The most exciting novel Bret Easton Ellis has written since American Psycho, and the publishing sensation of the year.
Lunar Park
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Review
..demonstrates a reinvigorated talent that is all the more impressive for its funny and frightening portayal of failure -- Novel of the Week, The Telegraph, 1st October
..has a mesmerising and elegiac ending which transcends the genre crescendo in the book's second half.. -- The Telegraph magazine, 1st Oct
Here is a book that progresses from darkness and banality to light and epiphany with suprising strength and sureness. -- Stephen King, Entertainment Weekly, 23rd September 2005
The creepiest insight..and the most mature-is that some such longings may even survive death. -- Stephen King, Entertainment Weekly, 23rd September 2005
..has a mesmerising and elegiac ending which transcends the genre crescendo in the book's second half.. -- The Telegraph magazine, 1st Oct
Here is a book that progresses from darkness and banality to light and epiphany with suprising strength and sureness. -- Stephen King, Entertainment Weekly, 23rd September 2005
The creepiest insight..and the most mature-is that some such longings may even survive death. -- Stephen King, Entertainment Weekly, 23rd September 2005
Book Description
Imagine becoming a bestselling novelist while still in college and almost immediately famous and wealthy, and then seeing your insufferable father reduced to a bag of ashes in a safety-deposit box, even as your celebrity drowns in a sea of vilification, booze, and drugs. Imagine having a second chance, as the Bret Easton Ellis of this remarkable novel is given. Now married to the mother of his previously unacknowledged son and living in the suburban hinterlands, Ellis here recounts the unraveling of this new life. He glimpses a disturbing (fictional) character at his fateful Halloween party, and a car identical to his late father’s; his stepdaughter’s doll violently “malfunctions”, and their house undergoes bizarre transformations. Connecting these aberrations to graver events – a series of grotesque murders, and the epidemic disappearance of young boys – Ellis struggles to defend his family even as his wife, their therapists, and the police insist that his apprehensions are rooted instead in substance abuse and egomania. Lunar Park confounds one expectation after another, passing through comedy and mounting psychological and supernatural horror toward an astonishing resolution – about love and loss, fathers and sons – in what is surely the most powerfully original and moving novel of an extraordinary career.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
By Paul Bowes
TOP 500 REVIEWER
Format:Paperback
'Lunar Park' is a strange book - perhaps the oddest that Bret Easton Ellis has published. In effect, it re-imagines the novel of contemporary nihilism that Ellis pioneered in 'Less Than Zero' and 'American Psycho' as a tale of paranoiac domestic horror in the manner of 'Poltergeist' - a family threatened in its own home by unnatural forces.
As one might imagine, Ellis is wholly aware of the precedents, and the novel is seamed with references to contemporary horror cinema that acknowledge the second-handedness of his theme, while undercutting criticism by introducing an element of knowing postmodernist play. This is greatly reinforced by Ellis's adoption of the classic doppelgänger motif; his protagonist is a writer haunted by his own fictional creations. But Ellis doesn't stop here: instead he redoubles the atmosphere of paranoid suspicion by making this character himself a doppelgänger, a 'Bret Easton Ellis' who shares some details of the author's biography but whose fictional life then departs in significant ways from the 'real-life' template - for whose ultimate veracity we have only Ellis to trust.
The result is a book that isn't wholly successful as literature but that holds an odd fascination. In this it resembles nothing so much as the tales of H.P. Lovecraft, which have something of the same dynamic of remorselessly accumulating dread, and the same implication of an existential horror that lies unvoiced beneath the surface effects.
Ellis has made something of a motif of the wholly unreliable narrator, and here he goes further than before, offering the reader a drug-addicted and alcoholic celebrity writer as the only real source of information within the narrative.... Read more ›
As one might imagine, Ellis is wholly aware of the precedents, and the novel is seamed with references to contemporary horror cinema that acknowledge the second-handedness of his theme, while undercutting criticism by introducing an element of knowing postmodernist play. This is greatly reinforced by Ellis's adoption of the classic doppelgänger motif; his protagonist is a writer haunted by his own fictional creations. But Ellis doesn't stop here: instead he redoubles the atmosphere of paranoid suspicion by making this character himself a doppelgänger, a 'Bret Easton Ellis' who shares some details of the author's biography but whose fictional life then departs in significant ways from the 'real-life' template - for whose ultimate veracity we have only Ellis to trust.
The result is a book that isn't wholly successful as literature but that holds an odd fascination. In this it resembles nothing so much as the tales of H.P. Lovecraft, which have something of the same dynamic of remorselessly accumulating dread, and the same implication of an existential horror that lies unvoiced beneath the surface effects.
Ellis has made something of a motif of the wholly unreliable narrator, and here he goes further than before, offering the reader a drug-addicted and alcoholic celebrity writer as the only real source of information within the narrative.... Read more ›
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
By Lozza
Format:Paperback
I may be bias as Ellis is my all time favourite writer but i could not put this book down.
Like his previous novels, Lunar Park is intelligent, slick and cinematic and as usual the subject matter is painfully personal to the writer. I agree with other reviewers that at times it did feel like i was reading a Stephen King story but the overall tone is classic Ellis.
The only minus point i can think of is that i can't imagine it being as gripping and involving for a person who has never read any of his previous novels. If you're a fan, however, then it has to be a must read.
Like his previous novels, Lunar Park is intelligent, slick and cinematic and as usual the subject matter is painfully personal to the writer. I agree with other reviewers that at times it did feel like i was reading a Stephen King story but the overall tone is classic Ellis.
The only minus point i can think of is that i can't imagine it being as gripping and involving for a person who has never read any of his previous novels. If you're a fan, however, then it has to be a must read.
14 of 16 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is an absolutely stunning novel: a laugh-out-loud social satire mixed with a surreal and genuinely scary horror story. Its ambiguity is entirely intentional. As with the Glamorama reviews, I'm amazed how many readers here have completely missed the point. When Ellis creates 'shallow' characters they are MEANT to be shallow. When he creates bizarre story shifts that defy logic, they are MEANT to do this. These are not failings of the author, but examples of his incredible command of language, his huge imagination, his devastatingly effective sense of humour, his bottomless capacity for parodying the worlds he scrutinises. Lunar Park was never meant to be a 'straight' novel with a standard plotline, as should be obvious from page 1. Go along with its playful mischief, its inspired gothic surrealism and its extremely dark humour and you will be in for a real treat. This is an all-time classic: one of the best 20 novels ever written. I'm off to read it again now.
11 of 13 people found the following review helpful
By NICO
VINE™ VOICE
Format:Hardcover
Having read through the first few pages of this novel, I had to flick ahead to check if the first chapter was in fact an extended introduction. That's when the brilliance of this novel dawned on me. The adoption of the quasi-autobiographical style to this work was a stroke of genius demonstrating new depths to Easton Ellis' capabilities.
I was enthralled by this book from start to finish, and whilst nothing Easton Ellis has produced to date could ever stand up to his modern-day classic American Psycho, this would be the strongest contender from his catalogue. Witty; full of suspense; and engaging, this is a well written work of fiction.
With Lunar Park, Easton Ellis is completely redeemed after the nonsense that was Glamorama. Definitely a 2006 must have!
I was enthralled by this book from start to finish, and whilst nothing Easton Ellis has produced to date could ever stand up to his modern-day classic American Psycho, this would be the strongest contender from his catalogue. Witty; full of suspense; and engaging, this is a well written work of fiction.
With Lunar Park, Easton Ellis is completely redeemed after the nonsense that was Glamorama. Definitely a 2006 must have!
11 of 13 people found the following review helpful
By Cultural Rob
Format:Paperback
Read the first 60 pages of Lunar Park and you might be tempted to re-jig your week so you can fit this novel in. You feel excited to be reading something in prime condition from one of the US's most inconsistent novelists. In those first few pages, he makes some fine jokes about opening lines (his own) and even manages to get one in of his own that sounds fittingly memorable and meaningless. It's frightening stuff (Any lingering thoughts that I might be reading Glamorama were painlessly extinguished) and climaxes with a frenetic, witty description house party (with Jay McInerney cameo) where the Ellis personas go into meltdown. He goes over his career in rollicking confessional mode, gleefully exposing himself with all the recklessness of a writer of fiction. Which he still is. For after these 60 pages, things start to get seriously weird for the narrator Brett. His life goes badly downhill. But so does the writing. All of a sudden the great prose, the crackling dialogue, the wit, it just goes. He starts writing in these stupid short, descriptive sentences that would be beneath King or Koontz. Things get very, very weird. It's interesting for a while (Ellis is stalked by a Patrick Bateman character) but it soon becomes obvious he hasn't a clue where he's going with this or what it means. It's like he sat down, knocked out the first half in an unstoppable flow and then burnt himself out with a half a manuscript left. I'll probably re-read that first part. I'll just know to stop after the party next time.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
3.0 out of 5 stars
Very Stephen King
This is the first Bret Easton Ellis book I have read and, had it not been for the fact I enjoyed the film version of American Psycho, I would not be as earger to read his other... Read more
Published 5 months ago by Reeney
4.0 out of 5 stars
"Look how black the sky is," the writer said, "I made it that way."
I wonder if Bret Easton Ellis ever logs into Amazon & reads these customer reviews?
If so, I'd like him to know that I the final few pages of Lunar Park moved me to... Read more
If so, I'd like him to know that I the final few pages of Lunar Park moved me to... Read more
Published 7 months ago by Rooksby
5.0 out of 5 stars
Bret Easton Ellis Brillance Keeps Shining
Quirky, left of centre parabolic novel that provides a backdrop in part to Bret's earlier live that's fuelled with egotism, narcissism amongst many other proud self-absorbed... Read more
Published 10 months ago by Michael Desmond
5.0 out of 5 stars
this is not horror
this is not a horror novel... it is quite simply a great novel, from a great writer. Yes there are flaws but there are also dizzying heights that other writers never reach. Read more
Published 19 months ago by william
5.0 out of 5 stars
Good!
The physical aspects of this book are really nice, from the hardcover and underneath picture to the box case it slides it to that protects the book. Read more
Published on 12 Jun 2011 by Rich1987
1.0 out of 5 stars
Awful, don't believe the hype
I read American Psycho many years ago, and I came to Lunar Park with high hopes after reading other customers' reviews. Read more
Published on 13 May 2011 by Jose Sanchis
5.0 out of 5 stars
unexpected masterpiece
I really wasn't prepared for the marvellousness of this novel.What starts as an interesting insight in the mind and pointlessness of the author's life, filled with generous doses... Read more
Published on 21 Oct 2010 by Nikolaos Oikonomidis
1.0 out of 5 stars
Not terby repeated I hope
I felt cheated when I read this load of contractual tripe. Mr Easton Ellis himself declared that he just tried to write a simple horror story. Last resort of a tired mind methinks. Read more
Published on 9 Sep 2009 by edmundo
5.0 out of 5 stars
Ellis's most humane novel to date!
I finished this baby this morning and I am absolutely uplifted by this
as well as inspired.I have only read two of Bret Easton (Less than zero
and American psycho) Elis's... Read more
as well as inspired.I have only read two of Bret Easton (Less than zero
and American psycho) Elis's... Read more
Published on 21 Aug 2009 by Mr. A. J. Ralph
2.0 out of 5 stars
Disappointing
The start of this was very promising, the first chapter being a fake autobiographical musing of the author's descent into drug addiction which launches us into BEE becoming a... Read more
Published on 3 July 2009 by David Hampson
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