INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER • In this modern classic, the acclaimed New York Times bestselling author explores the incomprehensible depths of madness and captures the insanity of violence in our time or any other. Patrick Bateman moves among the young and trendy in 1980s Manhattan. Young, handsome, and well educated, Bateman earns his fortune on Wall Street by day while spending his nights in ways … day while spending his nights in ways we cannot begin to fathom. Expressing his true self through torture and murder, Bateman prefigures an apocalyptic horror that no society could bear to confront.
“A masterful satire and a ferocious, hilarious, ambitious, inspiring piece of writing, which has large elements of Jane Austen at her vitriolic best. An important book.” —Katherine Dunn, bestselling author of Geek Love
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This book is so good. In fact, it does such a great job at mocking the ’80s while detailing a well connected psycho, that I actually disliked the perfectly competent movie at first because it was only a mere shadow of the source material
AMERICAN PSYCHO – American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis is one of my favorite books. It’s a work of true genius, about a sadistic murderer who is self-obsessed. The thing that’s great about this author is his strong voice – several of his other novels convey similar themes. The reader is transported into the protagonist’s shallow, depraved and violent thoughts and actions.
Ooph, this one was a doozy!
Most of you have probably heard of this book because of the movie adaptation starring Christian Bale.
The other half might be confusing it with the Hitchcock film, Psycho. They are not the same thing. Do not make the same mistake I did.
Like a lot of books I have reviewed so far, the only reason I read this particular novel was because of a class I took at undergrad. The class was called Contemporary Extremes, and I gobbled this book up. I finished it in two days, prompting my lecturer to stare at me as if I was some sort of alien. He told me he’d never met anybody who could stomach reading this book so quickly.
What he doesn’t know is that I don’t actually have a stomach of steel. I just pushed all the queasy feelings away because I was so into the book.
Warning: this book is not for the faint of heart. Do not read this book while eating.
So Patrick Bateman is this Wall Street business man who has his own office, only wears the best clothes and only does the best blow in the classiest clubs in New York. Patrick lives the perfect life.
Patrick is also a psychopath if there ever was one.
Holy shit Patrick is insane. He has no concept of what it means to be considerate to other’s feelings (so I guess that also makes him a sociopath?). He goes on regular killing sprees where he just straight up murders random people in such a methodical and professional way, the guy could make a living as a hit man. He’s obsessed with everything being perfect and clean, and he boasts and incredible eye for detail. So much detail that he can tell you exactly what anyone is wearing – how much it cost, where they got it from, when it was in fashion, and how relevant it is at that particular moment.
The problem is that the way Patrick talks about clothes and material objects – cars, cigars, CDs, wine, business cards – is actually a dead give away to his mental disorder. Patrick doesn’t understand that everyone else around him is just as real as he is. He’s so entrenched in a material world that his entire reality seems fabricated, like he could very well be the only person existing and everyone around him simply exists to satisfy his needs (read up on Solipsism if you have no idea what I’m talking about). Patrick murders people because, to him, they’re not even real enough to deserve being alive. They’re just occupying an empty spot in his brain, one that he can very easily replace.
So how does nobody else around him realize that he’s actually certifiably insane?
Because everybody else around him is just as bad.
Patrick is part of an upper class society where the only thing that matters is material objects. Patrick frequently forgets his colleagues names, mixing them up for each other, and they do the same to him. Patrick frequently pays attention to just his colleagues clothes and how much money they spent on lunch, rather than what they actually look like. And when Patrick kills somebody, nobody actually really notices, because they’re not even sure who everyone around them is.
At risk of spoiling the novel, it’s actually a really surprisingly, philosophically provoking read. It puts you in the mindset of a person who is questioning his reality, and has no way of escaping a hell he’s put himself in. As far as he knows, he’s not real, and nothing around him is either, but he has no way of getting out of it.
All in all, this book is a stunningly amazing read which, I emphasize again, should not be read while eating. I can’t wait to read more by Ellis, and I can’t wait to reread this book. Even if I can’t eat lasagna without wanting to heave a little bit anymore.
Final rating: 5 stars for the psychotic young millionaire.
There is just too damn much detail about clothes and fashion. It was a real turn-off and for those who want to see some seriously psychotic shit, it presents it in such a dull and uninteresting way that it’s hard to get through. This may be the only time I have (or will ever) say this… but go watch the movie instead.
I originally watched the movie first then after finding out it was a book, I asked my parents for it as a Christmas gift. Truly amazing and so much more detailed than the movie. I don’t want to spoil anything, but if you are into psychological mind f*cks. I highly recommend!
This novel was written by a modern-day Dostoyevsky without the writing or storytelling skills. The repetitive description and infatuation with clothing, restaurants, conspicuous consumption and hyperactive technical and social dissonance are overdone. The violence and depravity have a point, but again they are overdone. “Is it real or is it Memorex?” holds for the underlying question of the book. Does this story occur only within Bateman’s head, or is some, or all of it true?
A supposed seminal work of modern literature; I set out to read it. Had I not spent three days in the hospital, bored to death, I doubt that I would have finished this book. In the final 30 pages, the author begins to reveal where he has been going, and it is here that his ability to write truly shows itself. While delving into similar ideas and issues that Dostoyevsky pondered, Ellis does so with much less aplomb.
Bret Easton Ellis is a master of dialogue and gets to the heart of difficulty in elite society (though I think we all kind of suffer from what Patrick Bateman experiences). This is the extreme of what happens when we disconnect from the people around us, isolation, lack of conection to humanity and each other is dangerous. If you watched the movie, you have no idea what you’re missing. This is a completely different beast and so much more — more creative, more powerful, more scary than the movie could dare be. Read it. Read it now.
Also the closet I’ve seen to modern day Marquis de Sade. Do NOT read if you are not good with detailed torture, violece, and sex.
Ticks all the boxes other books are too terrified to tick
I’ve read the book a few times and each time I read it I’ll learn something new. I certainly would not recommend it for anyone that is not mature enough to read it. End it should certainly come with a warning that it is quite disturbing and it could affect you emotionally. The author wrote a masterpiece of a narcissistic sociopathic serial killer. Who is also wrapped up in the 80s yuppie drugs scene. The detail of the book is quite impressive and I’ll probably read it again someday. I found it quite fascinating yet sadistic and disturbing.
Wow. if not for all the swearing, I’d recommend this book as a set work for every high school student. Grabs you by the lapels and mugs you.
I think this book is dangerous in today’s world, in that it can give people ideas. The scene in the Central Park Zoo is just something too horrific to be fictionalized. Sorry BEE, you’re a talented writer but in today’s crazy world it doesn’t work anymore. I have to say that I still love the movie though. There was a touch of humor added and the CPZ scene was taken out. I just think that we should be careful not to influence the unbalanced. I threw this book away when I was done.
Well this was an odd book with probably the most unreliable narrator I’ve ever seen. At the beginning I was pretty confident that all these events were actually occurring. But at the end now, I’m not really sure any of this happened at all. I don’t know where the reality stopped, and drug fueled psychotic breaks started. And that disconnect was really interesting, it was unique and different and a viewpoint I don’t read very often.
Something I find interesting is how much I actually cared for some of the characters. I honestly didn’t expect to like anybody, or really feel bad for anybody especially with the conversations they have in the book. But each of the side characters make me question what type of person this really is, when not looked at through the eyes of somebody with deep psychological issues. Are they really horrible people, or do you only see the small bits that frame them as horrible individuals? The female characters really stood out for me, they felt like they had stories and personalities and such. But you never read about any of that, instead you just see them as sacks of meat to have sex with and abuse. It also makes me wonder though, what is the actual conversations going on without the narrator tainting everything with drugs and such.
Overall, I would probably be willing to read this book again just to see if I can pick up more on where reality breaks down. I think it would be interesting to see how this effects my viewpoint on the events and characters.
Without doubt, one of the worst books I have ever read. If you enjoy books the take glee in breaking puppies legs for the hell of it, this is for you. Ugh.
could not get passed page 48 – why because every page mentioned “designer” this, that – get to the story…
I didn’t like anything about this book. Although it presented what is probably an accurate picture of a certain shallow, self-entitled, amoral class of people, that portrait doesn’t support any pretension that this novel is more than a shallow, sick, nausea-inducing read about individuals not worth the powder it would take to blow them to Hell.
I did not particularly enjoy this book which I found very disturbing in its portrayal of the main character. The story went all over the place and included chapters that seemed to be bizarre digressions from the story line.
Well written but focuses on the most obnoxious people imaginable
Perhaps it didn’t age well, but I can’t imagine it was enjoyable to read when it was first published. After 70 pages I couldn’t take another page-long list of products from a 1980s edition of Vogue.
Years ago, I had watched the brilliant movie before reading the book, and after suffering through the totally lame YOU by Caroline Kepnes, I decided to revisit AMERICAN PSYCHO. The eighties certainly were a decade of extravagance…
AMERICAN PSYCHO was published in 1991 – to much controversy, it seems -, and while some eighties cultural references are necessarily dated, in some ways it is eerily very current. Donald Trump is Patrick Bateman’s idol, and reading this novel in 2019 is morbidly hysterical and more than a little bit scary. I cannot help but wonder what Mr. Ellis would do with a revamped, digital-age version of the story; the mind boggles.
The words “scathing satire” don’t even begin to describe this book. It is gruesome, surreal, riveting, and you can’t help but cringe as you find yourself laughing at the dark humour and the absurdity of it all, while being totally grossed out yet marvelling at the creativity of Bret Easton Ellis as well as his impeccable prose and genuine-sounding dialogues.
I’m sure theses were written on AMERICAN PSYCHO; it’s horror at its most terrifying (at least, Bateman is an equal opportunity killer), but also serves as an allegory for those vapid people, so self-absorbed that they don’t see what’s going on around them, they hear what they want to hear, they don’t care, they’re not even interested in others, in the real world. AMERICAN PSYCHO had been one of my first incursions into the world of the psychopaths and sociopaths, and even after reading other books on psychopathic killers – fiction and non-fiction alike – I’m still very much impressed with how accurately Mr. Ellis depicts Patrick Bateman, whom we watch becoming even more unhinged as the story progresses. Or is some or all of it happening in his mind…
As captivating and thought-provoking as it is, and fabulously well written, I don’t think I could read this book in one sitting; I’m not especially squeamish but it’s a lot to take. At the end, there is an excerpt from WHITE by Bret Easton Ellis; it released earlier this year. It sounds interesting and I will probably have a look at that and at Less than Zero.
I got my digital epub copy from the library (thank you!), and I don’t know if it was a fluke, but Chapter 20 was incomplete; lines or pages were missing at the end.
repetitive