american psycho bret easton ellis book review

Bateman kills without a pattern, the only consistency being his ever-increasing lust for violence, progressing from simple stabbings to long sequences of rape, torture, cannibalism and necrophilia, all told through the dispassionate monologue of Bateman. He is involved in a loveless engagement with fellow socialite Evelyn, although he takes any chance to sleep with other women, all of whom seem to bear a passing resemblance to his fiancée.Īfter murdering his colleague, Paul Owen, Bateman uses his apartment as his own personal slaughterhouse, a place to kill and dispose of bodies. Mistaken identity is common, both in the narration and as a frequent topic of discussion amongst Bateman and his peers. He is obsessed with image, with no regard to substance, to the point that many of his colleagues form an indistinguishable gestalt being. Bateman is also, possibly, a serial killer. After all, how can we trust a man as vain and concerned with image as Bateman to actually be telling us the events? How much of it is fantasy or hyperbole, told for the sake of venting the frustrations of Bateman?īateman is a businessman, an investment banker. Told through the mind of Patrick Bateman, the book is sometimes unsteady, unreliable. American Psycho is strangely seductive, hypnotising in its hyper-attentiveness. Some judge it to be a worship of the aestheticism of violence, others see it as a hilarious black-comedy about the price of success.

Something sinister lurks in the book behind it’s refined prose, the evil of Bret Easton Ellis, the evil of capitalism, of Yuppies, of the cocaine-fuelled 80s, and of the ever-present weight of society, forcing us to be less than we dream.Įveryone has an opinion of the story, often garnered from the 2000 film starring Christian Bale. It can’t be sold to anyone in Australia under the age of 18 and in Germany the book only became available for purchase in the year 2000.

It has been 27 years since American Psycho came out and yet with all the talk of the numbing of society, this work still manages to shock.

American psycho bret easton ellis book review