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Product Description

Product Description
Patrick Bateman is twenty-six and works on Wall Street; he is handsome, sophisticated, charming and intelligent. He is also a psychopath. Taking us to a head-on collision with America's greatest dream - and its worst nightmare - "American Psycho" is a bleak, bitter, black comedy about a world we all recognize but do not wish to confront. "Serious, clever and shatteringly effective." - "Sunday Times." ""American Psycho" is a beautifully controlled, careful, important novel...The novelist's function is to keep a running tag on the progress of the culture; and he's done it brilliantly...A seminal book." - Fay Weldon, "Washington Post." "For its savagely coherent picture of a society lethally addicted to blandness, it should be judged by the highest standards." - John Walsh, "Sunday Times." "That the book's contents are shocking is downright undeniable, but just as Bonfire of the Vanities exposed the corruption and greed engendered in eighties politics and high living, "American Psycho" examines the mindless preoccupations of the nineties preppy generation." - "Time Out."

About the Author
Bret Easton Ellis is the author of five novels and a collection of stories, which have been translated into twenty-seven languages. He divides his time between Los Angeles and New York.

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First Sentence
ABANDON ALL HOPE YE WHO ENTER HERE is scrawled in blood red lettering on the side of the Chemical Bank near the corner of Eleventh and First and is in print large enough to be seen from the backseat of the cab as it lurches forward in the traffic leaving Wall Street and just as Timothy Price notices the words a bus pulls up, the advertisement for Les Miserables on its side blocking his view, but Price who is with Pierce & Pierce and twenty-six doesn't seem to care because he tells the driver he will give him five dollars to turn up the radio, "Be My Baby" on WYNN, and the driver, black, not American, does so. Read the first page

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Customer Reviews

28 Reviews

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4.0 out of 5 stars (28 customer reviews)

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36 of 43 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Read this now., 6 Feb 2007

By	J. D. Aspinall (South West England) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Let's get one thing clear, American Psycho is a comedy - that needs to be understood before you read it. It's a comedy about yuppies, and how empty-headed and essentially shallow they are, about how far too much money coupled with far too little imagination can cause you to begin to shrink your world, until you live in such a self indulgent cocoon, you cannot even spot the raving, murdering lunatic in your midst. That is effectively what Easton-Ellis is telling us - yes, Yuppies are THAT shallow.

This is a well constructed work; it actually causes the reader to suffer from the same syndrome that grips the minds of most of its characters - only in reverse.

We have the self-obsessed city-boys, only interested in the correct clothing labels and getting reservations at the right restaurant, and us, the readers, obsessing over the violent scenes of rape and murder, and missing the point entirely. The violence and murder are simply incidental to the plot, they are not the point. They serve just the same purpose as a piece of misdirection performed by an illusionist. Just as you look the wrong way, the conjurer pulls a stroke.

Patrick Bateman - the protagonist - is as hilarious as he is twisted; a perfectly tanned, toned and attired Metro-Sexual killing machine; drowning with pleasure in the very selfish excess that he despises, and yet must conform to the rules of. He maintains the required trophy girlfriend and keeps up to date with the latest men's fashion, has membership of the most exclusive fitness club, styles his hair with a surgeon's precision and forces rats into the vaginas of his victims - a man of many tastes, indeed.

His circle of co-accused are just as lacking in any sort of meaningful mental programming, treating the New York they live in as one huge private boys' club, with membership relying on ticking certain financial and fashion based boxes on a seemingly ongoing basis. Most of the men in this work are successful, rich and hilariously stupid, and that is certainly the point. A second point - which feeds the previous one - is that they never step out of the world in which they consume space, therefore never catch a glimpse of their own vulgarity, and consequently, are unable to change for the better, or indeed, want to. They are the small obnoxious building blocks, who together, make the impenetrable wall of arrogance and snobbery that protects their false, built-on-sand world.

Even between themselves, in packs of their own kind, these men are only half aware of each other, do they even know who each other really is? They all have adopted the habit of addressing each other by their surnames, at least a large majority of the time. This is not so worrying until a particular character is introduced, and he starts referring to Bateman by the wrong surname. Why should this be worrying? Because Bateman responds to the surname as if it were correct, unable, due to the particular etiquette at work in their society, to offer a correction. This small, comical component offers to the reader some very disturbing questions about - if you will - the depths of their shallowness. When Bateman addresses an acquaintance, does he use the correct name himmself? Are they just humouring him, shackled by the same etiquette? Is any of the group of friends Bateman surrounds himself with the people he thinks they are?

This question is thrust at the reader, when after killing Paul Allen, a man he has been obsessing over for sometime, Bateman learns that the very same man has been seen in a restaurant in London. This is a confirmed sighting because Bateman is told by his victim's dinner guest, no less! So who on earth has he killed?

This particularly gruesome murder offers Easton-Ellis the chance to have another subtle kick at the world he is cleverly ripping to pieces. The killing happens in Allen's own plush apartment; and upon returning to clean up the mess, Bateman - armed with a surgical mask to cope with the smell - has a brief conversation with a real estate agent who is re-selling the expensive property. The agent spots the surgical mask, and Bateman spots the mysteriously clean apartment. Their brief exchange involves the agent saying she doesn't want any trouble and that Bateman should just go. So he does, walking away from the scene of his crime utterly bewildered, his already fragile mind ever more damaged.

It is exchanges like this that allow us to wonder if Bateman has actually been created by the world he lives in. Is the "Greed is good" culture causing his psychoses? What could happen to a person's view of what's acceptable, when that person lives in world that utterly lacks substance and any shred of morality, a world where even murders can be cleaned up if there's a possibility of profit? Is Bateman the ultimate avenger for the self-indulgence of the slick-haired city boys and their air-head women? It's possible, though I believe that Easton-Ellis lets Bateman loose on this world because he simply thinks they deserve it.

It was people of this kind that Brett Easton-Ellis was mixing with during the second half of the Eighties; he saw their world from the inside, the celebrity and credibility of being a writer allowing him rare access. He has stated that the time spent mixing with New York's Yuppie elite, convinced him that they were the sort of people he would hate to be like; though they certainly left a lasting impression on the man, and this work demonstrates that impression. He didn't like them much.

I said this book is a comedy, and so it is. Consider this scene. Finally snapping and deciding to kill a chap whose attentions our psycho is sick of, he strides into the men's room to confront his intended victim, his black-gloved hands ready to strangle the life out of this irritating man. As Bateman's hands grip the man's throat, the victim starts to smile, feeling the first stirrings of sexual desire. The victim is secretly gay (and must enjoy his own dark pleasures behind closed doors, it's implied, if strangulation turns him on), and Bateman's hands gripping his throat confirm Bateman must be as well. At last, the fa�ade is dropped, now they can be together!

The comedy runs throughout this book. A urinal cake, taken from a men's room, coated in chocolate, and then offered as a present, provides hilarity as the trophy girlfriend attempts to eat it. Bateman dropping his veil of normality and telling people directly what violent acts he'd love to perform on them (no-one really listens to each other, so he gets away with it), whilst the empty heads just nod along, paying no attention. Yeah, yeah, man. Sounds good, let's touch base, oblivious that Bateman is telling them he wants to dig out their eyes. Again, telling us just how dumb and ignorant these people are.

The laughs are there, just so long as you don't allow yourself to be tricked into paying too much attention to the violence. There's plenty of it, and a lot is incredibly graphic, but it's there to catch your eye - to keep you from the seeing reality; just like the soulless drones that populate the book can't see it either, they're too busy obsessing about designer labels to be able to.

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16 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Many things to many people, 22 Jul 2007

By	Brian Hamilton "brianhamilton14" (Scotland, UK) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

American Psycho is not an easy book to read or review. It is many things to many people, a straightforward account of a serial killer's exploits, a treatise on male machismo, a satire on 80's consumerism, an insight into a nervous breakdown. It can be none, some or all of these things depending on your age, intelligence and personality. I bought this book about ten years ago and have read it about six times. Each time as I open it I find it affects me on a different level. As I have matured, gotten married and become a father, the books resonates differently on each read.

The novel is powerful and affecting. For me the gore and killing has become a backdrop to the bleakness that overwhelms Patrick Bateman. He is incredibly rich, handsome, well educated, at a place where he is envied by most. Yet, he is consumed by doubt, terror,fear and anxiety that his life is hollow, unfulfilled and empty. Here he is, the epitome of consumerist America, a poster boy for a thousand expesnive colognes or pairs of designer underpants but he is dissatisfied, predatory. The fact that he speaks of his life of priviledge and his killings in the same breath is both disconcerting and perhaps, for some, a thrilling look into a life of hedonistic abandon where there is no fear of the police knocking at the door, nobody to put a stop to any form of behaviour one wishes to indulge in.

It is beacuse of this that the book is both majestic and shocking. The controversy is nothing but media white noise. If it hasn't already, the furore surrounding this will die down and the book will be viewed for what it is, a classic.

This book will put words to any feelings of alienation, dissatisfaction, doubt of one's worth and self image and the pressure to conform, that the adult male cruising through the late twentieth and early twenty-first century goes through. For that reason alone it should be read by woman as well to help them appreciate the pressures men face but are unwilling or unable to vocalise.

A classic for so many reasons.

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6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Not for the faint hearted!!!, 9 April 2007

By	Jen "jay214" (West Yorks) - See all my reviews

This book is a fabulous satire on upwardly mobile, shallow yuppies. Its sarcastic and ironic humour had me laughing till I nearly cried. It really tears into those who are materialistic above all else and makes them look ridiculously foolish. The worst thing is I know, and I'm sure everyone knows, people exactly like this. Pat Bateman is an excellent character, a perfectly normal, arrogant, irritating businessman by day and an absolute lunatic on his own time. Be warned, the violence is hideous, truly horrific and if you don't have a strong stomach then don't read this. I feel strange saying this given how bad the violence is but it seems like the perfect balance to Pat's consumerism and concern with all things new and expensive. If you read it you'll see what I mean. I've been told the film isn't very good so I'm going to give it a miss as I enjoyed the book. I recommend it.

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Most Recent Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars A Brilliant but Flawed Novel of its Time
Read the title of the book and be aware of what you are letting yourself in for. It is called 'American Psycho' and you should adjust your expectations and tastes accordingly... Read more

Published 1 day ago by G. Lyon

1.0 out of 5 stars It's just dull
This book can be many things to many people who have raved about it and awarded it five stars. It is a satire on the 1980's materialism and yuppiedom. It is comic and graphic. Read more

Published 20 days ago by Officer Dibble

5.0 out of 5 stars masterpiece.
I was twenty when this book came out. And i bought it on the day that it did. Almost two decades on i am re-reading it for what must be the tenth or eleventh time. Read more

Published 1 month ago by The Sky Is Empty

5.0 out of 5 stars No introduction neccessary...
This was truly mind blowing.As a major fan of the movie I took the time to read the book.For the first hundred or so pages it seems pretty slow,with the character development. Read more

Published 1 month ago by Mr. A. J. Ralph

2.0 out of 5 stars See the film instead - or at least first
I'm assured that this work is a satirical masterpiece, and I appreciate that. I believe satire to be one of the most powerful tools against the sort of corruption that this book... Read more

Published 1 month ago by Mike Sadler

1.0 out of 5 stars A waste of time and paper
I persevered on the basis that there must be a point to the book. I was wrong.

It is an endless list of designer label names, descriptions of clothes and the food... Read more

Published 5 months ago by Jezza

4.0 out of 5 stars A Macabre Masterpiece
I originally tried to read Brett Easton Ellis' American Psycho about three or four years ago and wasn't put off by the murder but by the monotone never ending first fifty pages of... Read more

Published 5 months ago by Simon Savidge "savidgeread...

4.0 out of 5 stars My first BEE novel
This is my first book by BEE and only casually picked it up in the bookshop.
Its a well written book, not for the faint hearted as it can be quite graphic indetail and some... Read more

Published 7 months ago by N. P. Preston

1.0 out of 5 stars The most pointless book I've ever read.
Yep, without doubt.

It's shocking, no doubt, but mainly in its inanity...

The constant references to Labels, restaurants, bars and clubs, the obsession... Read more

Published 11 months ago by M. Saxby

5.0 out of 5 stars I love this book
I only read this book after I seen the film, which is portrayed wonderfully by Christian Bale. The book itself is the blackest of comedies with a hint of sarcasm about it. Read more

Published 21 months ago by Starkweather

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