Rating: 
Summary: Bateman's a geek, and this wasn't a satirical novel at all.
Review: If anyone finally gets to this review.... three stars is because it kept me intrigued enough to continue reading, but not five because it disturbed me. The violence and gore would make me give it zero stars, but since it disturbed me so much that I thought of it for days after, I should have given it a five. In AP, Easton-Ellis makes the deepest, darkest point of which we are all terrified. People devoid of emotion don't value humanity, and they are out there. And sometimes, they don't get caught. I enjoyed the prattling on of the designer names (tried to see how many I own/recognized) because that was the extent of the Bateman's ability to relate - it gave great insight into what he valued. Previous reviewers seemed to hate it, but I didn't. And in case you don't notice, or possibly haven't seen the more prevalent mentions in the movie: Bateman is a geek, constantly hiding in his headphones, insecurely needing to have the most expensive suit, imperiously needing to be able to tell you the difference between Armani and Emporio Armani, desparate to get into the wait-listed resturants that refuse him; thus, the dissertations on Whitney Houston, Phil Collins, et al. He can't relate to humans - he can only siphon his unfocused manci energies into business cards, facial products, designer apparel, music, and obviously, murder. He discusses these things with us the way we would discuss with others our relationships with our boyfriends, girlfriends, etc. The gruesomeness of the murders and tortures sadly kept me reading because all I could think about was the fact that Ellis was sick enough to devise these methods of torture for a character and then describe them in precise and vivid detail as though they had been witnessed sometime prior in Ellis' lifetime. Perhaps Ellis has gotten his hands on the mentioned snuff film. THAT unnerved me. The only thing I found possibly satirical in the whole novel was the fact that not one character could say with absolution he was sure who the guy coming toward him was - each bar/party/restaurant scene was riddled with... "Is that John Popper?" "No, it's Al Green." "No, it's Dave Matthews, you idiots!" from Bateman and cohorts in reference to co-workers at other houses on Wall Street. The inability to recognize any other person gets so twisted and tangled with yes-it's-him-no-it-isn't, that when Bateman jealously kills a co-worker, we never find out if he even killed the man he thought it was. This confuses all interaction with the officer who finally interrogates Bateman and the horrific bar-side conversation with Bateman's lawyer (who, comically but sadly can't remember who Bateman is, although they constantly speak on the phone). I was left with questions - why he doesn't kill the gay guy who continually hits on him and makes scenes in which Bateman is mortified in public. Kill the innocents, but not the annoying? I concluded that Bateman was gay and, viola! all the women victims explained. What happened to the decaying body parts in the dead co-worker's apartment? That whole scene left me mystified, and seemed to say, oh well, that's 80's New York for you. Find an apartment with decayed women's bodies laying about and we'll throw a fresh coat of paint on it and make a few million in commission. I wanted that questions answered, but alas, it was not. How could anyone continually bring bloody bedsheets to the cleaners with no suspicion or repercussion? How does one blow up a police cruiser, lead them on a lengthy chase, but it makes no headlines the day after? Also confusing was Bateman's ability to warm to Jean, his secretary, but not one other human, including Evelyn, his fiance. It was a contradiction of his character, or possibly Ellis was trying to show us a monster on the brink of humanity, and not the other way around. The movie stunk compared to the book, the book was horrifiying, and I'm not sure if I could verbally recommend it, because I'm not sure what would be though of me afterward. But, if you want to be mezmorized and horrified in a way you thought literature could not provide, read this book.
Rating: 
Summary: brilliant
Review: When i began reading American Psycho i had no idea what to think. It had already been made into a movie but i wanted to read the book before contemplating the movie. And i'm thankful i did because i doubt the movie could ever do for me what the book did. With a movie, if you don't wanna see something you shut your eyes. With the book you have no choice but to read what's before you and let the visions form in your mind. This book was graphic and i found myself truly disturbed by some aspects of it. I can only have admiration for Ellis for being able to do this because i've never read a book that shook me this much. I've come across feminist groups saying Ellis was wrong for writing in such great detail the torture towards women and so on, but i didn't think this was an attack at anyone in particular. It was a satire and should be treated as such. And i know i will never want to see the movie because i don't want to spoil the images in my head, no matter how gory and bloody they may be. The movie could at best deliver a watered down version which i would never appreciate. So bravo to Ellis on this brilliant book.
Rating: 
Summary: Just A Curiosity
Review: This is the book that started it all.....not the disturbing trend of ultra-violent media fictions; that has been going on for eons. It started a cascade of book and movie titles beginning with the modifier "American..." and as a result we now have "American Psycho", "American Beauty", and "American Rhapsody", among others. If I'm not mistaken, "American Cavedweller", "American Pencil Factory ", and "American Phone Jack" are among the few not taken. Being American involves a certain amount of cultural narcissism, and it's difficult to begrudge us this interest: American history being the series of tall tales that it is, the cultural landscape is rather a pretty thing to look at sometimes. So it makes sense that, as a marketing scheme, you can hardly go wrong by beginning the title of your literary or filmic epic with the name of our country.....it implies that one more rollicking whopper of a tale is to be added to the legend of all things American. It's a grabber. And it's a darned pretty flag, too. Bret Easton Ellis is a writer of scenes of endless dreary upper-crust social events with identical people talking in bored monotones about drugs, momentary sexual urges and pop culture. As far as I can tell, each of his books is more or less a collection of such scenes. And each one has the approximate character development and plot dynamics of a coffeemaker warranty pamphlet. Ellis took advantage of a neglected media outlet in the 1980's (books for the young adult) and took the opportunity to be the one to reflect that particular generation's culture and lifestyle back to them in the way that, deep down, most everyone craves."Less than Zero" was the book to do this reflecting, and reflect it did, quite literally, with references to all kinds of familiar schools, pop bands and drugs littered like candy throughout the pages. People ate it up, and Ellis has never looked back. American Psycho follows the familiar Ellis formula: a bunch of elegant get-togethers strung out with ceaseless vapid, cynical dialogue that ends arbitrarily after 400 pages or so. Ellis has expanded his range, however...he has moved us out of the world of the suburban coked-out teenager and moved us to 1980's Wall Street, home of the coked-out bond trader.His protagonist, one Patrick Bateman, is, in addition to being one of Ellis' patrician narcotics hobbyists, three things conspicuously: A) a wearer and exhaustive mental chronicler of fine men's fashions and accessories, B) A pop music aficionado, specifically of the most vapid top 40 radio artists and their hits, and C) most famously, a vicious murderer. The book is mostly unreadable, in my estimation not for the extreme violence of the murder scenes and the graphic deviant sex, some of which is rather creative if you've been desensitized to such things the way so many have been........but for the regular interjections of annoying and stupefyingly precise descriptions of the garments of every character to enter the room where things are happening. If you took out this leaden catalog-ese, the novel might well be half as long as it is. Unless you yourself are a department store garment buyer or ardent GQ reader, its like trying to read Sanskrit. Some, perhaps including Ellis himself, have described this film as a "satire" of 1980's excess and greed. Perhaps this would be more poignant if the decade of the '80s had not been followed so closely by yet another decade with exactly the same values. "American Psycho" is not satire. It fails at being satire in the same way that Oliver Stone's movie "Natural Born Killers", another claimant of the "Satire" mantle, fails. To satirize, one must bring something revered down from some kind of lofty station by revealing its pretentiousness; its lack of virtue. Vicious murder neither has virtue nor ever can pretend to have it, and therefore is immune from satire. The murder descriptions are sheer pandering of the most obvious kind. Sometimes people don't mind being pandered to . I certainly don't. I was more than willing to skim the endless pages of Valentino this and Emernegildo Zegna that to locate the surprisingly short and sparse passages devoted to Bateman's grisly executions. I even lingered over some of Bateman's erudite histories and critiques of Phil Collins and Huey Lewis, amusing in a sort of Gen X-ironic way. (Strangely, these music digressions stand alone from the events in the book like mini-essays, not communicated as dialogue or as any part of the action.) Treat this book the way you would a glossy expensive magazine at a newsstand: pick it up, scan the juicy parts, and put it back down. By all means don't make the mistake of trying to read it.
Rating:
Summary: An fascinating book...
Review: Ellis does a masterful job of keeping your mind and emotions in continuous movement as you read this book. One moment I am sickened by the homicidal madness that Patrick Bateman inflicts on his victims, and in the next moment I am wowed by Ellis' wordplay and intricate depiction of Manhattan life circa 1980s. That's the beauty of this book-it brings out a morbid fascination that you know everybody out there has with death and sex and money while smartly commenting on the social morass of 1980's New York. You will be engrossed!
Rating:
Summary: beyond imagination
Review: AP was one of the best fiction books I have ever read. It took me sometime to adapt myself to the story, people, location but once you start to use your imagination and visualize the places, then there is no way to close the book and continue your routine life. Some scenes were disgusting, some were funny, some ironic... but at the end it took me a day to finish the book and as one of the reviewers say "I do not know what to read after reading such a good fiction".... I must admit that I wanted Bateman to be arrested at the end but ...... I would suggest this book to lovers of adventure, horror, murder and pyschological stories.
Rating:
Summary: Makes me think twice about the death penalty
Review: I give author Ellis 1 star for fashion tips, and another star for his ability to use language skillfully. However, when I read a novel I try to appreciate the intent, skill, dialog, and PLOT. I finished this book and took a shower to clean the misogny from my memory. The main character spends his time spiraling into the disintegration of a personality that mirrors the crash and burn of American society. Ellis' lengthy descriptions of sex, gore and body parts fills me with loathing that I am actually reading this, especially the brutality against women and their fascinating and disposable sexual organs. I find myself skipping over redundant gore. It finally occurs to me that by drawing this reader to the end, Ellis makes me a partner in his literary degradation. At least I only wasted my money; Ellis has plundered his own talent.
Rating: 
Summary: Pointless Read- If No Stars was an option, it would get none
Review: This book is everything that is wrong with society. Literally. I am actually angry that I spent a week of my life reading this piece of trash novel and even angrier that I didn't throw it away after the first chapter. After reading it, I can not believe that anyone would want to turn this "literary work" into a film. I know the arguments of people who actually enjoyed this book. Yes, society is screwed up. True, nobody listens to what people are saying. Ok, people get off on the material things in this world. But the detail in which Ellis describes the murder and torture of the people (especially women) in this book is absolutely horrifying. (Disclaimer: Yes, I am a woman, but I am not a feminist, nor am I a very religious person. I do not have a weak stomach and I am a grown up who reads many kinds of books.) This being said, I had a very difficult time reading this novel. I was hoping that the ending would redeem the rest of this mess, but it never did. The book just left me with a feeling of absolute guilt and nausea. So if you want to waste 200 pages reading about the designer suits our antihero and his friends are wearing, and then waste another 200 pages hearing about gruesome tortures and murders, please rush out to your neighborhood bookstore and pick up American Psycho. And be sure to read it right before bed!
Rating:
Summary: A Look at the 80's
Review: For a while, my friends have been nagging at me to read Bret Easton Ellis' novel AMERICAN PSYCO. Around the time when the film version came out, I picked up the book. This was a very good read. In the beginning, Ellis explored what the 80's was about. The idea of business men making it big (GREED IS GOOD), what is in and out (still goes on today), and the pop culture of music and style showcase the novel. Patrick Bateman considers himself egotistic, and trying to be the best. He even goes over the edge to commit murder. After the half way point, the book makes a 360, focusing more on Bateman's gruesome murders and antics (and let me tell you, the details of what he does is VERY gruesome and horrific). It took me a while to figure in the climax of the novel, for it came and went while I read it. I had to read the ending twice of understnad what had happened. AMERICAN PSYCHO is a book I would suggest to read. Interesting, thought provocting, and thematic.
Rating: 
Summary: The best book ever
Review: I have never ever read a book that fascinated me the way " American Psycho" did, maybe because there simply is no other book like AP. I am probably one of the younger readers, I'm 17, but I always had the urge to read this book because there was so much controversy about it. I have to admitt there were moments when I was disgusted by what I read and thought I couldn't go on but I could, those digusting scenes are necessary to gain a deeper view of the inside of Patrick Bateman. I have just finished reading AP and I don't know what to read now because there won't ever be a book that good, so I might just read it again. American Psycho shows us a world that we wish to ignore, it is a masterpiece, it is ironically funny, it is full of black humor and label poetry. You just have to read this book.
Rating:
Summary: Shocking
Review: A satire? Where's the satire? This is more of a gruesome horror. Patrick Bateman is a wonderfully original creation. He is a yuppie during the day discussing restaurants and fashion but at night he becomes a savage killer. We get hints to our anti-hero's madness as he mutters under his breath that he is a serial killer but nobody listens to him. However we actually don't read any of his diabolical murders until about half-way in and then we are flooded with them. It is unfair to criticise Ellis's writing skills because he is a marvel with dialogue. The conversations with his yuppie friends are frighteningly plausible and the description of his murders are horrifically graphic. That said, there were faults. Certainly I failed to see the purpose of the chapters which advertised 80's pop groups. Many of the plot points fell apart and there wasn't much of a link. It was a very honest and brutal tale that seemed to be based in real life and this is why plots with the detective or the taxi-driver who recognises him never seem to go anywhere. The conclusion is unremarkable. It seems that Bateman is becoming worse and worse but there is no explosion near the end and this leaves the reader feeling empty. Ellis has an original character but there are no memorable supporting players. We are left with no conclusion and this is disappointing.
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