Luckily, the novel is worth the wait. Hermetic, paranoid, sleek, dark — and with brief explosions of the sex and violence that have characterized Ellis' oeuvre — 'The Shards' is a stark reminder that the 'American Psycho' author is a genre unto himself.
, is a narrative that came to him in 1981 — more than four decades ago — when he was a 17-year-old high school senior.
Luckily, the novel is worth the wait. Hermetic, paranoid, sleek, dark — and with brief explosions of the sex and violence that have characterized Ellis' oeuvre —Bret is a 17-year-old senior at Buckley, a prestigious L.A. prep school. He hangs out with the cool crowd, has an attractive girlfriend, lives mostly alone and in his own world in his rich parents' house, and drives a Mercedes 450SL.
This is a novel that simultaneously occupies a few different spaces. Parts of it reads like a crime novel and others like a very dark, sexualized, drug-infused coming-of-age story. But there is also a lot of humor, a deep, scathing look at privilege, and a very personal exploration of the things that haunt us, the way distrust affects us, and how sex, growing up, jealousy, fear, and obsession can shape the life of someone at the cusp of their teenage years.
And the metafiction doesn't end with the obvious similarities between Ellis his character. The novel is also very aware of itself, and the writing shows that. Perhaps the only element that isn't constantly enjoyable here is the endless detail — there are constant descriptions of places, the cars everyone drives, what they wear, full recollections of long conversations that go nowhere, the streets Bret drives through aimlessly, a mall, etc.
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