Review from a Transgressive Fiction Fan
This book blew me away. First of all, you have to be prepared to be let into the mind of a psychopath. That entails more than murder, which a lot of people reviewing this book completely miss. Watch out for these two types of brainless reviews. “Its worth the boring stuff for the violence”. or “It’s misogynistic! And about murdering people. You like that?”. I know it’s not standard, but a protagonist CAN be a villian. If you think experiencing or creating something makes you an advocate of it, you’re missing out on a lot of good art.
Anyways, the entire book is written from Patrick Bateman’s point of view, and Patrick Bateman is a materialistic vain insecure obsessive compulsive hallucinating (yeah, mysogynistic i guess)delusional psychopath. And you will be completely enveloped in his world. This is what traps you and makes the book so addicting. I would read this book at the park, or on the bus, and when I’d put it down to join the rest of the human world it was almost impossible. For a good 10 minutes I’d just be staring at people feeling a million miles away.
You don’t skip over the bits about his facial creams, you absorb it and afterwards let your jaw drop that he is more passionate about it than any human life, or feeling. People ARE materials to him, just more useless and often tasteless ones.
Maybe you won’t even notice when a talking cheerio is sitting in a chair being interviewed, since you can’t be sure of what he’s hallucinating either. (and that’s key).
Just suck it up and take it. READ the book.
“Insightful” Review from a Mainstream Reader
Bret Easton Ellis is an author who makes the (otherwise inexplicable to me) concept of the Finnish sauna appealing. After reading his vile ‘brain’-droppings, I wanted to spend hours in an intolerably hot humid cabin, there to sweat and be beaten with birch twigs until all of the vileness I had absorbed from contact with this dreck had been purged from my system.
I truly have a hard time understanding how anyone could consider this book brilliant. But then I also have a hard time understanding why people flock in droves to suffer the latest lientery with which Chuck Palahniuk continues to bescumber his readership.
Sometimes vileness is nothing more than that. There is no pony here – just a heap of stinking album graecum.