A raw portrait of a lost, rich generation who experience sex, drugs, and disaffection at too early an age
Less Than Zero
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Review
'It is all too relevant to teenagers today'
--Alastair Hutchinson in The Times
--Alastair Hutchinson in The Times
Book Description
Clay comes home to L.A. for Christmas vacation and re-enters a landscape of limitless privilege and moral entropy, where everyone drives Porsches, dines at Spago, and snorts mountains of cocaine. He tries to renew feelings for his girlfriend, Blair, and for his best friend from high school, Julian, who is careering into hustling and heroin. Clay's holiday turns into a dizzying spiral of desperation that takes him through the relentless parties in glitzy mansions, seedy bars, and underground rock clubs. Morally barren, ethically bereft and tinged with implicit violence, Less Than Zero is a shocking coming-of-age novel about the casual nihilism that comes with youth and money. ‘An extraordinarily accomplished first novel’ New Yorker ‘One of the most disturbing novels I’ve read in a long time. It possesses an unnerving air of documentary reality’ Michiko Kakutani, New York Times ‘The Catcher in the Rye for the MTV generation’ USA Today ‘Remarkable. A killer – sexy, sassy, sad’ Village Voice
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful
By A Customer
Format:Paperback
An interesting point that has arisen in previous reviews is that some people treat "The Informers" as a novel and others as a series of stories. I know how they both feel.
I first read it in paperback, where there is no indication whatever that this is not a novel. I tried to keep track of the different narrators and different characters until my brain hurt (this wasn't helped by the fact that all the male characters are 20 years old, blond with green eyes and adonis-like bodies - just how Ellis likes 'em, I guess - and all the women are middle-aged, wasted and strung out on tranquillisers.)
I loved it anyway for what the blurb calls its "impressionistic blur" of narrative. That's another way of saying it makes your brain hurt if you try to keep track of them individually.
Then I picked up a hardback copy in a second-hand bookshop and it made it quite clear that this was a collection of stories. I breathed a sigh of relief, but as someone who is never happier than when he feels there's something in a book he's not quite getting, "The Informers" felt slightly diminished as a result.
Read it anyway. It's cool, mature, bleak, hilarious Ellis.
38 of 40 people found the following review helpful
By rp
Format:Paperback
Where did Bret Easton-Ellis come from? I don't mean geographically. I mean how did someone in their early twenties write such a complete book? Less Than Zero is so accomplished it's incredible. It tells the story of the teenagers of the rich and famous, and their decent into decadence simply in search of something to do. These characters simply have nothing to risk. They are dead to the world and completely souless.
I think a lot of other authors wouldn't be able to resist the temptation to satirise the characters. Easton-Ellis looks beyond the shallowness of his characters and the result is a tragedy worthy of Evelyn Waugh, F. Scott Fitzgerald or Ernest Hemingway. Unfortunately, Less Than Zero is not as entertaining as Vile Bodies or The Great Gatsby. It's on a par with The Sun Also Rises though.
I think as the years go by, this book will be seen as more and more tragic, and an extremely good record of 1980s America at it's most empty and decadent. When it was first released some reviewers misread it as some kind of nihilistic call-to-arms for young party people. There's even an excerpt on the back of the book from one reviewer who compares the characters to The Beat Generation and generally approves of their wild party antics. I think now that the dust has settled it's easier to understand the meaning of this book. There's no soul in this party.
I think a lot of other authors wouldn't be able to resist the temptation to satirise the characters. Easton-Ellis looks beyond the shallowness of his characters and the result is a tragedy worthy of Evelyn Waugh, F. Scott Fitzgerald or Ernest Hemingway. Unfortunately, Less Than Zero is not as entertaining as Vile Bodies or The Great Gatsby. It's on a par with The Sun Also Rises though.
I think as the years go by, this book will be seen as more and more tragic, and an extremely good record of 1980s America at it's most empty and decadent. When it was first released some reviewers misread it as some kind of nihilistic call-to-arms for young party people. There's even an excerpt on the back of the book from one reviewer who compares the characters to The Beat Generation and generally approves of their wild party antics. I think now that the dust has settled it's easier to understand the meaning of this book. There's no soul in this party.
14 of 15 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Apparently this was writen before American Psycho but was held back because it wasn't thought of too highly by the publishers. After the overwhelming success of 'AP' this was given the go ahead some years later, the publishers certain that those who lapped-up his previous work would buy this without a second thought.
It makes me wonder: if this was his debut, what would we be saying about this author?
It makes me wonder: if this was his debut, what would we be saying about this author?
The Informers is a collection of short stories loosely held together by one or two characters who flit in and out of a few, and includes narratives from fading rock-stars, vampires, drug abusers, and characters in the mould of 'Clay' from Less Than Zero - angst-ridden, self destructing teens.
It is sometimes hard to follow and difficult to make the connections between the many characters, but often Ellis sucks you in and spits you out with a ball of low-life going-ons and and the care-free abuse of under-age girls - by Vampires, no less. Yes, like his other work, sometimes it is a little hard to stomach.
All in all I'd rank this in last place of all his 5 works, but the rest are of such high quality that this is no fair reflection on this dark, humerous and sometimes-grotesque read.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
By Dead Celeb
Format:Paperback
I have to admit, when I first read this collection of short stories, having read a fair amount of Ellis other work, I thought 'Oh, here we go again, same old boring self obsessed rich kids doing drugs, Ellis is a one trick pony'. But this haunting book drew me in. Don't try and keep track of all the characters, one of the points is that they are almost anti-characters, losing their souls in a sea of Valium and vodka. The writing is masterfully minimal, giving as much if not more attention to designer clothes than the essential selves-if there is any-of the characters.
While some stories miss the mark-real life vampires?...This book contains some genuine sublime moments.
Reading this book is like viewing the world by flicking through 700 tv channels, showing the alternate horror and banality of the Western world. Cool and detached. Enjoy.
While some stories miss the mark-real life vampires?...This book contains some genuine sublime moments.
Reading this book is like viewing the world by flicking through 700 tv channels, showing the alternate horror and banality of the Western world. Cool and detached. Enjoy.
10 of 11 people found the following review helpful
By A Customer
Format:Paperback
The first book I have ever read by Ellis and I will be reading more as a result. I have just finished the book and it has become one of my all time favourites. Ellis writes about boredom and irrelevant conversation in a gripping manner. Hard to comprehend I know but the author summaries the 80's perfectly. Anyone in their mid-twenties onwards should be able to relate to this book and find it spot on and possibly even miss those times.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
By Paul Bowes
TOP 500 REVIEWER
Format:Paperback
Less Than Zero is the obvious starting place for readers unfamiliar with Bret Easton Ellis, but his first novel is also still one of his best. The much better known American Psycho is a variation on the same themes at more than twice the length.
Ellis is a writer with a narrow range of subject matter and tone, but within his limits he is an acute observer, and this novel is far better than it should be, given the writer's extreme youth (Ellis was twenty-one in the year of publication; by contrast, Douglas Coupland, older by three years, didn't publish his similarly lauded Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture until 1991, at the age of 30). It shows some signs of being a young man's book - the structure is compiled out of relatively short-breathed passages, none longer than a few pages - but Ellis is canny enough to make use of a natural structural device to give the narrative shape: the narrator, eighteen-year-old Clay, is home from college for a four-week vacation over Christmas and the New Year.
The time is the Reaganite early 80s and the place is Los Angeles. The characters are for the most part the children of the rich, for whom the party lifestyle begins early and education and meaningful work are largely optional. This is the world of Fitzgerald, though the repetitive, telegraphic style is closer to that of the young Hemingway. There are distant echoes of Nathaniel West's Day of the Locust, and perhaps more recent ones of the Los Angeles of Chandler and Ross Macdonald; but the primary influence is the Joan Didion of - the most significant postwar novel of life inside the privileged LA circle - and the California-themed journalism of Slouching Towards Bethlehem (FSG Classics) and The White Album (FSG Classics).
Less Than Zero has been criticised for its emotional coldness and its imposed flatness of tone, which some observers have mistaken for amoralism on the part of the author. In fact the novel is rather conventionally moral. The narrator, Clay, is not a boy who cannot feel but a boy who is desperately trying not to feel because he is steadily being overwhelmed by the conviction that almost every aspect of the lives that he and his friends are leading is false and destructive. (An aspect of the book that has not been much commented on is that it is also a disguised reckoning with the parents of the author's generation, whose shortcomings are mercilessly, if for the most part indirectly, exposed through the portrait of their children.)
As a forensic analysis of a social group whose habits have since been advertised and imitated around the world Less Than Zero is unlikely to be bettered. Although Ellis has since written at much greater length, the novel benefits greatly from its relative brevity and tight formal organisation. If it skirts around the savagery that would later threaten to overwhelm American Psycho, it also lacks that novel's humour. Clay is not Patrick Bateman: but Bateman is what several of the characters Clay meets in Less Than Zero threaten to become, a few years later in their lives. The earlier novel made Ellis's reputation, and would be worth reading if the author had never written another line. Read more ›
Ellis is a writer with a narrow range of subject matter and tone, but within his limits he is an acute observer, and this novel is far better than it should be, given the writer's extreme youth (Ellis was twenty-one in the year of publication; by contrast, Douglas Coupland, older by three years, didn't publish his similarly lauded Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture until 1991, at the age of 30). It shows some signs of being a young man's book - the structure is compiled out of relatively short-breathed passages, none longer than a few pages - but Ellis is canny enough to make use of a natural structural device to give the narrative shape: the narrator, eighteen-year-old Clay, is home from college for a four-week vacation over Christmas and the New Year.
The time is the Reaganite early 80s and the place is Los Angeles. The characters are for the most part the children of the rich, for whom the party lifestyle begins early and education and meaningful work are largely optional. This is the world of Fitzgerald, though the repetitive, telegraphic style is closer to that of the young Hemingway. There are distant echoes of Nathaniel West's Day of the Locust, and perhaps more recent ones of the Los Angeles of Chandler and Ross Macdonald; but the primary influence is the Joan Didion of - the most significant postwar novel of life inside the privileged LA circle - and the California-themed journalism of Slouching Towards Bethlehem (FSG Classics) and The White Album (FSG Classics).
Less Than Zero has been criticised for its emotional coldness and its imposed flatness of tone, which some observers have mistaken for amoralism on the part of the author. In fact the novel is rather conventionally moral. The narrator, Clay, is not a boy who cannot feel but a boy who is desperately trying not to feel because he is steadily being overwhelmed by the conviction that almost every aspect of the lives that he and his friends are leading is false and destructive. (An aspect of the book that has not been much commented on is that it is also a disguised reckoning with the parents of the author's generation, whose shortcomings are mercilessly, if for the most part indirectly, exposed through the portrait of their children.)
As a forensic analysis of a social group whose habits have since been advertised and imitated around the world Less Than Zero is unlikely to be bettered. Although Ellis has since written at much greater length, the novel benefits greatly from its relative brevity and tight formal organisation. If it skirts around the savagery that would later threaten to overwhelm American Psycho, it also lacks that novel's humour. Clay is not Patrick Bateman: but Bateman is what several of the characters Clay meets in Less Than Zero threaten to become, a few years later in their lives. The earlier novel made Ellis's reputation, and would be worth reading if the author had never written another line. Read more ›
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3.5 out of 5 stars
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
1.0 out of 5 stars
Repellent characters that do nothing
I'm sure some will say that this book is an allegory for a moral decline in American youth etc. When I read a book I want to find a story, good writing, characters etc. Read more
Published 9 days ago by Damo Green
5.0 out of 5 stars
Disappear here
This is a really strange one - the characters in this excellent novel are so far removed from my own (very tame) coming of age experiences yet Mr Easton-Ellis makes the whole thing... Read more
Published 10 days ago by K. K. Jakubczyk
3.0 out of 5 stars
Decent Read
This was my first Bret Eatson Ellis book, It was a decent read. The book doesn't really have a plot exactly, to sum it up-involves rich teens and cocaine. Read more
Published 20 days ago by Keith Bruton
3.0 out of 5 stars
you won't see it coming
This is clever. And nasty. And empty. And vacuous. Basically it's Ellis.
A series of vignettes take us through the standard Ellis tropes. Read more
A series of vignettes take us through the standard Ellis tropes. Read more
Published 1 month ago by The Amazon J
5.0 out of 5 stars
perfect
I was completely stunned by the book's conditions. The description said it was second-hand but it actually looks like brand-new. Shipping time was grand, too
Published 5 months ago by Jacopo
3.0 out of 5 stars
Blast from the past
Interesting reading this again after all these years. Enjoyable again but slightly more disturbing this time around. Good book to pass time with.
Published 5 months ago by Mark Meggy
4.0 out of 5 stars
Short stories NOT a full blown novel...
Less a novel and more a collection of extremely loosely connected short stories set in L.A. The movie based from the book is pretty terrible, but from watching that it makes... Read more
Published 6 months ago by finalguy
5.0 out of 5 stars
Amazing!
I read this book when at uni and it spoke to me perfectly. Ellis really has captured the voice of a generation but it speaks to everyone that age. Read more
Published 6 months ago by KamikazeKat452
2.0 out of 5 stars
The Informers
I came to Bret Easton Ellis by, probably, a fairly familiar route: saw American Psycho; read American Psycho; bought something else hoping for it to be another American Psycho (The... Read more
Published 7 months ago by Tom
3.0 out of 5 stars
A tale of the emptiness of the teenagers who have everything...
In this anti-consumerist story everything is available in excess, be in clothes, cars, drugs or sex and few of these things provide any real satisfaction. Read more
Published 9 months ago by Culture Vulture
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