Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN: 9780330484770
Edition: New edition
ISBN: 033048477X
Label: Picador
Manufacturer: Picador
Number Of Pages: 416
Publication Date: April 21, 2000
Publisher: Picador
Studio: Picador

---

Related Items:

• American Psycho [2000]
• Fight Club
• The Catcher in the Rye
• The Rules of Attraction
• Less Than Zero
• see more

Alternate Versions: Click to Display

Browse for similar items by category: Click to Display

---

Editorial Review:

Amazon.co.uk 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




Rating: - tough read
This book will take you from horror to blandness in the turn of a page. It is possibly one of the hardest books I've ever read, but in turn one of the most well constructed. Obviously some reviewers on Amazon consider the writing poor, as well as the structure, but it seems like they have not just missed the point of the books structure, more like taken a thousand mile detour around it. It's a brave book and Ellis deserves praise for his uncompromising approach in every area of the storyline. I must ... Read More

---

Rating: - Better than the film...
I'd seen the film already and had been intrigued as everyone said the film was incredibly graphic, but I didn't find it all that viscerally visual, although I'd been told the book was more descriptive in its violent scenes. This was absolutely correct.

From the outset, Patrick Bateman is a meticulous person who obsessively lists a person's attributes - in his world, a person's job, possessions, politics and how he presents himself is who he is. He's a mass of contradictions, expressed both ... Read More

---

Rating: - Better than the film, sometimes quite bizarre
Okay so it is better than the film, the books usually are, it is packed with extra happenings which are well described. I must admit to finding it a little hard to follow, perhaps it was the writing style. However if you're into a little gore this book is for you, you'll enjoy it.

---

Rating: - So misunderstood that it's comical.
'American Psycho' is, above anything else, a post-modern novel about the problems with post-modernism. I feel like I should address one particular issue, or I could go on for pages. Does Bateman actually murder anyone; how much of his life is a fantasy? Every review I have read here seems to suggest that he either DID or DID NOT commit these acts. However, this is to miss the point entirely. Easton Ellis has clearly read 'L'etranger' and 'Notes from Underground' because the existential subtext is clear. ... Read More

---

Rating: - Laugh till you cry
Yes, it's gratuitously violent and disgusting, yadda, yadda, yadda. But 'American Psycho' is also one of the funniest and most brilliant works of satire you will every read. I laughed so much and so loud I startled people on planes.

Dissects the dark underbelly of New York capitalism in the 1990s just as sharply as Bateman's knife. A true classic from the first word to the last.

---