- Paperback: 384 pages
- Publisher: Picador; UK First Paperback Edition edition (26 April 1991)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0330319922
- ISBN-13: 978-0330319928
- Product Dimensions: 19.2 x 12.8 x 2.6 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (147 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 5,376 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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More About the Author
Product Description
Product Description
Patrick Bateman is Harvard-educated and intelligent. He works by day on Wall Street, earning a fortune to complement the one he was born with. His nights he spends in ways we cannot begin to fathom - doing impermissible things to women. He is living his own "American Dream".
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
24 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Generation X classic which makes Coupland look like a light weight,
By Richard 82 (London, UK) - See all my reviews
This review is from: American Psycho (Paperback)
Easton-Ellis' first person description of the development of a psychopath is nothing short of mind blowing and this fact alone makes American Psycho a great novel. Following the anti-hero Patrick Bateman through about a year of his life and aided by flashbacks to past events the reader is drawn ever more into the mindset of a killer and his normalisation and disassociation from the acts that he is committing. At the beginning of the book (where violence is only hinted at briefly), it is very easy to laugh at Bateman, his shallow life, appalling friends and fiancé and his assumption that happiness and wealth are one and the same thing. As the story develops one can almost feel pity for someone who is so clearly trapped in a life not of his choosing but which he is unwilling to leave for all the wrong reasons.
Bateman's increasingly violent behaviour and periods of psychosis characterise the middle of the book, but the author still finds room to add his own brand of dark humour to the situations he puts his star into. In the final section of the book we see Bateman develop into a full blown psychopathic monster, completely out of control and unable to repress the primal urges that are overcoming him. That Easton-Ellis manages to achieve this whilst taking a sideways sneer at eighties yuppie culture AND providing an allegorical interpretation of what it means to be alive in modern day America is what makes this novel remarkable and ultimately an essential read. My only complaint is that the novel is too long. Did the Huey Lewis and The News chapter really add anything to the plot, particularly after lengthy discussions on Genesis and Whitney Houston? Some of the later murders also seemed to add very little to the development of the character or the plot and one could argue were only added for pure shock value. (I'm thinking in particular of the murder of the escort girls and the rat chapter). This has the effect of making the last fifty to a hundred pages a bit of a chore, and dilutes the otherwise excellent ending. Like Lunar Park this novel creeps up on you and doesn't necessarily leave you in a better place than when you started it. There is no happy ending and if you feel disgusted after 200 pages it is probably best to put the book down at this stage rather than put yourself through the last 150 pages which are far more graphic. If you found the humour in the film entertaining and didn't find the murders too gory then I would recommend this. If you have trouble dealing with misogyny or black comedy then it is probably best to do what most of New York's high society should have done and avoid Bateman altogether.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
great fun,
This review is from: American Psycho (Paperback)
Before we start, let's remember this is not a political statement. it's just a book. And a damned good one.To escape the banality of his cosseted existence, Patrick Bateman seeks to find meaning through contrast in the nost extreme manner imaginable: murder, mutilation and a love of Genesis records. His love of such vacuous tripe as Phil Collins, Whitney Houston and Huey Lewis & the News - and his preoccupation with what his companions are wearing - are extremely clever and funny ways in which the author reveals the main character to us. And his (and everyone else's) repeated instances of mistaken identity make a brilliant comment on how the people in this world are simply clones of one another. Bateman 'needs to fit in' at the same time as craving the his own individuality. As the book deveops, we see this conflict push him further and further to the brink. Compulsive reading.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
American Satire,
By
This review is from: American Psycho (Paperback)
This book, I loved. Its pure satire straight from the intellectually messed up mind of Bateman, a pathological time bomb exploding in the book to help Ellis show the world the downside of yuppie America. The events range from comparing business cards to violence at the most extreme level. Ellis uses Bateman very well in the book. His self analytical diagonstic style at times shock the reader. Late in the book, the story moves from 1st person to 3rd person for a couple of pages, exhibiting an unexpeted style of sleek beutiful prose found no where else in the psychoanalytical frame of Bateman. The characters all show flaws of upper class yuppie society. Evelyne obsessed with marriage and wealth, Courtney constantly on anti-depressents, making her a character the complete opposite of Bateman. The humour is not in the violence, but in the explicit manner in which Bateman tells people numerously he is psychotic and wants to kill them and they are obvlivious to it. To experience a completley different novel, read this. An explosive satire on American capitalist corruption featuring a genuine psychotic murderer will have your heart racing.
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