Rating: 
Summary: With so many good books out there, dont waste your time here
Review: I guess it was bound to happen. A book that disgusted me to the point of not recomending it because of its violence. I'm a 23 year old kid who grew up around all this media violence and consider myself pretty desensitized to all of it, especially in terms of books. I'm a believer that violence can have a point(fight club) but it just doesn't have a point here. This is sex and gore for the sake of controversy alone. Free publicity was the motivation, it had to be, because nowhere in the 400 page novel does a plot ever get started it just goes on and on about what his friends are wearing, the girls he has sex with, and why and how he kills them. murder, violence, sex, all can add up to an intriguing story, but Ellis is more concerned with giving us graphic details of sex positions and killing sprees then he is with giving us a reason to keep reading. There's better books out there, (Basic Eight, Virgin Suicides) don't waste your time here.
Rating:
Summary: American Psycho - from a normal perspective
Review: How disappointing. What began as a clever, scathing critique of arrogance, narcissism and selfishness in the late 80s soon dissolved into a grotesque, disturbing and excessively cruel narration of the protagonist's (Patrick Bateman) animalistic behavior.In fairness, there are ingenious devices that shine a satiric light on the emptiness of every single character who inhabits these pages. Constant references to "Les Miserables" are telling, and the characters' endless carelessness with names and faces effectively place Bateman in a shallow sea of interchangeable bodies with no real identity. Bateman stands out, if only because of the depravity of his every act. He rapes and tortures women to their death. He casually kills a child. He routinely wounds and murders those who cross his path. As a pastime, he inflicts pain on animals. All this between fancy meals, two hour workouts and obsessive grooming habits. Bateman also goes to the office every now and then, and somehow manages to remain employed despite terrible attendance and zero productivity. It is not the author's intentions that disappointed me. Patrick Batemans probably do exist, sans the uninhibited (and unpoliced) killing, and their lives provide an excellent target for satire. The film "In the Company of Men" accomplishes this brilliantly. What disappointed me was the unnecessarily graphic portrayal of Bateman's evil acts. They succeed not in erasing any hope of finding a human being within the protagonist, but in provoking me to question the mental state of an author who is able to conjure such ghastly images and present them to us, the readers.
Rating: 
Summary: A Study Of Literature in American Psycho
Review: This might be... the best book I've read in my whole life (eventhough not so many years I lived). Patrick Bateman became my inspiration spring with his quotes and realistic theories at the end of the book. Not to be said much, but to me a parallel idea with the movie American Beauty. The end of the so-called primitiveness of human kind in 21. century, what is waiting our children is the same kind of story of Patrick Bateman. In other words unsatisfaction. Tell me does this world worth welcoming ouyr children, or should we bring children to this shi..y world. To me "NO". I'm welcome to share my ideas with others, and listen to others.
Rating:
Summary: Who Cares?
Review: I'm about 1/3 of the way through this thing. I'd be done by now if it weren't for the incessant fashion descriptions favored by Ellis. These really get old after the first few pages. WHO CARES about Bateman's A. Testoni loafers? Get to the point! I suppose that I'll finish the book just to see what happens, but I can't recommend that anyone else waste time with it. In contrast to the reviews on the back cover, this book is neither important nor seminal. OK -- I finally finished it -- after which I threw it in the trash. (I couldn't even consider using the recycle bin.) This had nothing to do with the subject material -- it's just SO poorly written.
Rating:
Summary: Terrible Stuff
Review: This is not a good book. There are some things you don't want inside your head, and most of them are in American Psycho. There are scenes in this book that are gauranteed to have an emetic effect on the reader. Don't misunderstand me; freedom of speech is a principal I have built my life on, I value the First Amendment as much as the next wishy-washy liberal. But when "art" sinks to the levels of depravity found in this book, well, priorities have to be reevaluated. Mr. Ellis is an extremely limited writer; all his books are identical in style, mood and tone. He has no imagination except for horrific violence. Don't read this book. It may be a satire, but then so is Catch-22. Heller knew what he was doing. Ellis hasn't a clue.
Rating:
Summary: Only half kidding
Review: Most reviews of Easton-Ellis' tale of excess, detachment, wealth, apathy and torture see merely a simple metaphor. In the novel, a young Wall Street high roller views women, pop music and fashion with an equal cold and calculating eye. The character, Patrick Bateman, appears to represent the vacant materialism and accumulation that defined the 1980's. Fair enough until you realise that Brett Easton-Ellis is a "Patrick Bateman". Wealthy, Harvard educated and young, Easton-Ellis is more like his character than the "good" people that Patrick despises. As a result, the book not only comments on the lifestyle of the yuppies but allows the author to look inward and battle a few demons of his own. Poignant, intense, funny and frightening on more and more levels with every horrific chapter.
Rating: 
Summary: A little Bateman in all of us
Review: Ellis' American Pyscho is one of the most finely crafted pieces of literature in this day and age. Although written in 1991, Ellis' magnetism and diction portray events present in the metropolisses of our great nation to a tee. Read this book for the gore, the sex, the drugs, or simply for the witty asides delivered by Patrick himself. The movie does not do Bateman justice, rather, the book itself makes him out to be a star, a hero, and almost a sort of role model. Three cheers for Bret!
Rating: 
Summary: An American Psycho-path society is taking place
Review: While reading this Bret Easton Ellis book, whether it is very entertaining, even enjoyable, because of the setting, a reflection came to me as a reader and as a therapist: is it me, or this book is mirroring the kind of American society we are dealing within these times? Because all of Patrick Bateman's feelings and actions, even himself, are nothing extraordinary, but the incarnation of how sick, how vulnerable and inmature, childish and alienated Americans, and the whole world, are becoming. "American Psycho", since the very begining, provoques two reactions: you are atracted to the detailed descriptions of Manhattan's way of life, but, at the other hand, you feel a certain fascination you do not know if it is product of repulsion or pity for this poor minded, superficial, mysoginist, and obssesive yuppie, Bateman. All these words can be applied to make a generalized decription of the valuess and the "idealistic" images American society is exporting to the rest of the world. The serial killer phenomena, criminal hunting, racist, social and economic explotation and discrimination, besides the prosperous, wealthy, elegant, fancy, and beautiful images of the so-called "American way of life" are two visions that very few people associate, even link. But, as besides Light, shadow is, Bateman has the two extremes of the spectrum. And so the American society. As a Latin American, although I try to be impartial, I had seen with alarm that all the things I mentioned before (the serial killer phenomena and criminal hunting, and the discrimination and explotation) are taking place in here, Venezuela, and the book itself, although it is supossed to be literature and fiction, amazingly mirrors the realistic facts and breaking points of such living way. We should only expect that this kind of people, incarnated by Bateman, and the whole society that make them exist, change POSITIVELY towards an equilibrated and fair way of working, living and loving among all of us. I have to quote this: I have enjoyed the book but I do not support, and do not stand, that such characters as Bateman exist in here. But the society, too, has to restructure itself in order to reach the traced possitive goals it has in trying to bring in solutions for individualss like him. At the dawn of a new era, we have a lot of things to do rigth now...
Rating: 
Summary: Did I miss something?
Review: I read this book after an "intellectual", literary friend of mine recommended it, and I was thoroughly disgusted. Yes, I "got" the satire, and I found it amusing. Yes, I've seen and read plenty of gore in my time, and no, I'm not easily disgusted. I found the book disturbingly misogynist, and Patrick Bateman, the main character, wasn't likeable enough for me to take his exploits mildly. I read the whole thing, though on at least 3 occasions I put the book down and promised never to pick it up again. I feel that Ellis was trying to invoke fear with a satiric yet realistic story, but this isn't the kind of book that kept me up at night wondering if this could really happen. Bateman was constantly setting traps for himself (leaving his own bite marks on bodies in a colleague's apartment, -admitting- his own crimes to people who think he's just kidding or perhaps mis-hear him) and he is still able to continue (don't the police check dental records? I believe they do). I was horribly disappointed with the ending, and I thought that Ellis could have made his point without trying so hard to disturb and shock his readers, probably living out his own sick fantasies through his character. I would, however, like to see the movie. The plot was fine, I just got sick of Bateman's tortuous sex acts. I never thought I'd say this, but I wonder why people waste so much time slapping ratings onto normal TV shows when books like this are far worse than anything that's ever appeared on a screen.
Rating:
Summary: Skip it!
Review: If you are interested in reading about a sick, twisted, narcissistic, shallow, obsessively stylish psychopath then read this disturbing novel. If you are looking for light and/or happy entertainment look elsewhere. Athough it's possible to consider it well-written I found this pretentious novel to be much like an annoying and insecure person who tries too hard to impress. My best word of advice: Skip it!
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