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Summary: a must read for the optimistic
Review: this book delves into the fact that we all are around people like this everyday. they don't have to look like charles manson to be dangerous. They just have to have an imagination.
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Summary: One of the best 10 books I've read in the last 10 years
Review: I was so seduced by the narrative I didn't realize until near the end the twist.....I actually thought Patrick Bateman was killing people in a perverted way. Wow, it was a relief when I figured it out. GREAT, GREAT book.
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Summary: This book is not meant to entertain it is meant to shock.
Review: Bret Easton Ellis is brilliant. Not only has he given us a character that we truly abhor, but he gives us a character that makes us think. Many other people have written comments to the fact that the book was apalling and really misogynistic, but this is his point. This was a decade of decadence and excess. The elite were in business and high society was making the transactions. Bateman's attitude about life is bleak he concentrates on the material, and this leaves him souless. People reading this book need to recognize that the murders and outrageous sexual acts are those of a heartless- materialistic man. Bateman was created by the society in which he lived. He has no qualms about killing anyone because he feels nothing. Murder is a game, and as natural to Bateman as breathing. If you do read this book recognize that it is a satire, and regard it with caution. Ellis is a wonderful writer and his prose is genius. His other books are wonderful also.
Rating: 
Summary: Try E! instead
Review: I find it amusing when people gush about Mr. Ellis "humorous" portraits of fin de millenium Manhattan (or America, or whatever). They seem to take for granted that Ellis is criticizing or making a caricature of this vapid, shallow and ridiculously silly world. Think twice, pal. The guy is not criticizing it. The guy is totally, completely, head over heels in love with it! Take the glam away from him and he will certainly pine to death: now that wouldn't be a bad thing, as this would certainly rid us from any more dubious opuses. Because you see, he keeps on churning them out, and certain breed of critics keeps on telling us how "humorous" this guy is...
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Summary: Made me angry and kept me fascinated...........up to a point
Review: Throughout most of this book, I felt angry. Patrick Bateman could get away with this stuff simply because he is rich and he is white. Even more frightening he's pretty smart. The American Dream is dead, the book implies. People no longer have hopes or goals to achieve. The book is on the whole fascinating, and then Ellis does something. He shows us that Patrick Bateman is cursed to do this. In reality he is quite a wimp, and this barrage of depravities is all that keeps him alive. I felt that this transition to of our sympathy was very jagged. About five sixths into the book, I had enough. I can't wait to see the movie, this material is begging to be told in a cinematic format, and made taunter.
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Summary: A disturbing look at a contemporary yuppie psychopath
Review: American Psycho eventually draws you into the character of Patrick, a sinister murderer who works on Wall Street. The way Ellis depicts the gruesome killings through Patrick's eyes are explicitly powerful, and we get to view everything from the eyes of the deranged psychopath. The novel provides a twisted view of impulses, but remains eerily melancholic as Patrick gets worse, and he realises exactly what he is. It is a terrificly controlled book, with funny moments, but also a dark side that summarises our quick-fix Gucci-wearing society, particularly of the Eighties.
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Summary: Useless, Senseless
Review: I found Less Than Zero to be disturbing but meaningful so waited until the hype on this one died down to read it. Now wish, very sincerely that I hadn't. There is no point to this book- it does not entertain, enlighten or educate. As the protaganist himself says about his acts (again and again), "It was another useless and senseless death". When you are not plunged into scenes of horrific carnage (I had to skip them after the first two)you are reading the captions for Vanity Fair, GQ, and Vogue. An endless monologue for the best designers and restaurants. It is like a bad porno movie, only the thinnest of plots strung between scenes of unreadable gore and violence against women. More importantly, for a work of "contemporary literature" it was completely implausible. A maid who has no qualms about swabbing down walls streaked with brain matter, a dry cleaner who repeatedly washes sheets soaked in blood, murdering people in broad daylight with NO chance of getting caught? This book is no better than a D grade dime horror paperback and should have been sold in porn shops not bookstores. Whether the crimes are real or imagined does not matter- there is no statement made on or about society because there is no motive, not one single insight into the mind of this monster. He sprang, fully fleshed, evil incarnate from the first page. No hows or whys. We may have people like this moving among us (although I doubt to the extent of this book) but there are reasons for their behavior. Again, completely unbelievable. Ellis' intimate knowledge of the multitude of ways to maim, degrade, and torture the human body; to prolong pain and suffering makes me think that he is one pathetic wretch of a human being. DO NOT BUY THIS BOOK- IT IS A WASTE OF YOUR MONEY. BUY SOMETHING ELSE!
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Summary: Horrible and Wonderful
Review: I found this book to be both horrible and wonderful. I despised the main character for his horribly shallow perspective on himself and his world when he was being nothing but a trivial, boring yuppie. I couldn't even think of him as human as his thoughts travelled to the horrific acts he perpetrated. Yet the book has a lot to say about our priorities as a society and our cultural obsession with and distraction by the trivial. A friend indicated that he believed the violence was only in Patrick's head, and I couldn't argue, because the book was written entirely from Patrick's perspective. So are the murders the imaginary revenge of an inadequate boy/man? Or the real ravages of a self-obsessed society gone mad?? I couldn't tell for sure, but thought Ellis did a fantastic job of raising the question. The book is ambiguous and addresses the core of the essential hollow institutions we all face.
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Summary: APATHY MEETS DISULLUISIONMENT IN A MATERIAL WORLD
Review: ELLIS IS ONE OF THE FEW LITERARY MINDS THAT HAS THE CAPACITY TO SWALLOW THE READER TO THE POINT OF APATHETIC DESPERATION, AND THEN SPIT YOU OUT, BETTERED BY THE EXPERIENCE. NO OTHER BOOK, SANS "THE BELL JAR" EXPRESSES MORE KEENLY THE CAREENING EFFECT OF A SOCIETY OF EXCESSES ON THE MORTAL SOUL. BROKER BY DAY, SOCIOPATH BY NIGHT, ELLIS ILLUMINATES A LIFE FILLED TO THE BRIM BY EMPTY FILLERS, AND POP-CULTURE BY-PRODUCTS. YOUR BRAIN WILL SWIM BY THE NAMES, FACES, PLACES, AND REFERENCES THAT DELUDE THE PROSE. ELLIS ISN'T A PREACHER, HE ISN'T A DEVIL, HE'S THE VOICE IN THE NIGHT THAT AWAKENS YOU FROM THE NIGHTMARE YOU'VE BEEN HAVING-AMERICAN PSYCHO IS A NOVEL THAT DOES JUST THAT. IT ILLUMINATES THE DESPERATE SWINGS A SOUL CAN TAKE WHEN UNDERNOURISHED BY THE FALSE GAIETY OF A SOCIETY PLAGUED BY IMAGE CONSCIOUS FACISTS. I RECCOMEND READING IT FOR THE GODIVA CHOCOLATE SEEN ALONE!-NOT FOR THE WEAK OF HEART OR STOMACH.
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Summary: The thin veil of civilisation revealed
Review: Other reviewers seem fixated by the graphic violence depicted in this book, and its easy to see why - it is arresting, compelling and deeply disturbing in its realism. When I finished the book, I wondered about possible justifications: Ellis, in TV interviews, does not seem to be gratuitious in anything he does.The explanation I take, and one I find irresistable, is that Bateman is a caricature, an image of us focused in terms we try not to think of ourselves in. On the surface, (which is all his contemporaries ever see, despite, or perhaps because of, their sophistocation), Bateman is wealthy, successful, and sexually compelling. And yet we know it is all an elaborate hoax, a skin Bateman wears in order to move freely about in our world. The beauty is that all his friends do exactly the same thing, for exactly the same reasons - they hide behind a veneer of class to disguise the desparate emptyness of their lives. Bateman's emptyness merely has a more unacceptable face. Ellis has used a classic technique, making a subtle point about the lives of the rich and famous, and by extension the lives of all who emulate them. Bateman is a part of us all taken to an extreme, to be used as an example for those who wish to avoid his fate - a life time of hollow, empty, menaingless window dressing.
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