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American Psycho Paperback – 1 Apr 2011

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Bret Easton Ellis (Author)
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Bret Easton Ellis (Author)
3.9 out of 5 stars 502 customer reviews
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Product details

  • Paperback: 400 pages
  • Publisher: Picador; Reprints edition (1 April 2011)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0330536303
  • ISBN-13: 978-0330536301
  • Product Dimensions: 13.1 x 2.5 x 19.7 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (502 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 2,060 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Product Description

Amazon Review

Brett Easton Ellis established a reputation as the enfant terrible of American fiction in the 1980s with his controversial novel Less than Zero, but with the publication of American Psycho he became established as one of the most notorious and reviled novelists currently writing. American Psycho deserves its controversy. The novel opens with a sign scrawled above a New York subway station: "Abandon hope all ye who enter". So begins a hellish descent into the world of Patrick Bateman, the novel's protagonist. Bateman is a handsome 26-year-old Wall Street yuppie, who spends his days listening to Whitney Houston and working out which exclusive restaurant to eat in and what clothes to wear in a dizzying parody of 1980s consumerism run mad.

However, Bateman also has a darker side; he is a psychopathic serial killer, with a penchant for torturing and sexually abusing young women before killing them in the most gruesome and explicit fashion. The novel contains little actual plot, and consists of extended descriptions of exclusive restaurants, designer clothes, TV shows and the minutiae of Bateman's vacuous world, relieved only by clinically described scenes of torture and mutilation which are not for the faint-hearted. Bateman makes little attempt to justify his actions, merely claiming that "this is the way the world--my world--moves". As a satire on the bankrupt, money-driven world of the 1980s, American Psycho is a successful, if rather heavy-handed piece of fiction, whose controversy seems only set to increase. --Jerry Brotton --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

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A seminal book. --Fay Weldon

Serious, clever and shatteringly effective. --The Sunday Times --This text refers to the Audio CD edition.

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Customer Reviews

Top Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 starsThe blackest of black comedies...
By FictionFan TOP 100 REVIEWERVINE VOICE on 13 Oct. 2011
Format: Paperback Verified Purchase
I started this book with some trepidation given that I knew it contains a lot of extremely graphic sex and violence. What I hadn't expected was to find the book so very funny.

The blackest black comedy I have ever read, the author lays bare the shallow and self-obsessed world of '80s yuppie culture and does so superbly. The obsessions with brand clothing, with pop icons such as Genesis and Whitney Houston, with nouvelle and fusion cuisine and most of all with conspicuous spending - all combined to remind me of the awfulness of the laddish greed culture so prevalent at that time. Throughout the book the author contrasts the drink and drug-fuelled excess of these successful city boys (and girls) with the poverty that could be seen at every street corner.

The violence is indeed graphic and gets progressively more extreme as the book goes on. However, given the theme of excess in all things that runs through the book, I felt it stayed in context. In fact, it eventually became so outrageous that, for me, it passed from being shocking to being, in a strange way, part of the humour of the book. I don't know quite how the author made me like and feel sorry for the monstrous 'psycho' Patrick - but he did.

Brilliantly written, extremely perceptive and amazingly funny - highly recommended.
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5.0 out of 5 starsA novel of two frighteningly different halves
By A Customer on 12 July 2001
Format: Paperback
On the one hand this book is, and let me make this clear straight away, one of the most repulsive books I have ever read. The further you get throught the book, the more horrific the murders become. It would be very easy to dismiss this as an empty, attention-grabbing ploy.
But that would be unfair: this book works brilliantly as a satire on the 1980s attitudes. Pages are filled with excrutiating detail of what Bateman is wearing; his daily routine is scrutinised in minute detail; his friends are empty-headed, vacuous fools, who listen to nothing. Bateman himself is simply taking the consumerist dream to its extremes: the idea that he can take life. Filled with black humour, and some truly surreal situations (Bateman asks for a "decapitated" coffee; no-one appears to notice), this is fantastic. The sex and violence are unpleasant, but in the context of the novel they make sense.
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5.0 out of 5 starsA Generation X classic which makes Coupland look like a light weight
By Richard 82 on 12 April 2006
Format: Paperback
Easton-Ellis' first person description of the development of a psychopath is nothing short of mind blowing and this fact alone makes American Psycho a great novel. Following the anti-hero Patrick Bateman through about a year of his life and aided by flashbacks to past events the reader is drawn ever more into the mindset of a killer and his normalisation and disassociation from the acts that he is committing. At the beginning of the book (where violence is only hinted at briefly), it is very easy to laugh at Bateman, his shallow life, appalling friends and fiancé and his assumption that happiness and wealth are one and the same thing. As the story develops one can almost feel pity for someone who is so clearly trapped in a life not of his choosing but which he is unwilling to leave for all the wrong reasons.

Bateman's increasingly violent behaviour and periods of psychosis characterise the middle of the book, but the author still finds room to add his own brand of dark humour to the situations he puts his star into. In the final section of the book we see Bateman develop into a full blown psychopathic monster, completely out of control and unable to repress the primal urges that are overcoming him.

That Easton-Ellis manages to achieve this whilst taking a sideways sneer at eighties yuppie culture AND providing an allegorical interpretation of what it means to be alive in modern day America is what makes this novel remarkable and ultimately an essential read.

My only complaint is that the novel is too long. Did the Huey Lewis and The News chapter really add anything to the plot, particularly after lengthy discussions on Genesis and Whitney Houston?Read more ›
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3.0 out of 5 starsHard going....
By Missie Durden on 11 July 2010
Format: Paperback
Well, what can I say about this book? I wouldn't say I was that disturbed by it, in the end, in part because I found the writing quite impenetrable and hard going so that I couldn't really get into the narrative.

It's a clever book; there's no doubt about that. You have to read it really carefully to get it, I think. Does Patrick Bateman commit any of the crimes he describes or does he just fantasise about it? They're pretty horrific scenes so either way, he fits the book's title. There are certainly enough inconsistencies to make you wonder, and I do find that clever. In fact, I find it a clever book all round but I just struggled so much with the delivery.

In essence, I couldn't say I'd truly recommend this book because I didn't find it very readable and, yet, at the same time I can't help thinking it is a modern classic because it did something with the unreliable narrator that hadn't really been done before. Even the major things that I object to in the book, like the constant detailed descriptions of clothes and food that slow everything down, I understand their necessity. Not a book I enjoyed but one that I respect.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 starsInteresting book

Bought as a present for partner. He loves this book, so if you're interested in psychopaths and their weird concept of life, then this is the book for you.

Published 1 day ago by Eve
2.0 out of 5 starssmall writing

Read about 20 pages,, but stopped because the writing is very small ,,

Published 4 days ago by P. kirke
1.0 out of 5 starsRambling gratuitous drivel

I persisted on reading this book to the end because I'd heard it was some sort of seminal work but I've never been more relieved to finish a book. Read more

Published 15 days ago by Amazon Customer
4.0 out of 5 starsFour Stars

A gross but compelling read.

Published 18 days ago by Gemma Cantwell
5.0 out of 5 starsBrilliant book

I enjoyed the movie and the book is brilliant. I couldn't put it down. It's very different from less than zero which I've previously read (and loved) but has that same edge about... Read more

Published 27 days ago by Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 starsIf you're a fan of the film you won't be disappointed. If you've never...

You are in the mind of a mad man. You are the mad man.... That is essentially what this book is all about. Read more

Published 1 month ago by Brett Pritchard
2.0 out of 5 starsVery Putdownable

I didn't get it, didn't like it and if you don't know the names of every brand that was trendy in Wall Street when this was written you miss half of the early book. Read more

Published 1 month ago by Tim Chaney
5.0 out of 5 starsAbsurdly great.

American Psycho is one of the most, if not the most, misunderstood novels that’s ever rocked the literary world. Read more

Published 1 month ago by Stefan
4.0 out of 5 starsNot for the faint hearted but one I would recommend. I really enjoyed...

Not for the faint hearted but one I would recommend. I really enjoyed the first-person narration from someone who feels themselves to be outside society looking in.

Published 1 month ago by Johanna Woolley
4.0 out of 5 starsFour Stars

Bought for a present

Published 1 month ago by j way

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