Rating: 
Summary: Limited imagintion
Review: Ellis is a writer, there can be no doubt of that! However, his attempt to snare and hold his reader with shock and exceedingly gross and graffic images of women tortured, mutilated and murdered illustrates his limited imagination to sell his book. He has allowed himself to prostitute his talent and what could have been a worthy story line "to make a buck!" The one star I rendered this review was for that viable but well hidden plot.
Rating: 
Summary: just wants to have a meaningful relationship
Review: Set in the 80's, the macabre tale of a highly wealthy, healthy, meticulous and acutely homophobic yuppie who has reached his peak of boredom, and literally tried everything to curb it. Everything. Did I mention he was also a psychopathic killer? Patrick Bateman starts out above the rest of us and by the end of the book, you won't know how far to look beneath you to find him. He transgresses through a metamorphosis that is society's doing. Although afraid, he fears nothing. He is morbidly humorous and when honest with those around him, no one hears. A perfectly balanced love-hate relationship will form with you and the main character because although he performs treachorous deeds on women, men, animals he is the exaggerated part of every human being that we logically deny ourselves. We talk about bums on the street behind their backs, Bateman goes a lot further which leads to the next statement. He is either one of two things. One, he is obviously lonely and looking for something real amidst a sea of plastic people, or he is two, fantasizing the whole murderous rampage because he lacks true feelings of omnipitance when he feels he should. Overexaggerating and fantasing what we all think about on a minute scale. Whatever the case, no one listens, and not being apprehended is the only thing to anger him in the end. Society's refusal to look down upon someone so obviously above that kind of behaviour from someone so above them all.
Rating: 
Summary: THIS IS NOT AN EXIT
Review: The book will grasp your attention at the first line. It takes you through a time(the eighties) which is not unlike ours in the new millenium. The main character, Patrick Bateman, is handsome, rich and part of a group considered high society. He works by day on wall street and at night does things, you won't be able to fathom. He murders, rapes and tortures the innocent. You will read this book and see that we only see appearance and not the inner being. He ealks away easily from each crime because he wears two thousand dollar suits and has the appearance of a regular millionare.
Rating:
Summary: Wow, what a book! Very dark and wildly hilarious.
Review: I loved this book. There, I said it and no, I'm not mentally unbalanced. You may need to prepare yourself for negative comments from your peers when they find out you're reading this. The book is about a rich white snob who lives in Manhattan (where else?), works on Wall Street (although he never actually seems to do ANY work during the course of the book, a funny aside), wears expensive clothing, eats at expensive restaurants, dates high-maintainance women, and commits violent murders. The book is funny because Patrick (the protagonist) commits his crimes randomly, interspersing the violence with his comments about business attire, cocktails, fine dining, and '80's music. Another thing that makes the book so amusing is the fact Patrick fits in so well with his peers, even though he is a closet murderer. Patrick continually comments to his "friends" about his nocturnal habits but they are so out of touch with everyday reality themselves that they pay no attention to him and he continues upon his killing sprees. Not much else to say except that if you like books that satirize yuppie lifestyles (Fight Club & Bright Lights, Big City come to mind) then give it a try. I read it in a day and a half. By the way the movie version was a disappointment. If you read the book you can understand that it really couldn't be made into a quality movie.
Rating:
Summary: This is not a novel....it is a drug
Review: Clearly I haven't had time to read all of the hundreds of reviews on this book, so I'm not sure if these issues have been addressed before or not. However, I feel that many of the criticisms of American Psycho are seriously misguided because they do not appreciate the purpose and form of the novel. There are two issues, repetition and extreme violence, that seem to cause the majority of non-believers to trash this book. The so-called repetition, which refers not so much to actually repeating the same things over again, but more the the practice of describing people mainly by their appearance, what they wear, eat, etc.. using an insider language of brand names and unfamilar terminology. Since a brand-name is meaningless as a description to someone unfamiliar with the brand, the result is that the brand names are more or less interchangeable. This then envokes a feeling of incessant repetition and lack of meaning. Why does Ellis subject us to this mind-numbing assault? The simple answer would be that people who are actually familar with these brand-names and who live materialistic lifestyles actully interpret their surroundings in this language, hence it is simply an accurate protrayal of Patrick Bateman's inner dialog. The truth, however, is that this is not the real reason why Ellis writes in this style. The replacement of literal meaning with essentially abstract patterns makes the effect of reading the novel more akin to listening to music than listening to speech. And the use of mind-numbing repetition, just like in 'techno' music, is meant to create a hypnotic effect to place the reader in an altered state of consciousness. The genious of Ellis is his mastery of this hypnotism, so that his books are not intellectual experiences involving words or ideas, but are more like narcotic experiences. The use of extreme violence and sex is also an integrated part of this effect. Combined with the hypnotic effect of rhythmic 'repetition', the brutal assault on our most deeply held illusions about good and evil, right and wrong, speakable and unspeakable, finishes the job...making the reading of the novel an intense, almost traumatic experience. The result is that reading the novel has altered our mental wiring in a profound way, much like brainwashing, which if you are familar with groups such as Scientology and Landmark Forum/est relies on very similar techniques. Those of you who are too stubborn or cautious to let Ellis work his spell on you will simply skim past the 'repetitive' and/or 'repulsive' sections and completely miss out on the essential experience. Those of you who for whatever reason, whether it is conscious willingness or mindless obedience, let the book feed its rhythm into your brain will find the experience powerfully transcedental. Satire of the 80's is the theme but definitely not the point. In my opinion, the film version also failed to capture the essence of Ellis's writing, mainly by reducing the sex and violence to such a dilute and unprovoking level. For movies which come closer to the mind-altering effect, I recommend David Cronenberg movies, e.g. Existenze.
Rating: 
Summary: Oh my.....
Review: Bret Easton Ellis truly wants us to believe that all the decadence of the 80's is horrible. So horrible that a crazed psychopath can hide behind it and get away with grotesque murder after grotesque murder? I really don't think so. I'm not a jaded reader or anything, its just that when someone tries so hard to tell us how bad all this consumerism is. But I think if someone looked into the life of Bret Easton Ellis they would see that the monetary success he has gained from his books probably allowed him to buy many of the possessions listed in the book. I just don't think that people should condemn with one hand and practice with the other. Bad analogy. Just think before buying this book.
Rating:
Summary: American Psycho leaves me depressed....
Review: I read American Psycho unaware of the bruhaha surrounding its release. Nor did I see the movie, so I was completely unbiased. I found this book appalling. Horrific in its descriptions of unspeakable cruelties upon humans and animals alike with a general attitude of misogyny. The descriptions of animal cruelty haunt me to this day though I know it is fiction. Plus it was just plain boring in its descriptions of what the character was wearing and his obssession with appearance and aging. I did not find this to be anywhere as compelling as Less Than Zero and furthermore thought it a disgrace that such a monstrosity be written, let alone published; just because the first ammendment says we can does not mean we should. This is simply a cookbook for the psychopath without imagination, not an analtyical probing of the flaws inherent in our society, as touted in reviews.
Rating:
Summary: great book, slightly weak ending
Review: I, at first, found the ending extremely weak. On a second perusal, I decided that it was chilling - but still a little weak. This book contains some relativly gory scenes, so watch out... but I think they add to the book, not detract. His colleagues either do not care to listen to what he is saying or just mis-hearing him, but Ellis makes a very good point about the arrogance of upper-class 'yuppie scum', as one small character calls them. You should definitly read this, it is intriguing, involving, and well-written. I found, when paying closer attention, that the writing style was almost a wave - slow at points, when Bateman was calm, sedate, say after a session at his private gym, and when he was losing control, fast and erratic - a very, very good compliament to the writing. Its very interesting to watch the writing style change slowly throughout even a single chapter, flowing perfectly. Read this book.
Rating:
Summary: America's Hero, Not an American's Hero
Review: With an incredible level of excruciating control, Easton Ellis has authored the dossier of the true American dream. Bateman embodies, fully and boldly, the American ideal; a vision which blooms from the fertile soil of our country's three pillars: capitalism, stratification, and human instinct. He is well bred while succeeding in his own right; as a wealthy young white male he is at the pinnacle of every strata; and after accomplishing all which the common man covets he bows to his whims. Eventually his original Onica blends with the blood splattered across his walls, for both him and the reader, and this journey is the essence of the book. You lose yourself in the current of American Psycho, thinking it will carry you to a remote isle of fantastical impossibilities in the vein of Palahniuk, and then you realize that it has dropped you in the nucleus of the culture Americans face every day.
Rating:
Summary: American Psycho a Crisis of Identity
Review: When I first read this book, I couldn't move past the violence and horror within it. It is a very disturbing book, and many people will stop reading it because of this. However, if you look inside you will see something more disturbing. The nothingness that is Patrick Bateman. The great lack of identity that he or any character in this book has aside from victim, or predator is what makes it stand out to me. Picture a world populated by interchangeable predators, and their unfortunate victims. This is the world of American Psycho. The predators are upper-class, white professionals with money and power. The vicitms in this case are the poor, women, or other minorities that are being, even at times literally, consumed by these rich white men. Bateman personifies the destruction of American society, through elitism and hate. Ellis, cleverly makes Bateman an interchangeable predator. Throughout the book no one knows who anyone is, and no one calls anyone by the right name. In this way Ellis says that Bateman is just a face in a sea of faces, and his depravations are simply symbolic of the depravations that destroy America on a daily basis. If you can stomach this book, then I reccomend it. The socio-political commentary within it is worth the read.
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