CBR Bingo – Queer Lives
“Y’all. Bret Easton Ellis is NOT OKAY.” So says I, at my book club where we read this book. I read American Psycho about a decade ago and distinctly remember getting to something so disturbing that I yelped out loud, slammed the book shut, and tossed it across the room. If that visceral experience sounds exciting to you, well Ellis has plenty more to disturb and haunt you with, and in this, his newest book, he will take 595 pages to do so. Prepare for the torment to be drawn out and the descriptions vivid.
If I haven’t lost you yet, allow me to give you some insight into this bit of fiction. It’s 1981 and Bret (yes. Bret) is a senior in high school at a swanky prep school in California. He’s got popularity, wealth, friends, a doting girlfriend, lots of drugs and alcohol, and limited adult oversight. Seems like something out out of the movies; a picturesque high school experience, but all is not well. He is tormented by his inner demons as he questions his sexuality and identity, desperate to finish out his last year of school and break away from the performative shell he has created for himself to keep people from guessing his dark secrets. Oh, and he and his friends might be being pursued by a serial killer who has a penchant for animal mutilation.
Bret’s also weary of a new student, rumored to be disturbed, and what he sees happening in the news with missing teens and the alleged serial killer has him on edge as he comes home every day to an empty house. His peers are impassive, even skeptical, as Bret has a reputation for the fanciful as a budding author working on his first novel “Less Than Zero.” (yes, the title of Bret’s actual first book).
So. Yeah. Ellis reimagined his own actual high school experience (the cover on the book jacket is his senior photo) and apparently has some stuff to work OUT. This book is an aggressive fever dream of fact and fiction, a thriller bordering on horror with graphic scenes of sex and violence. Our book club meeting was absolutely abuzz recounting the shocking twists and turns of this novel.
If you DO read it, don’t be like me and read it on a deadline where you have to power through this book in a week. Give yourself some time and space from it because spending hours on end living in Ellis’ head is a squicky place to be.
