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Glamorama (Unknown Binding)

by Bret Easton Ellis (Author) "Specks-specks all over the third panel, see? ..." (more)
3.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (52 customer reviews)

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Product details

  • Unknown Binding: 496 pages
  • Publisher: Picador (13 Dec 1998)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0330372084
  • ISBN-13: 978-0330372084
  • Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (52 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 265,581 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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    #17 in  Books > Fiction > Cult Authors > Ellis, Bret Easton

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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

Review
Pop fiction at its best against the star-studded backdrop of Los Angeles high society. Ya know, baby? (Kirkus UK)

The latest descent into the belly of the beast from Ellis (The Informers, 1994, etc.), who shows a surprising stamina for this sort of thing. Now that he has his formula down pat, Ellis - like Andrew Greeley and Stephen King - is both fun and easy to read. His new glare thriller follows a standard cherchezla femme course, in which the venal antihero forsakes greed in favor of lust only to discover than he's been a sucker from the get-go and that dames who shoot real bullets are far too smart to be for real. The patsy here is one Victor Ward, impresario of what promises to be the hottest nightclub in Manhattan if he can ever get money to open it up. Victor has every reason to hope for success, since he went to Camden College and is in tight with the smart set whose presence usually makes or breaks these places. One of his classmates is the actress Jamie Fields, Victor's old girlfriend, who has just disappeared in England during a movie shoot. Whether this is just one of Jamie's tantrums or a sign of foul play remains to be seen, and Victor is offered $300,000 to go over and quietly hunt her down. After a drunken crossing on the QE2, he hooks up with Jamie easily enough and even picks up the romance where they left it off - along with Bobby Hughes, Jamie's bisexual boyfriend. But Bobby seems to have some unsavory contacts, and the mountains of cash, crates of weaponry, and rooms of Palestinian "associates" that cram Bobby's London townhouse all lead Victor to fear that something sinister is afoot. Long before we discover the true identity of Victor's father (who, it may be said, is very influential in Washington, D.C.), we can smell a setup. The only question that remains by then is: Can help arrive in time? Brain candy for the Vanity Fair set. (Kirkus Reviews)

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Customer Reviews

52 Reviews
5 star:
 (16)
4 star:
 (15)
3 star:
 (7)
2 star:
 (4)
1 star:
 (10)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
3.4 out of 5 stars (52 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars an original idea, 26 Aug 2008
By SJSmith (UK) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)   
This review is from: Glamorama (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.
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6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Marilyn Monroe Meets Charlie Manson, 8 Mar 2004
This review is from: Glamorama (Paperback)
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). This novel is his most ambitious so far, operating on more levels than the London Underground. It is not an easy read but it is a profoundly rewarding one. The characters are grown-up from the dazed dissipation of their student lives in “Less than Zero” and the protagonist this time around was an appropriately two-dimensional walk-on part back then. In much the same way that food and fashion were described in mantra-like detail throughout “American Psycho”, Ellis now has his characters conversing by recycling cheesy song lyrics (but in such a subtle way that you’ll usually only pick-up on about half of the references). Nobody has an opinion about anything except that it’s something someone else told them previously and this, I suppose, is as good a metaphor for Ellis’ view on modern life in general as anything else he’s used previously. He has become sufficiently confident now to actually bang up against the confines of his medium and you have characters admitting that certain things are plot devices or showing an awareness that they are in fact only characters in a narrative. The last third of the book collapses in on itself like postmodern origami and everything becomes particularly self-referential and knowing. In the end it begins to challenge the readers willing suspension of disbelief but what holds the structure together is that it is shot-through with an arch and artful use of dialogue for which Ellis is now perhaps become the exemplar in contemporary fiction. This really is solid-gold stuff and an absolute requisite for anyone with a passion in modern literature.
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6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars A knee slapping overlooked gem, 12 May 2003
This review is from: Glamorama (Paperback)
B.E.E. sometimes missed the mark in his earlier works by overstating the case for the execution of the vapid American new upper-crust, but here he perfects everything that was ham-handed in the novel American Psycho.

The two are perfectly comparable in most respects: in one a hopelessly materialistic, vain, social climber succumbs to madness and starts cutting people up. In this one, a stupid, shallow, talentless model gets sucked (by his own weaknesses) into a murderous terrorist ring that is bent on destroying everything that he hates/supports him.

Be forewarned, this is two books in one, and it shifts course and tone immediately. The first half is gut-butsing black humor, then it swerves unexpectedly into surreal horror and ultraviolence. That is what it has in common with American Psycho, but don't think for a minute that American Psycho, the movie, would have been nearly as good if this book hadn't been written before the movie was made.

This is a challenging, hysterically funny, cutting social commentary. If you don't 'get it' then you probably don't know how accurate it is.

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Most Recent Customer Reviews

2.0 out of 5 stars 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 11 months ago by P. M. Stoddart

2.0 out of 5 stars 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 Jul 2006 by G. A. Reeves

5.0 out of 5 stars 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

4.0 out of 5 stars 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

1.0 out of 5 stars 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

3.0 out of 5 stars 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... Read more
Published on 21 Jul 2004 by Peter Roman

2.0 out of 5 stars 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

3.0 out of 5 stars 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 Jul 2003 by laura westwater

4.0 out of 5 stars Read The Rule of Attraction First
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. Read more
Published on 20 Jun 2003

4.0 out of 5 stars Like Hello Magazine gone mad
Nobody writes this kind of stuff better than Ellis. In fact, nobody apart from Ellis writes this kind of stuff. Read more
Published on 1 April 2003 by A. Davies

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