean that before enrolling in this school, he was in a psychiatric facility. Bret, who learns from Susan about this, decides that this proves that the guy is a freak. Bret convinces himself that Robert was responsible for the prank, based on him denying he was at the cinema + not telling Bret's clique that he was in a psychiatric facility (and why would he? the guy literally just met these people so not opening up about this doesn’t seem weird; after all, when bret learns about this he becomes hysterical, proving that robert was right in not disclosing his personal life story to them). Additionally, Bret seems to forget that he too is a liar. Anyway, Bret begins stalking Robert from the get-go and is scandalized that Robert catches him and isn’t happy with it (pretty sure bret calls robert a lunatic…which pot kettle mate). Every time he spends time with his bland group of friends Bret makes his outlandish feelings for and suspicions of Robert known and is frustrated that no one feels like he does. There are so many ridiculous scenes where an agitated Bret is about to have a hernia over Robert being a freak or responsible for ‘terrible’ things. Every-time Bret accuses Robert of this (to his face, to his friends, to adults) he is so apoplectic and hysterical it seemed weird that the people around him could move on from the frankly unhinged shit Bret just said.
Bret’s paranoia is exacerbated by the sight of Robert and Matt (the guy he sleeps with) talking, and when something is up with Matt, Bret decides that Robert is responsible.
Much of the narrative is about Bret either salivating over Robert or going on and on about what a ‘freak’ he is, often painting him as some sort of a ‘psycho’ mastermind. I swear, there were times when Bret is fixated on using a certain type of imagery when interacting with Robert, one that hints at Robert’s having several ‘faces’, that made The Shards come across as a third-rate Death Note. Bret’s morbid delusions are repetitive and seem to stem from him being attracted to and jealous of Robert, and being impressively ignorant about mental health (which is weird given that he paints himself as being intelligent and astute, a reader and film enthusiast…wouldn’t he have read sylvia plath? watched one flew over the cuckoo's nest?).
There are a lot of interactions that are about nothing. But not even in a realistic mumblecore way, these backwards and forwards were generic and often unconvincing. These conversations are meant to come across as intriguing, possibly hinting at the clique’s shifting allegiances and dynamics, but they succeed in only being bland and as insightful as a puddle. Bret’s friendship with these people is so shallow, that I didn’t ever feel particularly troubled by the supposed in-group tensions and petty fights. I understand that you might romanticize or come to mythologise certain aspects of your childhood or in this case your teenage years (which according to hollywood are everything), but then, make us care too. But no, we have to have these preposterous backwards and forwards that go nowhere and achieve nothing. Turns out that Thom and Susan tell Robert that Bret doesn’t like him, Bret is angry at first but this never goes anywhere (do i even care though?). Bret keeps wanting to get involved in the love triangle between Thom, Susan, and Robert not so much because he actually cares and is worried about Susan, but because he believes that Thom “didn’t deserve this” and he wants to keep his clique as is. Bret is so noisy and sanctimonious about Susan’s love life, often demanding to know how she feels about Thom and/or Robert. His distaste for Susan and Robert’s behavior is rich coming from the guy who eventually becomes involved with his gf’s father. But Bret is quite venomous when it comes to Susan and Debbie being taken by Robert, which again, is quite hypocritical given that he spends way too much time fantasizing about Robert’s body.
Eventually bad shit does happen and Bret is convinced that Robert is responsible. Not only because of him being a ‘freak’ and a ‘liar’ but at the party, Robert starts making obscene comments about what he would do to Susan. Rather than dissuading Susan from becoming involved with him by telling her what Robert said, whenever he speaks ill of Robert in front of others he just keeps going on about the same shit in a way that comes across as unfounded, irrational, and prejudiced, so no one, surprise surprise, takes him seriously. He even confronted Robert himself a couple of times, but these moments were far from suspenseful. The book wants you to think that it's this psychosexual cat-and-mouse game with a nihilistic vibe (in bret’s words: “numbness-as-a-feeling aesthetic”) but it all felt puerile, affected, and lacking any nuance whatsoever.
Funnily enough, I haven’t even spoken about the whole serial killer/cult/true crime aspect of the story. There is this killer on the loose, girls disappear, houses are being broken into, and pets disappear. All of this troubles Bret, but not the people around him. Time and again he believes someone else is in the house with him or that he is being watched and so on. He soon enough becomes convinced that it is Robert. Based on what…? His earlier (mis)conceptions and delusions and paranoia? I don’t know. I wasn’t expecting Bret the misogynist to care about the victims or wonder about their lives, their fears and desires, but I did think that he would question the motives of this killer, think about what drives or compels someone to enact such violence and depravity (nurture? nature?) but he doesn’t. Robert is a ‘certified’ freak. That’s that.
The story being set in LA also means that we get a ton of pages blabbering on celebrities, influential people, and the state of the entertainment industry in the 70s and 80s. The men in these rarefied spaces are granted semblances of personalities, and Bret even feels some degree of pity/empathy towards the ones he sees as old, washed-up, and pathetic. But…the women are not. This brings us back to Bret’s misogyny. Not only he doesn’t consider them as complex a being as man, but the way he talks about women left me with the impression that he did not attribute any sort of complexity or depth or intelligence, be it emotional or analytical, to them. Like many people who are way too obsessed with serial killers, he doesn’t give a shit about his victims (or at least, his female victims), he doesn’t think that someone like Debbie could experience anything meaningfully, he also views Susan as beautiful, and not much else, and sees her an object (either “unattainable” or be possessed by his bff thom), and all of the women over 30 are neurotic alcoholics.
I found Bret to be an arrogant, hypocritical, edgelord whose navel-gazing (seghe mentali) is by no means as shocking, subversive, or intelligent as it wants to be. You know how (often) other's people dreams are just boring? Even when they are convinced of their dreams specialness? And they insist on recounting them to you even when you make it clear you are not that interested? That’s how I felt listening to Bret's interior and exterior blathering.
I had the feeling that Ellis was trying hard to use certain motifs, but he does so inconsistently. But what really annoyed me was just how often Ellis felt the need to stoop to polemical asides, that try to make fun of younger generations for being pc, ‘sensitive’, and simplistic in their understanding of human nature (labeling people/things as good/bad)...in a way that, to use, as Ellis would say, the ‘parlance’ of today, is cringe. Mate, it’s embarrassing. Stop. We get it. Back then students could whistle at Susan and that was okay, she LIKED it even. Back then, a grown-ass man could proposition an underaged person, with the tacit and/or spoken understanding that in exchange for sexual favors they will be able to advance their career or something along those lines, without being labeled a predator. Boo-hoo. Bret even whines about when he thinks that someone like Thom would be called “in today’s parlance, a white privileged male, a king of the system”. Imagine that. How sad.
review continues in comment section
me: you din't connect shit
disclaimer : i did not like this book and my review reflects of that. if you loved this book or if you are a diehard ellis fan, skip this review, don't @ me telling me i’m wrong for disagreeing with you or that everything that i didn't like was intentional: you are right, i didn't get it.
still, i was able to form opinions that i will express in the entirely subjective review below which is less a review than a long-winded cathartic rant in the vain of Ellis, so read at your own discretion.
This book had no business being this long. Sure, the first 100 pages or so were intriguing but i was bored by Bret's endless navel-gazing, horniness, and flexing (we get it, you have a gucci backpack and you lift weights) and the constant inane fighting with his 'cohort', which usually follows this formula:
-what are you suggesting?
b. what do you think i am suggesting?
-i think you are suggesting something.
b. why would you think that i was suggesting something?
-i just do
b. why would you say that?
-say what?
b. that i was suggesting something
- because you are.
b. i think robert is a FuCkiNG fREaK.
Banal, polemical, self-indulgent, misogynistic, sensationalist, verbose, and frankly, just all over the place.
Ellis is an edgelord who brought to mind those wannabe auteurs like Sam Levinson whose work is desperately trying way too hard to be transgressive and brilliant. Sure, sometimes you can bring to the table both flash and substance, but sometimes, like in the case of The Shards, your attempts at flashiness are so forced, so ostentatious, so desperate, that you end up stripping your work of any actual substance. At times it seemed that this book was trying to be something like TSH, other times it adopts a true crime quality, but ultimately, it only succeeds in being truly cringe.
I can think of so many works that succeed in exploring obsession, enmity, alienation, and repressed desire, in a way that The Shards just fails to. Titles like Apartment by Teddy Wayne, These Violent Delights by Micah Nemerever, New People by Danzy Senna, Old School by Tobias Wolff, Night Film by Marisha Pessl. There are several films (of dubious quality) that present us with two delusional boys playing mind games, doing something ‘bad’ together, and you are not sure who is lying or who has the upper hand or if they want to kill or fuck each other such as Like Minds, Murder by Numbers, and Super Dark Times, that would probably succeed in being less dull than The Shards.
Before this review devolves into what is likely to be a spoiler-y cathartic rant, I will give you the gist of things:
this is a 700-tome of a book that oozes self-importance but beyond giving us detailed descriptions of everything worn by his peers (i could google ‘what did vanilla rich white teens wear in 1981/82’), providing us with every single street name he drives on (with as much passion as a sat nav), and using the same repetitive imagery and language to describe the bodies of the men around him (we get it, you are a horny teenager), it has nothing to say. Bret’s alienation and emptiness are established in the very first chapters, the rest of the novel doesn’t really elaborate on his malaise further. The true crime angle...it comes across as subpar true crime podcast that wants (but fails) to be something like Zodiac or I'll Be Gone in the Dark There.
I genuinely thought that Ellis’ would have more to say about evil and the nature of evil, about darker instincts, violence, obsession, delusions, normalcy, queerness, about privilege. But it doesn’t. Sure, he succeeds in capturing the essence of a place and moment in time, but he often loses sight of the big picture, so that beyond presenting us with a generic group of rich white American kids whose successful parents are divorced/separated and emotionally distant (i can hear that *violin*), spend their time by the pool, partying, drinking and snorting coke, and the guys’ (whose personalities are variations of the bro/chad figure) exchange puerile wisecracks all the while blissfully unaware of just how privileged an existence they have.
Despite Bret thinking that the story he is recounting is the most shocking story of all time, it was boring, shallow, and stupid even. There, I have said it. I usually don’t stoop to the level of calling a book I didn’t like stupid but The Shards was stupid. Once we passed the 30% mark, I no longer felt affected by the trying-too-hard-to-be suspenseful atmosphere, and neither Bret’s insufferable internal monologue nor his interactions with the obnoxious people around him challenged or inspired me. This book has nothing really to say and I should have heeded ellis' dedication (“for no one”).
There is a long introduction that I did not read with close attention, as it was a lot of waffling and Ellis discussing how beneath his “prince-of-darkness literary persona” there is “an amiable mess, maybe even likable” (sure) and this story which has haunted him for years, and although he planned on writing it, for the longest time, he was unable to. The gist is that the events in The Shards supposedly happened. Still, The Shards is marketed as a work of fiction, so I decided to approach it as such. But, if pressed, in the case that the events in The Shards are truly drawn from Ellis’ own personal real-life experiences, here is what I think: that's questionable. Sure, in some vague capacity, they may have happened but there is a lot of stuff that is...not so credible. Maybe this is due to Ellis’ unrelenting over-dramatizing and his edgy self-fashioning, maybe due to how inane and unlikely certain exchanges between him and his friends were (in that they often seemed either scripted or hollow, like the type of conversations you have come across in media about american high schools), or maybe due him constantly going on about how at that point in time he wasn’t aware of the true narrative of things, in a way that tries to be suspenseful, makes you question who is playing who, but Ellis is so heavy-handed and repetitive in his foreshadowing that it really ends up being counterproductive.
I have read enough mystery novels and a lot of academia-adjacent novels where we follow a clique of friends but someone is a bad egg and someone is cheating on someone else and someone is maybe gay etc., that can’t say that I found the scenes focusing on Bret’s ‘friends’ petty discussions or in-group fighting to be particularly riveting. Especially when Bret tries to tell us that the people in his clique are actually friends, and that he even loves Thom and Susan. Thom, Bret establishes early on, is drop-dead gorgeous and like almost every other young man he is friends with he is invisible compared to a greek statue, and we are reminded time and again that they all are tanned, blond, muscular, and so on. Now, Thom, we are told, has the personality of a golden retriever. And that’s pretty much it. I often forgot about his existence and the generic lines he gives gave me some strong NPC vibes. This is fitting in a way since Bret has a serious case of main character syndrome and occasionally says shit with some very strong red pill vibes. There are the girls, Susan and Debbie, who predictably fall into the Madonna/Whore dichotomy. Susan doesn’t have a personality as such, beyond being beautiful. Time and again, Bret will remind us that she is something else, Not Like Other Girls. Yet, she very much sounds like other girls. She has the most generic personality, her most distinguishing trait is that of being the object of desire of Thom and of Robert. Then there is Bret’s girlfriend…where to begin. The way Bret behaves towards her is disgusting. And I’m not even talking about what happens later on in the novel but from early on. His distaste for her person and her body, his completely denying her a mind, feelings, personality, depth, and so on, was dehumanizing. Bret’s misogyny proves that yes, sometimes, misogynists do come in shapes that are different from your good ol’ standard cis straight man mold. From the careless way, he calls her slutty, to the way he suggests that the way she comports herself is solely to gain male attention, to him being neglectful and dismissive of her, to his feeling more sympathy for Thom (whose parents have divorced) than Debbie (her mother is an alcoholic, and her ‘closeted’ father makes passes to her male friends). The sex scenes with her were a mix of grim (ragazza, file a restraining order) and turgid (of course, making this 'slutty' girl orgasm is easy for bret). Then there are the two boys Bret has flings with, one is the dopey stoner, Matt, and the other one is this Ryan guy who is very much the epitome of the bro. But of course, the true centerpiece in the novel is Robert, the new guy.
Now for the first 100 pages, like I said, I feel almost hypnotized by the fevered quality of Bret’s recollections. In the opening pages time and again Bret says ‘I remember’, and the rhythm created by this repetition is mesmeric. These idyllic last days of summer brim with the promise of youth, yet, these are tainted by Bret’s ominous foreshadowing, as he refers to the danger to come, and that things will never be as they once were between him and his friends. Bret is suspicious of this new guy from the moment he learns about his existence, finding it strange that he would transfer for his senior year and that he was able to get into their exclusive school. We become aware that Bret believes he is playing pretend, a role even, and that once the school year is over he will be able to make a fresh start in college. The night before the first day of school, he happens to see someone sneaking around the school. The morning after, he learns that whoever snuck into the school likely was responsible for a perverse ‘prank’. Bret meets Robert, the new guy, who is nice enough, until Bret realizes that he saw Robert months earlier during a screening of The Shining. He brings this up but Robert denies that it was him. Bret keeps insisting in a way that is guaranteed to give second-hand embarrassment (that’s basically how he behaves throughout the novel). Bret tries to paint Robert as a sinister figure, hinting that on that first day, he was already lying to them about ‘stuff’. And by stuff, I mean that before enrolling in this school, he was in a psychiatric facility. Bret, who learns from Susan about this, decides that this proves that the guy is a freak. Bret convinces himself that Robert was responsible for the prank, based on him denying he was at the cinema + not telling Bret's clique that he was in a psychiatric facility (and why would he? the guy literally just met these people so not opening up about this doesn’t seem weird; after all, when bret learns about this he becomes hysterical, proving that robert was right in not disclosing his personal life story to them). Additionally, Bret seems to forget that he too is a liar. Anyway, Bret begins stalking Robert from the get-go and is scandalized that Robert catches him and isn’t happy with it (pretty sure bret calls robert a lunatic…which pot kettle mate). Every time he spends time with his bland group of friends Bret makes his outlandish feelings for and suspicions of Robert known and is frustrated that no one feels like he does. There are so many ridiculous scenes where an agitated Bret is about to have a hernia over Robert being a freak or responsible for ‘terrible’ things. Every-time Bret accuses Robert of this (to his face, to his friends, to adults) he is so apoplectic and hysterical it seemed weird that the people around him could move on from the frankly unhinged shit Bret just said.
Bret’s paranoia is exacerbated by the sight of Robert and Matt (the guy he sleeps with) talking, and when something is up with Matt, Bret decides that Robert is responsible.
Much of the narrative is about Bret either salivating over Robert or going on and on about what a ‘freak’ he is, often painting him as some sort of a ‘psycho’ mastermind. I swear, there were times when Bret is fixated on using a certain type of imagery when interacting with Robert, one that hints at Robert’s having several ‘faces’, that made The Shards come across as a third-rate Death Note. Bret’s morbid delusions are repetitive and seem to stem from him being attracted to and jealous of Robert, and being impressively ignorant about mental health (which is weird given that he paints himself as being intelligent and astute, a reader and film enthusiast…wouldn’t he have read sylvia plath? watched one flew over the cuckoo's nest?).
There are a lot of interactions that are about nothing. But not even in a realistic mumblecore way, these backwards and forwards were generic and often unconvincing. These conversations are meant to come across as intriguing, possibly hinting at the clique’s shifting allegiances and dynamics, but they succeed in only being bland and as insightful as a puddle. Bret’s friendship with these people is so shallow, that I didn’t ever feel particularly troubled by the supposed in-group tensions and petty fights. I understand that you might romanticize or come to mythologise certain aspects of your childhood or in this case your teenage years (which according to hollywood are everything), but then, make us care too. But no, we have to have these preposterous backwards and forwards that go nowhere and achieve nothing. Turns out that Thom and Susan tell Robert that Bret doesn’t like him, Bret is angry at first but this never goes anywhere (do i even care though?). Bret keeps wanting to get involved in the love triangle between Thom, Susan, and Robert not so much because he actually cares and is worried about Susan, but because he believes that Thom “didn’t deserve this” and he wants to keep his clique as is. Bret is so noisy and sanctimonious about Susan’s love life, often demanding to know how she feels about Thom and/or Robert. His distaste for Susan and Robert’s behavior is rich coming from the guy who eventually becomes involved with his gf’s father. But Bret is quite venomous when it comes to Susan and Debbie being taken by Robert, which again, is quite hypocritical given that he spends way too much time fantasizing about Robert’s body.
Eventually bad shit does happen and Bret is convinced that Robert is responsible. Not only because of him being a ‘freak’ and a ‘liar’ but at the party, Robert starts making obscene comments about what he would do to Susan. Rather than dissuading Susan from becoming involved with him by telling her what Robert said, whenever he speaks ill of Robert in front of others he just keeps going on about the same shit in a way that comes across as unfounded, irrational, and prejudiced, so no one, surprise surprise, takes him seriously. He even confronted Robert himself a couple of times, but these moments were far from suspenseful. The book wants you to think that it's this psychosexual cat-and-mouse game with a nihilistic vibe (in bret’s words: “numbness-as-a-feeling aesthetic”) but it all felt puerile, affected, and lacking any nuance whatsoever.
Funnily enough, I haven’t even spoken about the whole serial killer/cult/true crime aspect of the story. There is this killer on the loose, girls disappear, houses are being broken into, and pets disappear. All of this troubles Bret, but not the people around him. Time and again he believes someone else is in the house with him or that he is being watched and so on. He soon enough becomes convinced that it is Robert. Based on what…? His earlier (mis)conceptions and delusions and paranoia? I don’t know. I wasn’t expecting Bret the misogynist to care about the victims or wonder about their lives, their fears and desires, but I did think that he would question the motives of this killer, think about what drives or compels someone to enact such violence and depravity (nurture? nature?) but he doesn’t. Robert is a ‘certified’ freak. That’s that.
The story being set in LA also means that we get a ton of pages blabbering on celebrities, influential people, and the state of the entertainment industry in the 70s and 80s. The men in these rarefied spaces are granted semblances of personalities, and Bret even feels some degree of pity/empathy towards the ones he sees as old, washed-up, and pathetic. But…the women are not. This brings us back to Bret’s misogyny. Not only he doesn’t consider them as complex a being as man, but the way he talks about women left me with the impression that he did not attribute any sort of complexity or depth or intelligence, be it emotional or analytical, to them. Like many people who are way too obsessed with serial killers, he doesn’t give a shit about his victims (or at least, his female victims), he doesn’t think that someone like Debbie could experience anything meaningfully, he also views Susan as beautiful, and not much else, and sees her an object (either “unattainable” or be possessed by his bff thom), and all of the women over 30 are neurotic alcoholics.
I found Bret to be an arrogant, hypocritical, edgelord whose navel-gazing (seghe mentali) is by no means as shocking, subversive, or intelligent as it wants to be. You know how (often) other's people dreams are just boring? Even when they are convinced of their dreams specialness? And they insist on recounting them to you even when you make it clear you are not that interested? That’s how I felt listening to Bret's interior and exterior blathering.
I had the feeling that Ellis was trying hard to use certain motifs, but he does so inconsistently. But what really annoyed me was just how often Ellis felt the need to stoop to polemical asides, that try to make fun of younger generations for being pc, ‘sensitive’, and simplistic in their understanding of human nature (labeling people/things as good/bad)...in a way that, to use, as Ellis would say, the ‘parlance’ of today, is cringe. Mate, it’s embarrassing. Stop. We get it. Back then students could whistle at Susan and that was okay, she LIKED it even. Back then, a grown-ass man could proposition an underaged person, with the tacit and/or spoken understanding that in exchange for sexual favors they will be able to advance their career or something along those lines, without being labeled a predator. Boo-hoo. Bret even whines about when he thinks that someone like Thom would be called “in today’s parlance, a white privileged male, a king of the system”. Imagine that. How sad.
review continues in comment section
January 13, 2023
This utterly absorbing pseudo-autofictional variation on Less Than Zero with thriller and un-true crime elements as well as an abundance of sex scenes reads like an over-the-top historical novel about the 80's - it's an eccentric pageturner and great, smart fun! Our protagonist and narrator is one Bret Ellis, a man who penned bestsellers like, you know, American Psycho. The fictional Ellis looks back at the year 1981 and the events that made him who he is: We learn about a psychopathic killer called the Trawler and an over-the-top cult who haunt Los Angeles, and they come for 17-year-old Bret and his friends who are seniors at the elite Buckley School - needless to say, real-life Ellis also graduated from Buckley.
In the novel, we meet the classic protagonists of every American high school drama: The simple-minded jock (Thom) and his prom queen girlfriend (Susan) - Bret is in love with both of them -, the spoiled rich friend of said prom queen (Debbie) who is Bret's girlfriend, the joint-smoking outsider (Matt) with whom Bret has sex, plus the hot mysterious guy (Ryan) with whom Bret also has sex (it's 1981, and people are not supposed to know about Bret being gay due to the stigmatization). The whole thing has a dark, sinister air: Most of the characters seem to know that they are playing roles, that this life of riches and parties is a charade, and of course there are tons of drugs, alcohol and sex to numb the pain. Enter Robert, the hot new guy (another stock high school drama character): Bret mistrusts him and, based on some possible hints, sets out on the quest to prove that he is indeed the Trawler, so a serial-killing maniac, all the while writing on a little novel called, you guessed it, Less Than Zero, about a bunch of disaffected high schoolers (ha! And did I mention that LTZ protagonist Clay has a poster of Elvis Costello on his wall, much like fictional Bret?).
With the arrival of enigmatic Robert and the sudden death of Bret's secret lover Matt, heightened paranoia begins to disrupt the relations between the characters: Inspired by Susan's dispassionate demeanor ("numbness as ecstasy"), Bret has long started to build up a wall of alienation, but now this gets fueled by his fear of the Trawler and his investigations into Robert's intentions - Bret becomes, as he says, "the tangible participant". He takes more and more drugs and becomes more and more unreliable - the fact that he is an aspiring writer known for his wild imagination also doesn't make him more trustworthy (this is a particularly wicked variation on the Künstlerroman). Another major factor dulling his perceptions is his constant teenage horniness: Even Robert might be terrifying, but he also turns him on. The novel is full of detailed sex scenes, as well as gruesome crime scene portrayals.
To the sound of 80's music, watching classic 80's films and wearing hip popper clothes from the decade, Bret and his friends seem determined to fit in the general Hollywood panorama, to hold on to appearances that give them safety, which, as every Ellis novel tells us, is an ultimately futile endeavor. What makes "The Shards" so unbelievably fun is how self-conscious, how meta the text is: Ellis invents his own origin myth, he claims to tell us why he took on his persona and how he garnered his reputation by serving us a tale of un-true crime that treats the 80's as a historical decade - which, of course, they are, but it's just so sovereign how Ellis laughs about the datedness of what first made him zeitgeisty. The American Empire of the 80's, it's long gone, and this author knows it.
Ellis remains a writer who refuses to be fully explained, to be placed and categorized - and he proves it with a novel that remixes his former work while turning the idea of autobiographical explanations into a travesty (see also Kracht's Eurotrash and Greene's Travels with My Aunt). Ellis indulges in shifting the portrayal of his fictional "Bret" character into someone untrustworthy and glamorously sinister, and I'm all here for the drama and the cheeky role play. With 700+ pages, this text could still be longer, because it is so enjoyable and, much like a series, opens a narrative space that invites readers to linger. I'd love to see this as a movie or a series - although a true-to-the-novel rendition would clearly be R-rated! :-)
Here's the Spotify playlist with all songs mentioned in the book: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2pE...
(Side note: Swiss Ellis fan and German-language literary superstar Christian Kracht recently published a novel about an author called Christian Kracht that also refers to his own debut novel, Faserland, and that also mocks the idea of an explanatory, autobiographical origin story - and Kracht's novel is called Eurotrash, a term mentioned six times in Ellis' American Psycho! WEIRD, and I love this crossover.)
In the novel, we meet the classic protagonists of every American high school drama: The simple-minded jock (Thom) and his prom queen girlfriend (Susan) - Bret is in love with both of them -, the spoiled rich friend of said prom queen (Debbie) who is Bret's girlfriend, the joint-smoking outsider (Matt) with whom Bret has sex, plus the hot mysterious guy (Ryan) with whom Bret also has sex (it's 1981, and people are not supposed to know about Bret being gay due to the stigmatization). The whole thing has a dark, sinister air: Most of the characters seem to know that they are playing roles, that this life of riches and parties is a charade, and of course there are tons of drugs, alcohol and sex to numb the pain. Enter Robert, the hot new guy (another stock high school drama character): Bret mistrusts him and, based on some possible hints, sets out on the quest to prove that he is indeed the Trawler, so a serial-killing maniac, all the while writing on a little novel called, you guessed it, Less Than Zero, about a bunch of disaffected high schoolers (ha! And did I mention that LTZ protagonist Clay has a poster of Elvis Costello on his wall, much like fictional Bret?).
With the arrival of enigmatic Robert and the sudden death of Bret's secret lover Matt, heightened paranoia begins to disrupt the relations between the characters: Inspired by Susan's dispassionate demeanor ("numbness as ecstasy"), Bret has long started to build up a wall of alienation, but now this gets fueled by his fear of the Trawler and his investigations into Robert's intentions - Bret becomes, as he says, "the tangible participant". He takes more and more drugs and becomes more and more unreliable - the fact that he is an aspiring writer known for his wild imagination also doesn't make him more trustworthy (this is a particularly wicked variation on the Künstlerroman). Another major factor dulling his perceptions is his constant teenage horniness: Even Robert might be terrifying, but he also turns him on. The novel is full of detailed sex scenes, as well as gruesome crime scene portrayals.
To the sound of 80's music, watching classic 80's films and wearing hip popper clothes from the decade, Bret and his friends seem determined to fit in the general Hollywood panorama, to hold on to appearances that give them safety, which, as every Ellis novel tells us, is an ultimately futile endeavor. What makes "The Shards" so unbelievably fun is how self-conscious, how meta the text is: Ellis invents his own origin myth, he claims to tell us why he took on his persona and how he garnered his reputation by serving us a tale of un-true crime that treats the 80's as a historical decade - which, of course, they are, but it's just so sovereign how Ellis laughs about the datedness of what first made him zeitgeisty. The American Empire of the 80's, it's long gone, and this author knows it.
Ellis remains a writer who refuses to be fully explained, to be placed and categorized - and he proves it with a novel that remixes his former work while turning the idea of autobiographical explanations into a travesty (see also Kracht's Eurotrash and Greene's Travels with My Aunt). Ellis indulges in shifting the portrayal of his fictional "Bret" character into someone untrustworthy and glamorously sinister, and I'm all here for the drama and the cheeky role play. With 700+ pages, this text could still be longer, because it is so enjoyable and, much like a series, opens a narrative space that invites readers to linger. I'd love to see this as a movie or a series - although a true-to-the-novel rendition would clearly be R-rated! :-)
Here's the Spotify playlist with all songs mentioned in the book: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2pE...
(Side note: Swiss Ellis fan and German-language literary superstar Christian Kracht recently published a novel about an author called Christian Kracht that also refers to his own debut novel, Faserland, and that also mocks the idea of an explanatory, autobiographical origin story - and Kracht's novel is called Eurotrash, a term mentioned six times in Ellis' American Psycho! WEIRD, and I love this crossover.)
January 23, 2024
AMERICAN PSYCHO
Mi chiesi se ci fosse un collegamento tra il richiamo del libro e il fatto che non fossi più interessato a scrivere per Hollywood.
Eppure, caro Brett, anche se non hai più voglia di scrivere per Hollywood, questa tua ultima fatica, il libro che ho appena finito di leggere, The Shards – Le schegge, cos’è se non un grande omaggio a Hollywood? A quei film, tipo il recente magnifico Babylon di Damien Chazelle. A quel cinema che sa trasformare in epica la storia anche più ordinaria. Che ha tendenza all’autocelebrazione. Che intrattiene e al contempo spinge a riflettere. Che è curato in ogni dettaglio (visivo - e infatti, le debolezze più manifeste sono caso mai sulla scrittura, cinema indie a parte, ma quello è un altro discorso). Che è mastodontico, non più confinabile nel limite dei cento minuti (ma nulla mi toglie l’idea che dipenda soprattutto dal trionfo del video e dalla progressiva sparizione della pellicola).
E poi, caro Brett, negli anni che racconti, quelli del Betamax, anch’io ero dalle tue parti, solo un po’ più a nord. Studiavamo cose diverse, ma entrambi a un college/università. Anni indimenticabili della mia vita. E anche della tua sembrerebbe a leggerti qui.
Ma non ce ne fregava niente: eravamo fatti e giovani ed era una tiepida sera di primavera e stavamo entrando nel mondo degli adulti.
Mondo nel quale da quella parti si entra a sedici anni, l’età della patente. E quindi, prima che adulti, ciò che conta è diventare autonomi, avere una macchina, quattro ruote e le chiavi di casa, andare dove si vuole, e tornare all’ora che si vuole.
Poi, certo, le cose possono migliorare se si è ricevuto in dono un portapillole di Gucci – oggettini che ricordo bene – da riempire di pillole, pilloline, polverina, magia, e sogni.
Caro Bret, hai scoperchiato il mio vaso dei ricordi. Forse perché ripeti spesso, ricordo, io ricordo.
Ma io credo dipenda soprattutto dal fatto che sei bravo, che sei uno scrittore che sa confondermi, facendomi credere che quello che scrivi sia tutto vero. Che la Los Angeles flagellata dal serial killer faccia venire alla mente i romanzi di Ellroy. Mentre è facile – o almeno dovrebbe esserlo – supporre che il gioco di incastri è raffinato, sai mischiare ad arte vero e falso, verità e finzione. E che il Pescatore a Strascico, e Matt e Thom e Debbie e Susan siano tutte invenzioni del tuo talento narrativo.
E certo ci voleva la tua abilità per farmi interessare e amare una banda di adolescenti ricchi e viziati e privilegiati, rigorosamente bianchi, iscritti a un club sulla spiaggia che tra i suoi soci non accetta né ebrei né neri, perennemente fatti o strafatti di sostanze varie (erba, coca, Valium, Quaalude – quarant’anni dopo, Tavor e Xanax) e/o alcol (vodka e tequila – quarant’anni dopo, gin), sempre firmati dalla testa ai piedi (anche se poi nella scelta dello shampoo e del bagno schiuma vanno molto sul banale), automuniti di Corvette, Mercedes, Porsche, Jaguar, con serbatoio illimitato. Farmi palpitare per questi Susan e Debbie e Bret e Ryan e Matt e Thom e Robert che del mondo conoscono MTV sitcom e soap opera più qualche film, che aprono un quotidiano solo per vedere l’inizio degli spettacoli e i concerti in programma.
Insomma, caro Bret, se le tue settecento pagine abbondanti le ho lette in poco più di quattro giorni, un motivo ci sarà; se il tuo libro non riuscivo a chiuderlo e metterlo giù, un motivo ci sarà; se ti ho divorato, e quando diventi violento e sadico e horror mi hai messo perfino strizza, un motivo c’è.
era festoso, era divertente, era ‘gay’
Eravate dèi, vero Bret? Belli, splendenti, folgoranti. Ma, innocenti mai, quello proprio no.
O devo pensare che anche adesso ti piace esagerare e tutto lo splendore che racconti, di Robert e Thom e Ryan, è il tuo gusto di aggiungere e colorare e rendere più interessante? E anche se son passati quarant’anni, anche col senno di poi, rimani lo stesso Bret del 1981, diciassettenne, quello che esagerava, come i tuoi amici sapevano bene.
quell’estetica “insensibilità come sentimento” che mi attirava tanto e che stavo cercando di perfezionare in “Meno di zero”… l’insensibilità come sentimento, l’insensibilità come movente, l’insensibilità come ragione d’esistere, l’insensibilità come estasi.
Parli del Pontormo, del suo splendido quadro sulla Deposizione, con quei colori pazzeschi: che tu sembri voler trasferire ai vestiti indossati dai tuoi personaggi, e come ti sai prendere i tuoi tempi, come sai dilatare le pagine, lasciare il lettore nell’attesa, e colorare le atmosfere, renderle, come sai arricchire di dettagli, il mestiere consolidato che dimostri e sfoggi, la scelta di un mega romanzo da oltre settecento pagine… questo e altro fanno pensare che anche per te, questa volta, come per il Pontormo a suo tempo, si possa parlare di manierismo (adoro quel periodo pittorico, sono i miei eroi, ho rivoltato Firenze a caccia di tutti quei dipinti, chiedendo permessi e facendomi aprire porte normalmente chiuse).
Non sapevo esattamente come descrivere “Meno di zero”. E non volevo farlo: era su di ‘me’ ma non c’era una storia, c’erano ‘scene’ ma non aveva una vera trama, c’era solo un tono sordo, divagante, che cercavo di perfezionare… a me non importava cosa ‘facessero’ i personaggi. Esistevano, e volevo solo trasmettere uno stato d’animo, immergere il lettore in un’atmosfera particolare creata da dettagli attentamente selezionati.
E se a questo giro ti tratto bene e con affetto e perché tu per primo mi hai trattato bene, e con affetto, regalandomi questo corposo divertente libro che ti vede tornato ai tuoi tempi migliori. Al punto che ti esibisci in un micro mea-culpa che molto ti fa perdonare:
Quel personaggio tipo principe delle tenebre che i miei lettori da sempre pensavano incarnassi stava infine svanendo, per essere sostituito da qualcuno di più solare – l’uomo che aveva scritto “American Psycho”, scoprivano certi con stupore, era in realtà un affabile disastro, forse addirittura simpatico, lontanissimo da quel nichilista superficiale che tanti mi avevano cucito addosso e con cui probabilmente avevo gigioneggiato. Ma non si era mai trattato di una posa studiata.
E poi non devo, né posso, dimenticare che come me sei un grande fan di Joan, questa passione la condividiamo.
E poi, mi sa che questa volta hai superato te stesso. E adesso non ho più scuse, uno o due dei tuoi storici, devo andare a recuperarlo.
Mi chiesi se ci fosse un collegamento tra il richiamo del libro e il fatto che non fossi più interessato a scrivere per Hollywood.
Eppure, caro Brett, anche se non hai più voglia di scrivere per Hollywood, questa tua ultima fatica, il libro che ho appena finito di leggere, The Shards – Le schegge, cos’è se non un grande omaggio a Hollywood? A quei film, tipo il recente magnifico Babylon di Damien Chazelle. A quel cinema che sa trasformare in epica la storia anche più ordinaria. Che ha tendenza all’autocelebrazione. Che intrattiene e al contempo spinge a riflettere. Che è curato in ogni dettaglio (visivo - e infatti, le debolezze più manifeste sono caso mai sulla scrittura, cinema indie a parte, ma quello è un altro discorso). Che è mastodontico, non più confinabile nel limite dei cento minuti (ma nulla mi toglie l’idea che dipenda soprattutto dal trionfo del video e dalla progressiva sparizione della pellicola).
E poi, caro Brett, negli anni che racconti, quelli del Betamax, anch’io ero dalle tue parti, solo un po’ più a nord. Studiavamo cose diverse, ma entrambi a un college/università. Anni indimenticabili della mia vita. E anche della tua sembrerebbe a leggerti qui.
Ma non ce ne fregava niente: eravamo fatti e giovani ed era una tiepida sera di primavera e stavamo entrando nel mondo degli adulti.
Mondo nel quale da quella parti si entra a sedici anni, l’età della patente. E quindi, prima che adulti, ciò che conta è diventare autonomi, avere una macchina, quattro ruote e le chiavi di casa, andare dove si vuole, e tornare all’ora che si vuole.
Poi, certo, le cose possono migliorare se si è ricevuto in dono un portapillole di Gucci – oggettini che ricordo bene – da riempire di pillole, pilloline, polverina, magia, e sogni.
Caro Bret, hai scoperchiato il mio vaso dei ricordi. Forse perché ripeti spesso, ricordo, io ricordo.
Ma io credo dipenda soprattutto dal fatto che sei bravo, che sei uno scrittore che sa confondermi, facendomi credere che quello che scrivi sia tutto vero. Che la Los Angeles flagellata dal serial killer faccia venire alla mente i romanzi di Ellroy. Mentre è facile – o almeno dovrebbe esserlo – supporre che il gioco di incastri è raffinato, sai mischiare ad arte vero e falso, verità e finzione. E che il Pescatore a Strascico, e Matt e Thom e Debbie e Susan siano tutte invenzioni del tuo talento narrativo.
E certo ci voleva la tua abilità per farmi interessare e amare una banda di adolescenti ricchi e viziati e privilegiati, rigorosamente bianchi, iscritti a un club sulla spiaggia che tra i suoi soci non accetta né ebrei né neri, perennemente fatti o strafatti di sostanze varie (erba, coca, Valium, Quaalude – quarant’anni dopo, Tavor e Xanax) e/o alcol (vodka e tequila – quarant’anni dopo, gin), sempre firmati dalla testa ai piedi (anche se poi nella scelta dello shampoo e del bagno schiuma vanno molto sul banale), automuniti di Corvette, Mercedes, Porsche, Jaguar, con serbatoio illimitato. Farmi palpitare per questi Susan e Debbie e Bret e Ryan e Matt e Thom e Robert che del mondo conoscono MTV sitcom e soap opera più qualche film, che aprono un quotidiano solo per vedere l’inizio degli spettacoli e i concerti in programma.
Insomma, caro Bret, se le tue settecento pagine abbondanti le ho lette in poco più di quattro giorni, un motivo ci sarà; se il tuo libro non riuscivo a chiuderlo e metterlo giù, un motivo ci sarà; se ti ho divorato, e quando diventi violento e sadico e horror mi hai messo perfino strizza, un motivo c’è.
era festoso, era divertente, era ‘gay’
Eravate dèi, vero Bret? Belli, splendenti, folgoranti. Ma, innocenti mai, quello proprio no.
O devo pensare che anche adesso ti piace esagerare e tutto lo splendore che racconti, di Robert e Thom e Ryan, è il tuo gusto di aggiungere e colorare e rendere più interessante? E anche se son passati quarant’anni, anche col senno di poi, rimani lo stesso Bret del 1981, diciassettenne, quello che esagerava, come i tuoi amici sapevano bene.
quell’estetica “insensibilità come sentimento” che mi attirava tanto e che stavo cercando di perfezionare in “Meno di zero”… l’insensibilità come sentimento, l’insensibilità come movente, l’insensibilità come ragione d’esistere, l’insensibilità come estasi.
Parli del Pontormo, del suo splendido quadro sulla Deposizione, con quei colori pazzeschi: che tu sembri voler trasferire ai vestiti indossati dai tuoi personaggi, e come ti sai prendere i tuoi tempi, come sai dilatare le pagine, lasciare il lettore nell’attesa, e colorare le atmosfere, renderle, come sai arricchire di dettagli, il mestiere consolidato che dimostri e sfoggi, la scelta di un mega romanzo da oltre settecento pagine… questo e altro fanno pensare che anche per te, questa volta, come per il Pontormo a suo tempo, si possa parlare di manierismo (adoro quel periodo pittorico, sono i miei eroi, ho rivoltato Firenze a caccia di tutti quei dipinti, chiedendo permessi e facendomi aprire porte normalmente chiuse).
Non sapevo esattamente come descrivere “Meno di zero”. E non volevo farlo: era su di ‘me’ ma non c’era una storia, c’erano ‘scene’ ma non aveva una vera trama, c’era solo un tono sordo, divagante, che cercavo di perfezionare… a me non importava cosa ‘facessero’ i personaggi. Esistevano, e volevo solo trasmettere uno stato d’animo, immergere il lettore in un’atmosfera particolare creata da dettagli attentamente selezionati.
E se a questo giro ti tratto bene e con affetto e perché tu per primo mi hai trattato bene, e con affetto, regalandomi questo corposo divertente libro che ti vede tornato ai tuoi tempi migliori. Al punto che ti esibisci in un micro mea-culpa che molto ti fa perdonare:
Quel personaggio tipo principe delle tenebre che i miei lettori da sempre pensavano incarnassi stava infine svanendo, per essere sostituito da qualcuno di più solare – l’uomo che aveva scritto “American Psycho”, scoprivano certi con stupore, era in realtà un affabile disastro, forse addirittura simpatico, lontanissimo da quel nichilista superficiale che tanti mi avevano cucito addosso e con cui probabilmente avevo gigioneggiato. Ma non si era mai trattato di una posa studiata.
E poi non devo, né posso, dimenticare che come me sei un grande fan di Joan, questa passione la condividiamo.
E poi, mi sa che questa volta hai superato te stesso. E adesso non ho più scuse, uno o due dei tuoi storici, devo andare a recuperarlo.
February 7, 2023
Did I just read this nearly 750 page book in two days? Tell me you’re crazy without telling me you’re crazy. In my defense, I didn’t realize how long this was before I requested it from the library. I simply saw B.E.E. had a new release and Mitchell said he would hurt me if I didn’t get it immediately. I think I was like a billion and a half down the wait list too, but ended up getting this within a week of asking for it so I think it’s safe to say others either were intimidated by the sheer volume or realized pretty darn quickly this wasn’t for them and returned it. And to whoever you are I say THANK YOU for letting me get my grubby little mitts on it post haste.
Now on to the book. Simply put, this is about . . . .
“the memories I had of the Trawler and more specifically of Robert Mallory.”
Written as a nonfiction narrative, this one is for the Bret Easton Ellis superfan. I mean, if you ever wanted to crawl around inside this fella’s brain, The Shards is the one for you! After finishing I did a Google to see what was said about this “true story” before it was released and I am amazed at how many people were duped. Dear Dummies: YOU LITERALLY HAVE A COMPUTER ATTACHED TO YOUR HAND ALMOST ALL THE TIME. It’s not hard to find out these cases didn’t actually happen. Not to mention he is an author who previously wrote a “true story” about fucking vampires. And also . . .
I was a storyteller and I liked decorating an otherwise mundane incident that maybe contained one or two facts that made it initially interesting to be retold in the first place but not really, but adding a detail or two that elevated the story into something legitimately interesting to the listener and gave it humor or surprise or shock, and this came naturally to me. These weren’t lies exactly – I just preferred the exaggerated version.
I just found out this was initially released as a serial story – new entries were written every two weeks and read by Ellis himself on his podcast. My first reaction to that? Oh yeah, I would have read the crap out of this as a serial. Followed immediately by, ewwwww, B.E.E. even YOU have a podcast?
With that knowledge now is the time to disclose that while I’m the first to say “don’t you have an editor?!?!?!?!” – on this occasion I’m giving a pass – because there literally was no editor nor any intention that this would be released as a physical book when it was initially created.
But I wasn’t kidding when I said this is for the superfan. Basically it reads like a high school journal written by someone with extreme literary chops and covers Bret Easton Ellis’ senior year at Buckley in 1981. Ellis more than dabbles in sex (both of the hetero and nonhetero varieties) and drugs, works on his debut novel Less Than Zero, finds himself a member of the “me too” movement nearly 40 years prior to its time and develops a bit of an obsession with the new boy in school who he believes might just be a serial killer. Oh, and also? It is QUINTESSENTIALLY 1980s. We’re talking popped collars, Topsiders, ray bans and a detailing of every single song that was playing at any moment throughout his days. It certainly is not a book for everyone, but it was most definitely for me. All the Stars.
Whistling tunes we hide in the dunes by the seaside . . . .
Now on to the book. Simply put, this is about . . . .
“the memories I had of the Trawler and more specifically of Robert Mallory.”
Written as a nonfiction narrative, this one is for the Bret Easton Ellis superfan. I mean, if you ever wanted to crawl around inside this fella’s brain, The Shards is the one for you! After finishing I did a Google to see what was said about this “true story” before it was released and I am amazed at how many people were duped. Dear Dummies: YOU LITERALLY HAVE A COMPUTER ATTACHED TO YOUR HAND ALMOST ALL THE TIME. It’s not hard to find out these cases didn’t actually happen. Not to mention he is an author who previously wrote a “true story” about fucking vampires. And also . . .
I was a storyteller and I liked decorating an otherwise mundane incident that maybe contained one or two facts that made it initially interesting to be retold in the first place but not really, but adding a detail or two that elevated the story into something legitimately interesting to the listener and gave it humor or surprise or shock, and this came naturally to me. These weren’t lies exactly – I just preferred the exaggerated version.
I just found out this was initially released as a serial story – new entries were written every two weeks and read by Ellis himself on his podcast. My first reaction to that? Oh yeah, I would have read the crap out of this as a serial. Followed immediately by, ewwwww, B.E.E. even YOU have a podcast?
With that knowledge now is the time to disclose that while I’m the first to say “don’t you have an editor?!?!?!?!” – on this occasion I’m giving a pass – because there literally was no editor nor any intention that this would be released as a physical book when it was initially created.
But I wasn’t kidding when I said this is for the superfan. Basically it reads like a high school journal written by someone with extreme literary chops and covers Bret Easton Ellis’ senior year at Buckley in 1981. Ellis more than dabbles in sex (both of the hetero and nonhetero varieties) and drugs, works on his debut novel Less Than Zero, finds himself a member of the “me too” movement nearly 40 years prior to its time and develops a bit of an obsession with the new boy in school who he believes might just be a serial killer. Oh, and also? It is QUINTESSENTIALLY 1980s. We’re talking popped collars, Topsiders, ray bans and a detailing of every single song that was playing at any moment throughout his days. It certainly is not a book for everyone, but it was most definitely for me. All the Stars.
Whistling tunes we hide in the dunes by the seaside . . . .
March 1, 2024
The author opens up with a section telling how it’s taken him some forty years to write this book. It is, he says, based on events he witnessed; acts of violence perpetrated on people he knew, friends. He says that he’d tried to write the book years ago but at that time the act of recalling events he’d lived through had freaked him out so much he’d ended up in hospital, suffering from the mother of all panic attacks. When he was a high school senior, at seventeen years of age, a new boy had arrived at his school and joined his friendship group. This boy, it was later revealed, had had a difficult past and though on the face of it he seemed to be fully adjusted, he was actually anything but. He was to become a prowler, a killer and he was to badly hurt at least one of Bret’s close friends.
Bret Easton Ellis attended The Buckley School in Los Angeles, an establishment available to the rich and pampered. At the time of the events he covers here his parents were away on a long trip abroad, so he’d been left at home for an extended period with the family dog and a maid who prepared his breakfast and cleaned up after him. All his friends similarly lived in grand houses, drove expensive cars and seemed to have free rein to do whatever they wanted. In addition, they all had access to the drugs of their choice. Bret had a girlfriend, Debbie, but in all honesty he wasn’t sure if he preferred guys; he was at that juncture where adolescence is about to make way to adulthood, but he wasn’t quite there – he references this thought a number of times.
Set in 1981, Bret talks a lot about the music he and his friends were listening to, and this fixed the timeframe in my mind too, with British singers such as Joe Jackson, Elvis Costello and Glenn Tilbrook also being amongst my favourites in the early Eighties. Having been transfixed by the opening section I truly believed I was reading a true account of events Bret had lived through, and yet as I came across long conversations which he repeated seemingly verbatim and detailed recollections regarding his own thoughts at that time, I concluded that a degree of artistic license was in play. So what was this: a factual account, a piece of fiction or something in between? I couldn’t really work it out. But I didn’t dwell on this too long as either way I was fully invested by now.
It’s a lengthy story - I listened to a 22 hour long audio version, read by the author – but every time I paused I just couldn’t wait to get back to it. I found it to be such a compelling story, and hearing it told through Bret’s voice added something for me. It just felt right. There’s a lot sex and violence here, much of it very graphic. There are other disturbing scenes too, so this one is definitely not for the squeamish or faint-hearted. But there is a richness in the writing and in the narrative that I believe lifts it above all but the very best books. As I approached the end I thought I’d worked it all out, but a surprising and somewhat ambiguous ending cast some doubt on that. It’s definitely one of the most mysterious, addictive and truly impactful books I’ve come across in a very long time.
My sincere thanks to W. F. Howes Ltd for supplying a copy of this audiobook, via NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.
Bret Easton Ellis attended The Buckley School in Los Angeles, an establishment available to the rich and pampered. At the time of the events he covers here his parents were away on a long trip abroad, so he’d been left at home for an extended period with the family dog and a maid who prepared his breakfast and cleaned up after him. All his friends similarly lived in grand houses, drove expensive cars and seemed to have free rein to do whatever they wanted. In addition, they all had access to the drugs of their choice. Bret had a girlfriend, Debbie, but in all honesty he wasn’t sure if he preferred guys; he was at that juncture where adolescence is about to make way to adulthood, but he wasn’t quite there – he references this thought a number of times.
Set in 1981, Bret talks a lot about the music he and his friends were listening to, and this fixed the timeframe in my mind too, with British singers such as Joe Jackson, Elvis Costello and Glenn Tilbrook also being amongst my favourites in the early Eighties. Having been transfixed by the opening section I truly believed I was reading a true account of events Bret had lived through, and yet as I came across long conversations which he repeated seemingly verbatim and detailed recollections regarding his own thoughts at that time, I concluded that a degree of artistic license was in play. So what was this: a factual account, a piece of fiction or something in between? I couldn’t really work it out. But I didn’t dwell on this too long as either way I was fully invested by now.
It’s a lengthy story - I listened to a 22 hour long audio version, read by the author – but every time I paused I just couldn’t wait to get back to it. I found it to be such a compelling story, and hearing it told through Bret’s voice added something for me. It just felt right. There’s a lot sex and violence here, much of it very graphic. There are other disturbing scenes too, so this one is definitely not for the squeamish or faint-hearted. But there is a richness in the writing and in the narrative that I believe lifts it above all but the very best books. As I approached the end I thought I’d worked it all out, but a surprising and somewhat ambiguous ending cast some doubt on that. It’s definitely one of the most mysterious, addictive and truly impactful books I’ve come across in a very long time.
My sincere thanks to W. F. Howes Ltd for supplying a copy of this audiobook, via NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.
December 8, 2022
Bret Easton Ellis, most famous for his books American Psycho and Less than Zero, has penned a wicked tale, one that is at once bewildering, terrifying, and completely absorbing.
"We were teenagers distracted by sex and pop music, movies and celebrity, lust and ephemera and our own neutral innocence."
We go back to the days when Bret himself was a senior at the private Buckley School in Sherman Oaks, CA. The year is 1981. He and his uber wealthy friends plan to spend their final year in high school under the haze of alcohol, cocaine, quaaludes, and anything else they can get their greedy little hands on. Kids with "a what-the-fuck entitlement" as they are described in the book. The year starts off well enough until a new kid, Robert Mallory, joins the mix. Bret is curious as to why someone would transfer from Chicago to LA in their final year in high school. He immediately gets bad vibes from Robert yet his friends are all welcoming him into their elite group.
Meanwhile, in the background of this story is The Trawler, a serial killer that is targeting, torturing, and killing young women. Bret gets obsessed with the story yet no one else seems to be paying attention. Certainly none of his friends are interested. Maybe it's the writer in him but he begins to build a time line of the murders and they all coincide with Robert Mallory coming and going from LA. Is it possible that Robert is The Trawler?
This book is a hard book to describe. It seems semi-autobiographical but it really is a work of fiction. I hit up Google many times while reading this to try and figure out what is real and what isn't. The Trawler was a serial killer in LA in 1981 but he targeted elderly women. Bret took that story and spun it to fit the narrative of this book and it was super successful. I was creeped out and chilled to the bone on several occasions. Having said that please be warned that this book is not for the faint of heart. The descriptions of the murders for some will be beyond disturbing and nightmare inducing. As a reader you will also have to endure all sorts of debauchery. If teens getting high and having sex is a no no for you then move right along. I would describe this book as hypersexual. There is a lot of male/male sex, some male/female sex, and a whole lot of masturbation. I've mentioned before that I don't need to know all the nitty gritty details of sex in my books but it does work here because there is absolutely nothing erotic about it. It sets the tone and atmosphere of not only the place but the time being 1981 when homosexuality was still firmly in the closet.
What is stopping me from giving this book 5 stars is the length. This book is over 600 pages long and incredibly dense. There is a lot of text on the page so you can't just fly through this. This book demands that you take your time. I personally think an editor could trim this down and make this book a masterpiece. For example there is a lot of driving around the LA area:
I took Avenue of the Stars and would make a left onto Santa Monica and then drive South Beverly Glen until it hit Bel Air Road where I would swing a right onto Bellagio, which would take us to Stone Canyon.
I was on the freeway and realized in a daze that I was flying through the Cahuenga Pass when I saw the Hollywood Cross lit above the Ford Ampitheatre and I found myself racing across the 101 passing through Burbank and Studio City and then Sherman Oaks and Encino and Tarzana, until I was out in Woodland Hills, where I drove through the now empty parking lot of the Promenade.
Now for someone from the area this may be really cool but for someone like myself on the East coast all these driving scenes got a little tedious because I wasn't able to visualize them at all. Maybe I should have pulled up a Google map of the area but, come on, who really wants to put that much work into reading a book.
So yeah, my only complaint is some editing because this book is sensational otherwise. A+ for the cover art as well. 4 stars!
TW: ALL OF THEM
Thank you to NetGalley and Knopf for my complimentary copy.
"We were teenagers distracted by sex and pop music, movies and celebrity, lust and ephemera and our own neutral innocence."
We go back to the days when Bret himself was a senior at the private Buckley School in Sherman Oaks, CA. The year is 1981. He and his uber wealthy friends plan to spend their final year in high school under the haze of alcohol, cocaine, quaaludes, and anything else they can get their greedy little hands on. Kids with "a what-the-fuck entitlement" as they are described in the book. The year starts off well enough until a new kid, Robert Mallory, joins the mix. Bret is curious as to why someone would transfer from Chicago to LA in their final year in high school. He immediately gets bad vibes from Robert yet his friends are all welcoming him into their elite group.
Meanwhile, in the background of this story is The Trawler, a serial killer that is targeting, torturing, and killing young women. Bret gets obsessed with the story yet no one else seems to be paying attention. Certainly none of his friends are interested. Maybe it's the writer in him but he begins to build a time line of the murders and they all coincide with Robert Mallory coming and going from LA. Is it possible that Robert is The Trawler?
This book is a hard book to describe. It seems semi-autobiographical but it really is a work of fiction. I hit up Google many times while reading this to try and figure out what is real and what isn't. The Trawler was a serial killer in LA in 1981 but he targeted elderly women. Bret took that story and spun it to fit the narrative of this book and it was super successful. I was creeped out and chilled to the bone on several occasions. Having said that please be warned that this book is not for the faint of heart. The descriptions of the murders for some will be beyond disturbing and nightmare inducing. As a reader you will also have to endure all sorts of debauchery. If teens getting high and having sex is a no no for you then move right along. I would describe this book as hypersexual. There is a lot of male/male sex, some male/female sex, and a whole lot of masturbation. I've mentioned before that I don't need to know all the nitty gritty details of sex in my books but it does work here because there is absolutely nothing erotic about it. It sets the tone and atmosphere of not only the place but the time being 1981 when homosexuality was still firmly in the closet.
What is stopping me from giving this book 5 stars is the length. This book is over 600 pages long and incredibly dense. There is a lot of text on the page so you can't just fly through this. This book demands that you take your time. I personally think an editor could trim this down and make this book a masterpiece. For example there is a lot of driving around the LA area:
I took Avenue of the Stars and would make a left onto Santa Monica and then drive South Beverly Glen until it hit Bel Air Road where I would swing a right onto Bellagio, which would take us to Stone Canyon.
I was on the freeway and realized in a daze that I was flying through the Cahuenga Pass when I saw the Hollywood Cross lit above the Ford Ampitheatre and I found myself racing across the 101 passing through Burbank and Studio City and then Sherman Oaks and Encino and Tarzana, until I was out in Woodland Hills, where I drove through the now empty parking lot of the Promenade.
Now for someone from the area this may be really cool but for someone like myself on the East coast all these driving scenes got a little tedious because I wasn't able to visualize them at all. Maybe I should have pulled up a Google map of the area but, come on, who really wants to put that much work into reading a book.
So yeah, my only complaint is some editing because this book is sensational otherwise. A+ for the cover art as well. 4 stars!
TW: ALL OF THEM
Thank you to NetGalley and Knopf for my complimentary copy.
January 4, 2023
I hope this is a sign to come because THE SHARDS is my first read of 2023 and I absolutely loved it. I feel embarrassed admitting this, but I’ve never read anything by Bret Easton Ellis before. My husband is always telling me about his works and how much he enjoys his novels, so I figured it best to start with his latest novel and work my way back. After hearing that @gareindeedreads loved it, I decided to go for it!
THE SHARDS is a dark metafiction novel that will continue to psychologically mess me up even after reading. I’m literally trying to figure it out now. The story involves a group of best friends at the Buckley School in Los Angeles during the 1980s. Our protagonist, Bret details his teenage years with this tight-knit group—money, drugs, parties, sex—this group lived a very intense life at a formidable time during their lives. Their lives, however, are forever changed when a serial killer begins claiming victims that are hitting close to home and it just so happens to line up with the arrival of a new student joining their senior class. This book starts off relatively slowly, but the subject matter gripped me from the moment I started. It’s a long book at around 600 pages, but I caught myself reading it whenever I could.
THE SHARDS is a book about obsession and lots of gay sex—but it’s also a coming of age story, sort of, with powerful messaging. I absolutely loved this book and I really need to talk to fellow readers about this book because I have lots to say! This book will stay with me for a long time.
THE SHARDS is a dark metafiction novel that will continue to psychologically mess me up even after reading. I’m literally trying to figure it out now. The story involves a group of best friends at the Buckley School in Los Angeles during the 1980s. Our protagonist, Bret details his teenage years with this tight-knit group—money, drugs, parties, sex—this group lived a very intense life at a formidable time during their lives. Their lives, however, are forever changed when a serial killer begins claiming victims that are hitting close to home and it just so happens to line up with the arrival of a new student joining their senior class. This book starts off relatively slowly, but the subject matter gripped me from the moment I started. It’s a long book at around 600 pages, but I caught myself reading it whenever I could.
THE SHARDS is a book about obsession and lots of gay sex—but it’s also a coming of age story, sort of, with powerful messaging. I absolutely loved this book and I really need to talk to fellow readers about this book because I have lots to say! This book will stay with me for a long time.
March 18, 2024
(3/17/2024 reread) listen i loooove marinating in a long ass book told from the perspective of someone who irl would be Absolutely Insufferable. the second time around this is just as good. there’s so much you pick up on that makes it just as gripping and exciting even though you know how it’s going to pan out… or do you!!! year of the cat i will never listen to you the same but i have yet to meet a fat ass ambiguous book i didnt like
(3/3/2024) eerie… tense… gripping… had so much of what i love to read about and was long as shit like YES we are so back!!! i cannot wait for this to be adapted
(3/3/2024) eerie… tense… gripping… had so much of what i love to read about and was long as shit like YES we are so back!!! i cannot wait for this to be adapted
December 24, 2022
Yet another fragment of coolly ironic metafiction from Bret Easton Ellis. The setting is new, the characters are somewhat younger, but everything else about this novel will be very familiar to readers of Ellis's work. At more than 600 pages, I couldn't help wondering what the point was. He has performed all these tricks before -- the gratuitous clinical depravity, the quirky blending of autobiography and fiction, the ultra-dry satire. What was fresh and provocative in the 90s now seems formulaic. It also doesn't help that in "The Shards" Ellis occasionally lapses into saccharine nostalgia for 1980s Los Angeles and his own adolescence. Overall, this is not a bad novel, but it reeks of self-indulgence.
November 18, 2023
3.75* rounded-up. Not sure what prompted me to buy this book… I was never a big fan of BEE; his transgressive novels didn’t quite resonate with me (my vote goes to JG Ballard); but then again this was some time ago (almost 20 years!), so I said lets give it another go.
Familiar themes: L.A. setting in the 1980s > loss of innocence & alienation > over-privileged, spoiled, entitled rich kids playing hardball (or they think so) > boring days and hedonistic nights full of sex, drugs and rock & roll (all in excess – with plethora of “explicit” content)…and a serial killer.
Nothing new or provocative that haven’t been said; no seismic revelations; transgressive enough to remind me the same old BEE with similar form, structure and narrative as his previous novels (Less than Zero & American Psycho spliced together). Saying that, somehow I ve enjoyed The Shards more! It seemed that this autofictional, “self-trolling” melodrama’s main purpose was some short of “release” from the angst of the moment. It oozed a kind of melancholic dreamy aura, a longing that reverberated throughout; and in the end deliverance!
Sustain the illusion till finally be free…
Give it a try…
*Some better editing would have definitely helped the narrative.
**Multiple references of 80’s songs played a significant role in the novel: e.g. Icehouse (by Icehouse): Now is colder every day. There is no love inside the icehouse: “ I remember the power of the song had the first time we played it in Susan’s car as we drove across the Sunset Boulevard and through Beverly Hills and the vocals were yearning for something better than what the lyrics offered and the chorus was about dreams, about hope, which were intensified by the doomy romanticism of the overall track itself.”
Familiar themes: L.A. setting in the 1980s > loss of innocence & alienation > over-privileged, spoiled, entitled rich kids playing hardball (or they think so) > boring days and hedonistic nights full of sex, drugs and rock & roll (all in excess – with plethora of “explicit” content)…and a serial killer.
Nothing new or provocative that haven’t been said; no seismic revelations; transgressive enough to remind me the same old BEE with similar form, structure and narrative as his previous novels (Less than Zero & American Psycho spliced together). Saying that, somehow I ve enjoyed The Shards more! It seemed that this autofictional, “self-trolling” melodrama’s main purpose was some short of “release” from the angst of the moment. It oozed a kind of melancholic dreamy aura, a longing that reverberated throughout; and in the end deliverance!
Sustain the illusion till finally be free…
Give it a try…
*Some better editing would have definitely helped the narrative.
**Multiple references of 80’s songs played a significant role in the novel: e.g. Icehouse (by Icehouse): Now is colder every day. There is no love inside the icehouse: “ I remember the power of the song had the first time we played it in Susan’s car as we drove across the Sunset Boulevard and through Beverly Hills and the vocals were yearning for something better than what the lyrics offered and the chorus was about dreams, about hope, which were intensified by the doomy romanticism of the overall track itself.”
August 20, 2023
On page 235. Can’t say I did not try, but the book bores me to death and I do not want to read anything more about designer clothes, the ever continuing mentioning of the streets names of L.A. where Bret is driving through and the nonsense conversations of the circle of friends. Such a disappointment, as I had so looked forward to reading Bret Ellis’ new novel after all these years.
October 17, 2023
In generale Ellis mi fa paura per motivi scontati, perché chissà che cazzo ha nella testa. Ma nello specifico mi fa paura nella sua forma lunga, perché American Psycho è un fiume in piena dal quale anni fa ero riemersa spossata, perché la violenza non era dosata e ti travolgeva e ti dissanguava, ed era tutto troppo pesante. La brevità di Meno di zero e Le regole dell'attenzione mi aveva folgorata, American Psycho mi aveva spompata. E non sapevo come sarebbe andata con Le schegge.
Ma ho trovato un Ellis diverso, cresciuto pur 17enne, più misurato nella violenza che è comunque imprevedibilmente perversa e dilagante, assurda, quasi ridicola. Qui c'è tantissimo sangue umano e non umano, ma l'orrore è anche e soprattutto all'interno, e filtra dai buchi della maschera che tutti indossano, che lascia qualche spiraglio per cercare di respirare un po' e non soffocare nel costume di scena, o per fare un altro tiro di coca. Il teatro allestito dall'Ellis scrittore e dall'Ellis protagonista del romanzo va a fuoco, il sogno finisce e tutti sono protagonisti e artefici di un incubo in cui le colpe si intrecciano, come le mani di due amici del liceo che come sempre accade credono che quell'amicizia invincibile, che li scaglia contro il mondo della corruzione adulta, sarà davvero per sempre.
Incalzante, respingente, intrigante. Straordinario. Vorrei liberarmi della spiacevole sensazione di terrore che ho addosso, ma non vorrei mai lasciarla andare. Non posso dimenticare cosa può farti un libro, se può farti provare queste cose così.
Ma ho trovato un Ellis diverso, cresciuto pur 17enne, più misurato nella violenza che è comunque imprevedibilmente perversa e dilagante, assurda, quasi ridicola. Qui c'è tantissimo sangue umano e non umano, ma l'orrore è anche e soprattutto all'interno, e filtra dai buchi della maschera che tutti indossano, che lascia qualche spiraglio per cercare di respirare un po' e non soffocare nel costume di scena, o per fare un altro tiro di coca. Il teatro allestito dall'Ellis scrittore e dall'Ellis protagonista del romanzo va a fuoco, il sogno finisce e tutti sono protagonisti e artefici di un incubo in cui le colpe si intrecciano, come le mani di due amici del liceo che come sempre accade credono che quell'amicizia invincibile, che li scaglia contro il mondo della corruzione adulta, sarà davvero per sempre.
Incalzante, respingente, intrigante. Straordinario. Vorrei liberarmi della spiacevole sensazione di terrore che ho addosso, ma non vorrei mai lasciarla andare. Non posso dimenticare cosa può farti un libro, se può farti provare queste cose così.
February 18, 2023
I devoured Bret Easton Ellis' books when I was much younger. Less Than Zero, The Rules of Attraction, American Psycho and The Informers have been on my "read" shelves for a long time. I began drifting through different genres as years went by, and I recently sampled The Shards and proceeded to read my newly downloaded copy right away. Normally, I shy away from long books. It took me just over two weeks to inhale this 741 paged novel. I am not a fast reader, but I was able to keep up a steady daily pace that took me deeper and deeper into the melodrama, suspense and psychopathy that is this book. Just like years ago, I was entranced, surprised, and shocked by the story's progression. It's a keeper. If you have enjoyed B.E.E.'s work in the past, this book is for you. I am happy to have realized that I still have some more catching up to do.
February 1, 2023
Wait … let me smoke a clove cigarette, pop my collar,carry my Gucci backpack around and watch a movie on the Z channel.
Also let me remember every song I ever heard and when I heard it during my senior year in high school … from 40 years ago!
Ugh this book was terrible!
The characters were the most soulless ,humorless, boring,drugged up high school seniors I’ve ever come across. Not a one had any redeemable personalities.
Gruesome violence … unsettling
Meaningless graphic sex… yawn.
I only finished out of spite 🙄
Also let me remember every song I ever heard and when I heard it during my senior year in high school … from 40 years ago!
Ugh this book was terrible!
The characters were the most soulless ,humorless, boring,drugged up high school seniors I’ve ever come across. Not a one had any redeemable personalities.
Gruesome violence … unsettling
Meaningless graphic sex… yawn.
I only finished out of spite 🙄
December 21, 2022
utterly riveted by this book, which seemed to me a twisty, romantic riff on Raymond Chandler's noir classic The LONG GOODBYE, not in content but in obsessive fascination with, and nostalgia for, a lost Los Angeles. And in the nearly paralyzing anxiety of the narrator, for whom fear and desire are a constant, are the only things. So much to say about doubles, masks, secret lives, all the gorgeous noir tropes that buzz through the book.
March 23, 2024
Hahah! Hell YEAH! This was fun
May 21, 2023
I have mixed feelings about this book. Overall, I didn’t hate it (though at times I thought I did). I was mostly engaged (though I did think it was going to become a DNF at around 300/400 pages), but I ploughed on.
Mainly, it’s far too long. The strength of the plot does not support it’s length. It’s overwhelmingly overwritten. A bit like Ian McEwan’s ‘Lessons’, it just felt like a vanity project for Ellis, wanting to write an epic. His own ‘Secret History’ (which I was also a bit ‘meh’ about.)
And whilst we’re talking about vanity… take a moment to think about Ellis, nearing 60 yrs old, writing himself into a story, as a 17 yr old, who’s having (almost constant) sex with ridiculously hot young guys (we’re talking Bruce Weber models by the sounds of Ellis’ fantasies). Of which we get pretty detailed accounts. So, erm, yeah, ok…
To Ellis’ credit (I think), these aren’t just purely wank fantasies however, as none of them ever amount to anything, and he’s always left, somewhat heartbroken, on the sidelines.
And unfortunately for Ellis (whom I’m sure was hoping it would be) none of it is particularly shocking. Not compared to some of the things I’ve read over the last year. If you were shocked by 50 Shades, probably stay away from this, but I think most other literary adults will be like, ‘And?’
(Except for the fish… if like me, you hate fish, let this be a warning! 🫣)
If you like Ellis, read it. If you’re curious, read it. If you’re unsure, find something else instead you definitely do want to read!
Mainly, it’s far too long. The strength of the plot does not support it’s length. It’s overwhelmingly overwritten. A bit like Ian McEwan’s ‘Lessons’, it just felt like a vanity project for Ellis, wanting to write an epic. His own ‘Secret History’ (which I was also a bit ‘meh’ about.)
And whilst we’re talking about vanity… take a moment to think about Ellis, nearing 60 yrs old, writing himself into a story, as a 17 yr old, who’s having (almost constant) sex with ridiculously hot young guys (we’re talking Bruce Weber models by the sounds of Ellis’ fantasies). Of which we get pretty detailed accounts. So, erm, yeah, ok…
To Ellis’ credit (I think), these aren’t just purely wank fantasies however, as none of them ever amount to anything, and he’s always left, somewhat heartbroken, on the sidelines.
And unfortunately for Ellis (whom I’m sure was hoping it would be) none of it is particularly shocking. Not compared to some of the things I’ve read over the last year. If you were shocked by 50 Shades, probably stay away from this, but I think most other literary adults will be like, ‘And?’
(Except for the fish… if like me, you hate fish, let this be a warning! 🫣)
If you like Ellis, read it. If you’re curious, read it. If you’re unsure, find something else instead you definitely do want to read!
May 14, 2023
4.0 Stars
I have become a fangirl of this author's work even though I can completely see why he is not for everyone. He has very specific topics he writes about through the lense of privileged, unlikeable characters.
For context, I loved American Psycho and Lunar Park. I liked certain aspects of Less Than Zero but wanted more plot. This one pulls heavily from Less than Zero but brings in the meta element that I loved from Lunar Park.
In terms of plot, this one was heavily focused on the drugs and sexual encounters of the author's (fictional) past. While I enjoy more edgy topics, I found it a lot for the length of the novel. This setup worked a little better in the smaller package, Less than Zero. I wished there had been more focus on the serial killer subplot, which I found the most interesting.
Yet, despite my mixed feelings while reading this one, I found myself very emotionally satisfied by the ending. My brain cannot stop wondering how much is true in this fictionalized story. I think the author's sexually active, drug persona is just what makes this book work. The book is him… or not… and I'm fascinated by that ambiguity.
I would recommend this for fans of the author's work, but I wouldn't necessarily recommend starting here for someone just trying him out for the first time.
I have become a fangirl of this author's work even though I can completely see why he is not for everyone. He has very specific topics he writes about through the lense of privileged, unlikeable characters.
For context, I loved American Psycho and Lunar Park. I liked certain aspects of Less Than Zero but wanted more plot. This one pulls heavily from Less than Zero but brings in the meta element that I loved from Lunar Park.
In terms of plot, this one was heavily focused on the drugs and sexual encounters of the author's (fictional) past. While I enjoy more edgy topics, I found it a lot for the length of the novel. This setup worked a little better in the smaller package, Less than Zero. I wished there had been more focus on the serial killer subplot, which I found the most interesting.
Yet, despite my mixed feelings while reading this one, I found myself very emotionally satisfied by the ending. My brain cannot stop wondering how much is true in this fictionalized story. I think the author's sexually active, drug persona is just what makes this book work. The book is him… or not… and I'm fascinated by that ambiguity.
I would recommend this for fans of the author's work, but I wouldn't necessarily recommend starting here for someone just trying him out for the first time.
October 23, 2023
I am obsessed with this book, something I didn’t think I would say before I started. My reading relationship with Bret Easton Ellis is messy. I devoured AMERICAN PSYCHO with a frenzy. I had a sorta similar experience with LESS THAN ZERO. But all of his other fiction left me tepid. So, I was a little apprehensive about starting this, especially with its large page count. Which BEE was I going to get here? Well damn, this book sunk its ferocious fangs into me from the first page and kept me in its clamped jaw the entire time. This is his best work since AMERICAN PSYCHO. It may even have surpassed it in my mind. Christ, this is a freak show odyssey.
Several people noted that this novel desperately needed an editor, and I’m usually one to jump on that hill, but I’m going to admit that the sprawling, repetitive, and excessive nature of the narrative is the novel’s strength. The overindulgent and unrestricted nature adds to the paranoia of the narrator (and the reader). It feels oppressive and makes us feel like we can’t get out of this thick, dark, twisted web. So much of the horror is in the unrelenting claustrophobic vibe. I honestly think this book wouldn’t be quite so effective if it was a shortie.
THE SHARDS is structured in a rather clever (and cheeky) way. Bret Easton Ellis is the narrator and he is acting as himself writing autoficton on his high school years. Ellis reimagines that time as an era where he and his friends, in their senior year, are terrorized by the presence of The Trawler, a serial killer who targets teenage girls in Los Angeles. Bret is convinced that the shy and beautiful new kid, Robert Mallory, is connected to these horrific killings. As the novel evolves, Bret becomes obsessed with his theories. But then there are also added complexities to Bret’s anxiety: he’s a closeted and is also attracted to Robert (!!!!) As Bret gets dangerously and obsessively closer and closer to trying to prove to everyone that Robert is not who he says he is, we start to wonder who the real psycho is: Robert or our dear Bret?
Ellis is up to old tricks with this one: The 1980s are glamorous, slick, and hedonistic. All the teenagers are privileged, entitled, jaded, ultra-horny, drug-induced, and left unsupervised. All of the adults behave as if they’re younger than their kids. Everyone has a flat and cynical way of talking. However, Ellis has amped up the gay sex in this. Same with the gore and violence (the descriptions of The Trawler’s victims are especially hard to stomach). And IT ALL WORKS!!
Ellis keeps the disturbing and ominous vibe going the entire way through (I’m legit impressed how well he did that for 600 pages), but the last 200 pages amps up the menace to the stratosphere. It’s a pressure cooker. There’s a particular scene in a Palm Springs house that legit had me on edge. The way it was described was unsettling; that scene has lingered. And that is the genius of this novel: I didn’t realize just how much the book was getting under my skin until that scene. That’s when I came to realize I had been going through a “quiet trauma” (and also proof to me that the chunky length of the book is needed) I’ve consumed lots of horror books and movies, yet that scene made me turn on my alarm system shortly afterward.
I could go on and on, but I’ll end with this: I’m so glad Ellis kept so much of the ending on an ambiguous note; so many loose ends, so many elements for us to consider and analyze ourselves. I had a theory on how the book was going to end, and it did not happen. But with all this ambiguity, perhaps I’m right. Genius book and one of my faves of the year, more things I never thought I’d say.
Several people noted that this novel desperately needed an editor, and I’m usually one to jump on that hill, but I’m going to admit that the sprawling, repetitive, and excessive nature of the narrative is the novel’s strength. The overindulgent and unrestricted nature adds to the paranoia of the narrator (and the reader). It feels oppressive and makes us feel like we can’t get out of this thick, dark, twisted web. So much of the horror is in the unrelenting claustrophobic vibe. I honestly think this book wouldn’t be quite so effective if it was a shortie.
THE SHARDS is structured in a rather clever (and cheeky) way. Bret Easton Ellis is the narrator and he is acting as himself writing autoficton on his high school years. Ellis reimagines that time as an era where he and his friends, in their senior year, are terrorized by the presence of The Trawler, a serial killer who targets teenage girls in Los Angeles. Bret is convinced that the shy and beautiful new kid, Robert Mallory, is connected to these horrific killings. As the novel evolves, Bret becomes obsessed with his theories. But then there are also added complexities to Bret’s anxiety: he’s a closeted and is also attracted to Robert (!!!!) As Bret gets dangerously and obsessively closer and closer to trying to prove to everyone that Robert is not who he says he is, we start to wonder who the real psycho is: Robert or our dear Bret?
Ellis is up to old tricks with this one: The 1980s are glamorous, slick, and hedonistic. All the teenagers are privileged, entitled, jaded, ultra-horny, drug-induced, and left unsupervised. All of the adults behave as if they’re younger than their kids. Everyone has a flat and cynical way of talking. However, Ellis has amped up the gay sex in this. Same with the gore and violence (the descriptions of The Trawler’s victims are especially hard to stomach). And IT ALL WORKS!!
Ellis keeps the disturbing and ominous vibe going the entire way through (I’m legit impressed how well he did that for 600 pages), but the last 200 pages amps up the menace to the stratosphere. It’s a pressure cooker. There’s a particular scene in a Palm Springs house that legit had me on edge. The way it was described was unsettling; that scene has lingered. And that is the genius of this novel: I didn’t realize just how much the book was getting under my skin until that scene. That’s when I came to realize I had been going through a “quiet trauma” (and also proof to me that the chunky length of the book is needed) I’ve consumed lots of horror books and movies, yet that scene made me turn on my alarm system shortly afterward.
I could go on and on, but I’ll end with this: I’m so glad Ellis kept so much of the ending on an ambiguous note; so many loose ends, so many elements for us to consider and analyze ourselves. I had a theory on how the book was going to end, and it did not happen. But with all this ambiguity, perhaps I’m right. Genius book and one of my faves of the year, more things I never thought I’d say.
January 17, 2023
The Shards is another Bret Easton Ellis novel in which the author includes a warped version of himself as a character: this time, 17-year-old Bret Ellis is a student at Buckley, a prestigious LA prep school, in the 1980s. One can assume many details of the plot, in which Bret parties with his similarly wealthy friends and struggles with his sexuality and episodes of existential dread, are true to life – but the book diverges from reality when it introduces a serial killer, ‘The Trawler’, who seems somehow connected to Bret’s magnetic new classmate Robert Mallory. I understand the story was originally serialised on the author’s podcast, and it bears the hallmarks of that – it rambles on and on, various pieces of information and characterisation are repeated – but the overall effect is somehow hypnotic. There’s some brilliant writing about nostalgia for youth. The reader is completely immersed in this glossy 80s milieu, complete with detailed settings and enough mentions of specific songs to make a lengthy soundtrack playlist if you want. It’s the longest book I’ve read this year, but when I got to the end I still wanted more.
I received an advance review copy of The Shards from the publisher through Edelweiss.
TinyLetter | Linktree
I received an advance review copy of The Shards from the publisher through Edelweiss.
TinyLetter | Linktree
February 11, 2023
I'm a bit shocked that, with over 1,200 reviews, this is still hanging over the 4-star mark. I haven't read Ellis since Less Than Zero, and that's going back four decades, I think. Did I even LIKE that book? It's beginning to come back to me that the answer may be "Not so much."
This one is around 600 pp. and I made it to the halfway mark before saying, "Enough is enough." This has got to be the most undisciplined writing I've plowed through for many, many years. Sure, a lot of novels (esp. of late) tend to be verbose, but they pale compared to this. Of the 300 pp. I read, I think 170 could have gone out the window without a problem. It would have done wonders for the book!
I got as far as I did for one reason and one only: murders. I admit I was curious where this was going, but it worked so studiously at NOT going, that I just lost all patience, saying, "Jesus, Bret. If you can't respect the reader, the reader might not respect you."
And yes, it's true, he makes himself the star character of the narrative. Everyone else is made up. As are an awful lot of scenes with tedious dialogue and repetitive internal monologues.
This one is around 600 pp. and I made it to the halfway mark before saying, "Enough is enough." This has got to be the most undisciplined writing I've plowed through for many, many years. Sure, a lot of novels (esp. of late) tend to be verbose, but they pale compared to this. Of the 300 pp. I read, I think 170 could have gone out the window without a problem. It would have done wonders for the book!
I got as far as I did for one reason and one only: murders. I admit I was curious where this was going, but it worked so studiously at NOT going, that I just lost all patience, saying, "Jesus, Bret. If you can't respect the reader, the reader might not respect you."
And yes, it's true, he makes himself the star character of the narrative. Everyone else is made up. As are an awful lot of scenes with tedious dialogue and repetitive internal monologues.
January 29, 2023
Ich bin mit "The Shards" zurück in eine Welt eingetaucht, die ich vor 36 Jahren das erste Mal kennen gelernt habe. Ich war 17 Jahre alt, als sich für mich durch junge Autoren der US-Popliteratur neue literarische Welten eröffneten. "Unter Null" erschien 1986 erstmals auf deutsch als rororo-Taschenbuch. Im selben Jahr erschien auch das noch bessere "Ein starker Abgang" von Jay McInerney, mit dem zusammen Bret Easton Ellis das Literary Brat Pack anführte. Auch noch in 1986 erschien "Die verlorene Sprache der Kräne" von David Leavitt. 1987 kam das grandiose "Großstadtsklaven" von Tama Janowitz. 1988 erschien der erste Roman von Michael Chabon "Die Geheimnisse von Pittsburgh". 1991 sollte Bret Easton Ellis mit "American Psycho" erneut die literarische Welt erschüttern.
Da das Internet noch nicht im Alltag angekommen war, hat man sich über Musik und Literatur in Zeitschriften informiert. Es gab die "Spex" mit dem Fokus auf Musik. Die Literatur kam aber durchaus auch vor. Mit Texten von Rainald Goetz oder der Möglichkeit im Spex-Shop die englischsprachige "American Psycho"-Ausgabe zu bestellen (via Postkarte). "Tempo" galt als "Lifestyle"-Magazin, war aber viel mehr. Hier gab es auch die junge Literatur. In der "Tempo", die 1986 zum ersten Mal erschien, schrieben Autoren wie Christian Kracht, Maxim Biller oder Uwe Kopf. Andrian Kreye ist ein ehemaliger "Tempo"-Autor, der auf Spotify eine knapp zehnstündige Playlist mit sämtlichen Songs, die in "The Shards" vorkommen, kuratiert hat. Das parallele Hören der Musik und Wiedererkennen vieler Songs hebt den Roman noch einmal auf eine weitere Ebene. In "Tempo" erschien 1992 die Reportage "Less Than Zero" von Kracht. Hier schliesst sich der Kreis zu Bret Easton Ellis und einer Zeit, die ich als unerhört aufregend in Sachen Literatur empfunden habe und miterleben durfte.
Das brillante "The Shards" ("Die Scherben") hat mich über mehr als 700 Seiten zurück in diese Zeit und diese Welt geführt. Es ist aber kein Nostalgie-Trip. Es ist ein Roman, der 1981 spielt. Die vordigitale Zeit, in der Easton Ellis an "Unter Null" arbeitet. Es ist wieder ein Roman über seelenlose, oberflächliche Rich Kids. Neben dem Nihilismus von "Unter Null" gibt es aber diesmal auch Empathie und Reflexion. Dummerweise aber auch einen Serienmörder. Das Buch ist ein Spiel mit simulierter Autofiktion, Gesellschaftsroman und literarischer Thriller in einem. Jede einzelne der 736 Seiten ist aufregend. "The Shards" ist ein Meisterwerk, das bei mir mit seiner elegant gleitenden Sprache und der dadurch entstehenden Atmosphäre, in die dann das Grauen einbricht, Glücksgefühle ausgelöst hat.
Wertung: 6,25 Sterne
Da das Internet noch nicht im Alltag angekommen war, hat man sich über Musik und Literatur in Zeitschriften informiert. Es gab die "Spex" mit dem Fokus auf Musik. Die Literatur kam aber durchaus auch vor. Mit Texten von Rainald Goetz oder der Möglichkeit im Spex-Shop die englischsprachige "American Psycho"-Ausgabe zu bestellen (via Postkarte). "Tempo" galt als "Lifestyle"-Magazin, war aber viel mehr. Hier gab es auch die junge Literatur. In der "Tempo", die 1986 zum ersten Mal erschien, schrieben Autoren wie Christian Kracht, Maxim Biller oder Uwe Kopf. Andrian Kreye ist ein ehemaliger "Tempo"-Autor, der auf Spotify eine knapp zehnstündige Playlist mit sämtlichen Songs, die in "The Shards" vorkommen, kuratiert hat. Das parallele Hören der Musik und Wiedererkennen vieler Songs hebt den Roman noch einmal auf eine weitere Ebene. In "Tempo" erschien 1992 die Reportage "Less Than Zero" von Kracht. Hier schliesst sich der Kreis zu Bret Easton Ellis und einer Zeit, die ich als unerhört aufregend in Sachen Literatur empfunden habe und miterleben durfte.
Das brillante "The Shards" ("Die Scherben") hat mich über mehr als 700 Seiten zurück in diese Zeit und diese Welt geführt. Es ist aber kein Nostalgie-Trip. Es ist ein Roman, der 1981 spielt. Die vordigitale Zeit, in der Easton Ellis an "Unter Null" arbeitet. Es ist wieder ein Roman über seelenlose, oberflächliche Rich Kids. Neben dem Nihilismus von "Unter Null" gibt es aber diesmal auch Empathie und Reflexion. Dummerweise aber auch einen Serienmörder. Das Buch ist ein Spiel mit simulierter Autofiktion, Gesellschaftsroman und literarischer Thriller in einem. Jede einzelne der 736 Seiten ist aufregend. "The Shards" ist ein Meisterwerk, das bei mir mit seiner elegant gleitenden Sprache und der dadurch entstehenden Atmosphäre, in die dann das Grauen einbricht, Glücksgefühle ausgelöst hat.
Wertung: 6,25 Sterne
February 11, 2023
608 pages...
608 pages!!
There is no reason for this book to be 608 pages, because as I was reading it most of my time was spent waiting for something to actually happen. Sometimes it did. Sometimes it didn't. Most of the time I was just reading about spoiled, horny teenagers in LA. Partying, thinking they're important, doing drugs, creating drama, having sex (lots of details in that department). Which is all great, and could have worked if it was just part of the story instead of most of the story. Call me crazy, but when you're reading 608-page book that technically also has a serial killer subplot... you kind of want more about that serial killer and less about horny teens. Is it just me? It can't be just me. And to be honest, the way things wrapped up was really frustrating.
Now, I am picking up on how the incessant desire to matter and be noticed, as well as to be taken seriously plays into the story that unfolds. I get it. It's interesting. Even despite some of dialogue that keeps going in circles, I still think the writing itself was mostly interesting and effective. But overall The Shards just didn't do enough of anything to justify its length. I was often bored and it was repetitive. There, I said it. It wasn't awful, I didn't hate it, but generally it was aggressively OK.
This was my first Bret Easton Ellis novel, and it seems like I chose poorly. Or maybe all of his books are like this and he's just not for me. I'll still give American Psycho a read at some point. Maybe.
608 pages!!
There is no reason for this book to be 608 pages, because as I was reading it most of my time was spent waiting for something to actually happen. Sometimes it did. Sometimes it didn't. Most of the time I was just reading about spoiled, horny teenagers in LA. Partying, thinking they're important, doing drugs, creating drama, having sex (lots of details in that department). Which is all great, and could have worked if it was just part of the story instead of most of the story. Call me crazy, but when you're reading 608-page book that technically also has a serial killer subplot... you kind of want more about that serial killer and less about horny teens. Is it just me? It can't be just me. And to be honest, the way things wrapped up was really frustrating.
Now, I am picking up on how the incessant desire to matter and be noticed, as well as to be taken seriously plays into the story that unfolds. I get it. It's interesting. Even despite some of dialogue that keeps going in circles, I still think the writing itself was mostly interesting and effective. But overall The Shards just didn't do enough of anything to justify its length. I was often bored and it was repetitive. There, I said it. It wasn't awful, I didn't hate it, but generally it was aggressively OK.
This was my first Bret Easton Ellis novel, and it seems like I chose poorly. Or maybe all of his books are like this and he's just not for me. I'll still give American Psycho a read at some point. Maybe.
February 26, 2023
Ellis kept me guessing until the end, for this long a novel it was surprisingly suspenseful. Personally I was a little frustrated by repetitive and idle dialogues and the amount of teenage drama, but it kept me listening in a fast pace nevertheless. What I really liked where the scary bits, like the parts about the Trawler, or the cassette tape the main character was sent, that was seriously eerie. I usually don't enjoy this genre of meta fiction meets true crime much, so I think I will definitely read other books by the author focusing on more horror.
June 18, 2023
...a boy, his friends, young people in LA, sexy, a little bi, drugs, someone is killed, there's a chase, violence and bloodshed, a mystery that the boy solves or maybe not, I preferred the downer ending but we could make it upbeat as well, I'd offer, we could negotiate that.
The way fictional young Bret Ellis, the narrator of The Shards, imagines pitching his screenplay to a producer is of course self-satire on the author's part, a list of all the components an AI would need to write its own Ellis knockoff (though let's pause to imagine Chat GPT trying to figure out "a little bi"), but it's also a pretty good description of the novel, right down to its openness to interpretation and slipperiness, its somewhat taunting quality.
I wasn't sure what to expect from Ellis after all these years. Lunar Park came out in...(checks notes)...'05, a few years after I'd gotten into his 80s and 90s work, and I thought it was just okay. I was pretty much Ellised-out by the time Imperial Bedrooms was released in '11, though I did read it (in a single afternoon in a bookstore- it's short), and I remember concluding that Ellis didn't seem interested in writing novels anymore.
But as much as Imperial Bedrooms felt like the fulfillment of a contractual obligation, The Shards feels like something Ellis very much wanted to write. It's a return to the time and setting of Less Than Zero- or to a few years earlier rather, 1981 to be specific- and on one hand it plays like his greatest hits: young people in LA, drugs, a little bi, a little apathetic, SoCal place names that I could never locate on a map, the proximity of the desert, ominously decontextualized pop lyrics, coyotes, the canyons, depraved serial-killer shit lurking in the background. A thesis could probably be written about the pandemic and the accompanying tendency to look backwards and get lost in nostalgia, but that's also something these details generated in me- nostalgia for Ellis's older novels that is, like hearing a new Tony Iommi solo after years between albums. That's a comparison by the way that is in one sense inappropriate, because Black Sabbath isn't the kind of music that Ellis seems to enjoy, but in another sense appropriate, because a) Sabbath goes perfectly with the novel's autumnal setting and atmosphere of slow-building doom, and b) appropriate in a general way because, as alluded to above, another of Ellis's old tricks (in common with Stephen King) is his use of music (you could say The Shards literally has a soundtrack- thanks to Meike for posting it), finding dark undercurrents in the lyrics of The B-52s and The Psychedelic Furs and Pat Benatar.
On the other hand, The Shards is also very different from Ellis's 80s and 90s writing. For one thing, it felt to me (at least initially) like one of the most traditionally-structured things he'd ever written. The story is preoccupied after all with one of the most archetypal of passages, from adolescence to adulthood, and pivots on the archetypal encounter (found in everything from The Great Gatsby to Wall Street) between a young and seemingly innocent person- in this case fictional Bret Ellis- and a shadowy charismatic figure who opens up a world of moral depravity that the seemingly innocent person is both repelled by and drawn to (maybe like my teenage self and Ellis novels), in this case a new student at Bret's high school named Robert Mallory. There's also a serialized quality to the novel (which I guess makes sense, considering that Ellis originally read it aloud as a series of installments on his podcast), with hints doled out and grim tidings foreshadowed and other lowbrow tactics of suspense utilized- none of which I can claim to be immune to any longer, if I ever was. It's not that Ellis's early writing was unstructured, but there was always this meandering disjointed quality (which I enjoyed), always room for the narrative to drift with its aimless characters. There's room for that in The Shards as well (it's 600 pages, after all), and Ellis is still great at bringing you into the rhythm of his characters' somewhat repetitive lives and making that compelling in itself, but combining that quality with an occasional shameless cliffhanger and real suspense creates a narrative momentum that I'm not sure any of his other novels have.
In addition to initially thinking The Shards was somewhat traditionally-structured (the structure kind of shatters in the last couple of hundred pages), I also found myself believing for a while that it was one of the sweeter and more earnest things Ellis had written, the hints of darkness at the margins mostly affectations and lingering narrative tics ultimately in service of a nostalgia trip about his coming-of-age and discovering of his homosexuality. It is about those things, or at least a fictionalized version of them, but it was also kind of thrilling to slowly realize what kind of story this really was, and how less noble Ellis's intentions actually were, so I won't say much more except that Stephen King is a much closer reference point than, say, The Perks of Being a Wallflower. Ellis in particular seems to prefer the earlier, nastier King, as do I, and we hear about fictional Bret's admiration for 'Salem's Lot and Cujo. An important plot development takes place at a screening of The Shining. And well, millions of people like Stephen King, but what impressed me was that the atmosphere of The Shards actually rivals those classics. Ellis has flirted with King's genre as far back as Less Than Zero, but it's usually been on the periphery of his stories- dark rumors of Manson-like activities in the canyons, recounted by laconic and indifferent narrators. He's never done anything like the slow-burn horror that The Shards turns out to be, and which prompted Christine Smallwood, in a perceptive review that you shouldn't read until you've finished the novel, to note Ellis's “once-in-a-generation talent for conjuring dread.” She does go on, in her mixed review, to write that "Ellis's stark and unsentimental moral vision is blind to half of human truth, and in this way has remained as childlike as the innocence it wants to dispel", which isn't exactly a compliment, and which echoes the words of some random guy on Reddit who I happened to see comment that Ellis is "...a bottomless pit of Gen-X darkness and nihilism." Both points probably have some validity, but I think also help account for why the last couple of hundred pages are so harrowing.
In short, I found this as playful, elusive, hypnotic, immersive, and yeah- malevolent- as anything I've read of Ellis's. The only thing is that, unlike The Rules of Attraction and American Psycho, it's not funny. Still, the most honest comment I can probably make is that I wished the 600 pages had been more like 1,000. It also made me wish I could remember what I did with my old Vintage paperbacks of Less Than Zero and Rules (both books obviously still in print, but now displayed in stores with requisitely awful modern covers instead of the austere and evocative photos of LA and an empty bed, respectively- the Vintage editions seem harder to find these days), both of which I suspect, at some point in my mid-20s and in thrall to David Foster Wallace and his repudiation of American Psycho, I either allowed myself to be very careless with or maybe even got rid of, just like a good Trotskyite.
January 9, 2023
#SHEREADSWITHCATS REVIEW
Thank you to the kind people at Knopf for providing me with a free copy.
I have been familiar with Bret Easton Ellis ever since I read AMERICAN PSYCHO way way back. BEE’s writing is always sharp, clever, and oozes with dark humor. So, OF COURSE, I needed to read his upcoming release THE SHARDS as quickly as possible. I mean, it’s his first novel in 13 years!!! I was Patrick-Bateman-excited to receive this copy and so I read.
THE SHARDS is metafiction and just over 600 pages. Bret and his tight knit circle of friends attend a prestigious prep school during 1980s Los Angeles, CA. Sex, drugs, greed, and general debauchery ensue. And like everything with BEE novels, the setting and his choice of era are always a character. This is a dark and disturbing read - THE SHARDS will stay with me for a long long time. Not to mention, there is a serial killer on the loose. Need I say more? Pub 1/17
Thank you to the kind people at Knopf for providing me with a free copy.
I have been familiar with Bret Easton Ellis ever since I read AMERICAN PSYCHO way way back. BEE’s writing is always sharp, clever, and oozes with dark humor. So, OF COURSE, I needed to read his upcoming release THE SHARDS as quickly as possible. I mean, it’s his first novel in 13 years!!! I was Patrick-Bateman-excited to receive this copy and so I read.
THE SHARDS is metafiction and just over 600 pages. Bret and his tight knit circle of friends attend a prestigious prep school during 1980s Los Angeles, CA. Sex, drugs, greed, and general debauchery ensue. And like everything with BEE novels, the setting and his choice of era are always a character. This is a dark and disturbing read - THE SHARDS will stay with me for a long long time. Not to mention, there is a serial killer on the loose. Need I say more? Pub 1/17
August 7, 2024
10 stelle... È un capolavoro, di sole 736 pagine... BEE si è superato per me è il libro della sua vita...
Non è mai uscito dagli anni '80
se non avessi letto le perizie di gaddis edito da saggiatore avrei decretato le schegge come miglior romanzo letto nel 2024 già ad agosto senza aspettare il 31 dicembre
Non è mai uscito dagli anni '80
se non avessi letto le perizie di gaddis edito da saggiatore avrei decretato le schegge come miglior romanzo letto nel 2024 già ad agosto senza aspettare il 31 dicembre
October 17, 2023
Per me questo è il primo romanzo di Bret Easton Ellis che leggo.
Il romanzo è ambientato nel 1981 e il protagonista è il diciasettenne Bret Ellis: qui romanzo e autobiografia si mescolano tanto da non riuscire a cogliere cosa sia vero e cosa sia inventato.
"Dopo quella sera abbandonai il progetto e nel corso dei tredici anni seguenti scrissi invece altri due libri, e solo nel 2020 sentii che potevo iniziare Le schegge, o che Le schegge aveva deciso che Bret fosse pronto, perché fu il libro a manifestarsi a me, non il contrario."
Interessante l'esplorazione di Bret per definire la sua identità di genere.
Però se il romanzo fosse ruotato solamente attorno alle storie di sesso, droga e ragazzate credo che lo avrei abbandonato dopo i primi capitoli.
Con maestria però l'autore colora la narrazione con le tinte di un thriller avvincente che fa allontanare la tentazione di abbandonare il libro.
"E volevo anche scrivere in quel modo: l’insensibilità come sentimento, l’insensibilità come movente, l’insensibilità come ragione di esistere, l’insensibilità come estasi."
Chi si cela dietro il serial killer collegato alle sette che infestavano Los Angeles e che porta Bret a dubitare di chiunque, specialmente di un misterioso nuovo arrivato a scuola? È se l’artefice di tutti questi delitti fosse Robert Mallory?
"Sembra sia stata la morte di sua madre la causa scatenante per cui Robert è un po’ uscito di testa, cosa comprensibile, ma credo che lui ne sia stato colpito in modo particolarmente duro, e che ciò abbia esacerbato quello che già aveva prima della morte di lei."
Da questo punto in poi il ritmo diventa sempre più incalzante: dov'è la verità? È Bret che vede cose dove non ci sono perché gli servono per la sua sceneggiatura o queste cose stanno succedendo realmente?
“E certe volte, quando mi sveglio da uno dei miei sogni su Robert o Matt o Ryan Vaughn o Thom o Susan, mi viene da ricordare che l’autunno del 1981 non è stato il sogno che nei decenni successivi mi è capitato di fingere che fosse. Ma mi sono sempre eclissato ogni volta che ho sentito il richiamo di quelle voci lontane, per andare a cercare il disco con la ragazza biondo platino in copertina, e alzare il volume, e suonarlo forte, chiudendo gli occhi e sdraiandomi ad ascoltare una canzone che parla di sogni.”
Bello!
Ora voglio recuperare gli altri...
Il romanzo è ambientato nel 1981 e il protagonista è il diciasettenne Bret Ellis: qui romanzo e autobiografia si mescolano tanto da non riuscire a cogliere cosa sia vero e cosa sia inventato.
"Dopo quella sera abbandonai il progetto e nel corso dei tredici anni seguenti scrissi invece altri due libri, e solo nel 2020 sentii che potevo iniziare Le schegge, o che Le schegge aveva deciso che Bret fosse pronto, perché fu il libro a manifestarsi a me, non il contrario."
Interessante l'esplorazione di Bret per definire la sua identità di genere.
Però se il romanzo fosse ruotato solamente attorno alle storie di sesso, droga e ragazzate credo che lo avrei abbandonato dopo i primi capitoli.
Con maestria però l'autore colora la narrazione con le tinte di un thriller avvincente che fa allontanare la tentazione di abbandonare il libro.
"E volevo anche scrivere in quel modo: l’insensibilità come sentimento, l’insensibilità come movente, l’insensibilità come ragione di esistere, l’insensibilità come estasi."
Chi si cela dietro il serial killer collegato alle sette che infestavano Los Angeles e che porta Bret a dubitare di chiunque, specialmente di un misterioso nuovo arrivato a scuola? È se l’artefice di tutti questi delitti fosse Robert Mallory?
"Sembra sia stata la morte di sua madre la causa scatenante per cui Robert è un po’ uscito di testa, cosa comprensibile, ma credo che lui ne sia stato colpito in modo particolarmente duro, e che ciò abbia esacerbato quello che già aveva prima della morte di lei."
Da questo punto in poi il ritmo diventa sempre più incalzante: dov'è la verità? È Bret che vede cose dove non ci sono perché gli servono per la sua sceneggiatura o queste cose stanno succedendo realmente?
“E certe volte, quando mi sveglio da uno dei miei sogni su Robert o Matt o Ryan Vaughn o Thom o Susan, mi viene da ricordare che l’autunno del 1981 non è stato il sogno che nei decenni successivi mi è capitato di fingere che fosse. Ma mi sono sempre eclissato ogni volta che ho sentito il richiamo di quelle voci lontane, per andare a cercare il disco con la ragazza biondo platino in copertina, e alzare il volume, e suonarlo forte, chiudendo gli occhi e sdraiandomi ad ascoltare una canzone che parla di sogni.”
Bello!
Ora voglio recuperare gli altri...
March 12, 2023
In letzter Zeit neige ich dazu Bücher dafür zu kritisieren, dass sie zu lang sind.
Ja, das ist auch hier der Fall. Es ist aber schnurz.
Mein erstes Buch von Bret Easton Ellis und ich weiß nicht wohin mit meiner Begeisterung.
Von Stephen King pflege ich zu sagen: "Meister des Belanglosen". Damit meine ich, das kein Anderer völlig alltägliche, belanglose Szenen, so einnehmend und unterhaltsam schreiben kann wie er. Daher ist es auch völlig egal wie ausufernd, umfangreich die Bücher werden. Man klebt fest, will weiter, mehr.... Herr Bret Easton Ellis darf sich nun mit auf dem Olymp meiner "Meister des Belanglosen" tummeln.
Das Buch nimmt einen ganz fiesen Psychothriller Drive an. Dazu einmalig eingefangen: die 80er mit sämtlichen Referenzen und einer Abgestumpftheit der Schönen und Reichen par excellence. Ich habe das Buch als unglaublich nihilistisch empfunden und feiere es für diese dunklen Vibes. Dazu eine nie nachlassende sexuell aufgeladene Parade an schönsten Körpern und Visagen - Liebe es!
Ja, das ist auch hier der Fall. Es ist aber schnurz.
Mein erstes Buch von Bret Easton Ellis und ich weiß nicht wohin mit meiner Begeisterung.
Von Stephen King pflege ich zu sagen: "Meister des Belanglosen". Damit meine ich, das kein Anderer völlig alltägliche, belanglose Szenen, so einnehmend und unterhaltsam schreiben kann wie er. Daher ist es auch völlig egal wie ausufernd, umfangreich die Bücher werden. Man klebt fest, will weiter, mehr.... Herr Bret Easton Ellis darf sich nun mit auf dem Olymp meiner "Meister des Belanglosen" tummeln.
Das Buch nimmt einen ganz fiesen Psychothriller Drive an. Dazu einmalig eingefangen: die 80er mit sämtlichen Referenzen und einer Abgestumpftheit der Schönen und Reichen par excellence. Ich habe das Buch als unglaublich nihilistisch empfunden und feiere es für diese dunklen Vibes. Dazu eine nie nachlassende sexuell aufgeladene Parade an schönsten Körpern und Visagen - Liebe es!
January 28, 2023
A gayer, more explicit The secret history set in Los Angeles. Bret is one of those rare contemporary authors who aren't afraid to become a character in a serial killer mystery. It had my attention, but it was too long.
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