- Paperback: 481 pages
- Publisher: Picador; Export ed edition (5 Dec 1998)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0330390082
- ISBN-13: 978-0330390088
- Product Dimensions: 21.4 x 13.8 x 4.2 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (53 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 2,807,022 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
Amazon.co.uk Review
Glamorama is a satirical mass-murder opus more ambitious than Ellis's 1990 American Psycho. It starts as a spritz-of-consciousness romp about kid-club entrepreneur Victor Ward, "the It boy of the moment," an actor/model up for Flatliners II. Ellis has perfect pitch for glam-speak, and he gives nightlife the fizz, pace, and shimmer it lacks in drab reality. Anyone could cite the right celeb names and tunes; but like a rock-polishing machine, his prose gives literary sheen to fame-chasing air-kissers. He's coldly funny: when Victor's girl tries to argue him out of a break up, she angrily snorts six bumps of coke, stops, mutters, "Wrong vial," snorts four corrective doses from whatever she has in her other fist, then objects to a rival at the party wearing the same dress she's wearing.
You had to be there; Ellis makes you feel you are. But such satire is a very smart bomb targeting a very large barn. Models' status anxiety doesn't merit Ellis's Tom Wolfe-esque expertise. Glamorama gets better when Victor gets drafted into a mysterious group of model/terrorists who bomb 747s and the Ritz in Paris, wearing Kevlar-lined Armani suits. Oh, they still behave like shallow snobs, pronouncing "cool" as if it had 12 "o"s, but now when somebody swills Cristal, it's apt to be poisoned, to horrific effect, which Ellis expertly describes. His enfant-terrible debut Less Than Zero aped Joan Didion. Now Ellis has grown into a lesser Don DeLillo--and that's high praise. --Tim Appelo --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Product Description
A man in what is recognizably New York is drawn into a shadowy looking-glass of that society and then finds himself trapped on the other side, in a much darker place where fame and terrorism, and family and politics, are inextricably linked and sometimes indistinguishable.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Whereas I found `American Psycho' an easy and absorbing read, I found this much harder work. Although rewarding in the end it took a while to get into. The part on the cruise ship became confusing for me and I was uncertain at times when we were focusing on a real plot or not. I enjoyed the concept of the camera crew, always having your life in the spot life etc but then I felt it lost something. If you don't reflect too much and try to analyse as you are reading it then this is a great read. I found myself trying to link characters together and once all the pieces of the jigsaw started to fall into place it was as if one of them wasn't quite right and you had to start all over again. However, it is a clever thriller and you never know which character to trust. Your ideas are continually blown to pieces as another piece of the puzzle is unravelled.
I loved the chapters going down in number, like a countdown. But a countdown to what exactly? A new script, a new scene, a new conspiracy? Both clever and intriguing to read this novel rather surprisingly sucked me in and even though at times I didn't have the foggiest idea what was going on, I was in the full long journey. It's difficult to work out Victor with his change of surnames - can we change our identity so easily and become someone different? Or is it something new to hide behind, to prevent us from having to reveal what lurks underneath the skin? Bret Easton Ellis takes celebrity culture and slowly picks away at it to let us see what exactly goes on behind the images we see on screen and in print.
I've had this book lounging on my shelves for quite a few years now, (6 to be exact) and I finally decided it needed to be read. I wish I'd read it sooner! Although not quite five stars for me, I'd happily recommend this novel and I certainly look forward to reading the other Ellis novel I own - The Rules of Attraction. It's a clever book and it's one that needs time devoting to it. You can't pick this up and then put it one side whilst you read another. It'll keep reminding you that it needs to be read! Devote some time to it and you will be rewarded with an intelligent and interesting masterpiece.
I loved the chapters going down in number, like a countdown. But a countdown to what exactly? A new script, a new scene, a new conspiracy? Both clever and intriguing to read this novel rather surprisingly sucked me in and even though at times I didn't have the foggiest idea what was going on, I was in the full long journey. It's difficult to work out Victor with his change of surnames - can we change our identity so easily and become someone different? Or is it something new to hide behind, to prevent us from having to reveal what lurks underneath the skin? Bret Easton Ellis takes celebrity culture and slowly picks away at it to let us see what exactly goes on behind the images we see on screen and in print.
I've had this book lounging on my shelves for quite a few years now, (6 to be exact) and I finally decided it needed to be read. I wish I'd read it sooner! Although not quite five stars for me, I'd happily recommend this novel and I certainly look forward to reading the other Ellis novel I own - The Rules of Attraction. It's a clever book and it's one that needs time devoting to it. You can't pick this up and then put it one side whilst you read another. It'll keep reminding you that it needs to be read! Devote some time to it and you will be rewarded with an intelligent and interesting masterpiece.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
All of Brett Easton Ellis's work is set within the same world. Characters appear and reappear through his books often ageing and learning from mistakes in previous novels.
In order to fully enjoy the characters in Glamorama it is important for you to have read The Rules of Attraction. Many of the central characters including Victor appear in both novels although Glamorama is not a sequal.
If you have enjoyed previous titles by Brett Easton Ellis then read Glamorama, if you haven't read anything of his before I suggest you start with American Psycho or Less than Zero.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I don't really know where to start but suffice to say that it took me just over two months to read this book. At least three times I considered stopping and moving on to the fourth Harry Potter book but I stuck with it. Yes it really is hard going at times and you begin to ask yourself whether any kind of story will ever develop. However, and this is the crux, keep going, because once the main protagonist ends up in Europe, things do begin to get interesting and highly perverse.
It's difficult to describe exactly what this book is about but at least by the end page you have some idea as to why Victor was sent to Europe. However you are left to make your own mind up about the film crews, about the apparent schizophrenia, about the double life. Now on paper this may not sound like the perfect way to wrap up a novel of this kind, but Ellis manages to come up with an ending which will satisfy you but always stay with you.
This is a dark, paranoid book cloaked in name dropping and popular culture but amongst the glamour and the money is a sickening look at nineteen nineties society and the terrible cult of celebrity. If you manage to stick with it you really will be rewarded with one of the most powerful novels around at the moment.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Absolutely beyond overrated
One of the most overrated books i have ever read, 50% of the book is unnecessary too, it does not capture, as the author intended the "zeitgeist" of the specific time mostly... Read more
Published 4 months ago by Angela Lee
Dullarama
I have never been totally convinced by Ellis's minimalist literary style. It can work brilliantly, such as in his scabrous 80s satire American Psycho, but it can be irritatingly... Read more
Published on 18 July 2008 by P. M. Stoddart
Career Low Point
Most of the negative reviews have nailed this book on the head: it's a rambling and pointless trawl through the fashion industry with brief interludes of international terrorism. Read more
Published on 9 July 2006 by G. A. Reeves
Are you guys reading the same book?
I think possibly some of the other reviewers here are confused about what this book is about and, possibly, what Bret Easton Ellis is about. Read more
Published on 26 May 2006 by Mr. J. Timms
Nothing to get hung about
Or, nothing is real, as John Lennnon sang. Which is what this book is about, and the use of pop lyrics to tell the story as well as interminable lists of fashionable clothes,... Read more
Published on 1 Aug 2005 by Mr. David Cheshire
Total waste
I have read and enjoyed all of Ellis' books except "The Rules of Attraction". This book is another exception: I read but feel it is very poor even now, years afterwards. Read more
Published on 26 Aug 2004 by Norberto Amaral
A muddled affair for an otherwise sharp satirist
The sheer volume I was presented with when buying this book in relation to Ellis's other novels gave me an inkling that perhaps the author had outdone himself somewhat in story and... Read more
Published on 21 July 2004 by Peter Roman
Marilyn Monroe Meets Charlie Manson
To declare a vested interest at the outset: I am a Brett Ellis fanatic, (albeit one frequently frustrated by the common misinterpretations of his work). Read more
Published on 8 Mar 2004 by Sean Lynch
Hmmm
I just finished reading this and it left me deeply unsatisfied.
The first 150 pages were fun but didn't do much. Read more
Published on 8 Oct 2003
Confusing
After reading "The Rules Of Attraction" and "American Psycho", I was prepared for his book "Glamorama" to be just as strange. Read more
Published on 16 July 2003 by laura westwater
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