The Rules of Attraction

Rating:
Summary: to date, this is Ellis' best work
Review: After reading every other book in Bret Easton Ellis' backcatalog, I picked up "The Rules of Attraction" expecting more of his overused trademarks: cocaine, sex, vacuous characters. I was really surprised when, in the first few pages, this shaped up to be an incredibly involving novel with some semblance of humanity incorporated into the vacant lives of beautiful college kids searching for love. The story is told through POV segments of various characters, including Sean Bateman (good-looking, hard-drinking, narcissistic), Paul Denton (openly bisexual, provides the novel with genuine morality), and Lauren Hynde (fretting over her boyfriend, who's off in Europe). Their weekly activities of going to parties, getting drunk/high, and getting laid are chronicled in a hell-as-repetition way, with Ellis incorporating bits of stark, unexpected humor that catches the reader off guard. "The Rules of Attraction" flows with a fluid consistency, so that even events that seem to repeat aren't marred by their redundancy and instead seem fresh. What Ellis does--which doesn't happen in many of his novels--is make us sympathetic toward these characters, even though they can be relentlessly egotistical and plain down stupid, we are curious about what their futures hold. It's only in the last 30 or so pages that the novel begins to wear out, with inexplicable motivations and emotions that drift with the consistency of mood swings coming to surface. Despite this, "The Rules of Attraction" is still a damn good novel--one of the best I've read in a while--and it's doubtful Ellis will ever be able to top it.

Rating:
Summary: Now that I've re-read this book 4 times...
Review: ...it's time to write a quick review. Some of the most inventive fiction techniques that I have ever seen- this book outshines Ellis's other books to such a degree that it is almost laughable. A remarkably accurate depiction of life at Bennington (oops, Camden) in the mid-80's. A true pleasure.

Rating:
Summary: I loved it!
Review: I love all of Bret's books, but this was probably my favorite. I love how he name drops and especially love his music references. If you've gone away to college, you can relate to certain things that occur in this book. I read it years ago, but remember loving it enough to read it a second time.

Rating:
Summary: University of Ellis
Review: "The Rules of Attraction" is probably the darkest novel about college ever written, and it is also probably one of the most accurate. For Ellis' characters, and many real college students, college is a time for sex and partying, a 4 year farewell party before entering the responsibility of the 'real world.' Ellis' characters are so filthy rich that responsibility is not a concept they can fathom. To them, college is a formality; another status symbol that they feel defines them. It's just another place to spend their parents' money, with more peers and more party venues. Like all Ellis novels, "The Rules Of Attraction" is grossly underrated and misunderstood. It is a quick but disturbing read that stays with you long after you finish the novel. Another Ellis masterwork.

Rating:
Summary: Falling into 1985
Review: Ellis' most maligned novel, but for me his greatest, an intricate, deeply personal account of lives ebbing away into nothingness. The characters, as usual, are often chauvinsitic, prejudice, even misanthropic creatures, but Ellis manages to get the reader on their side. We follow several voices, all ultimately revealing their inner vulnerability and their true selves in a confusion of hard drugs, hard sex and hard emotions. We begin with nothing, end with nothing, and nothing much happens in between, but surely this is the point; these lives, this generation, like the novel itself, seems to be in a rush to get where they are going. The only thing is, none of them know where that is.

Rating:
Summary: still holds true after a decade or two
Review: I am now a college junior and I read this book for the first time my senior year of high school. BEE basically wrote an outline of what to expect during my collegiate experience, more than a decade later. Let me tell you, this is suprisingly one of the best books of our time. Also a very quick and fun read with style that is on par with kosinski (not the unabomber, the author) and way ahead any other author of recent times.

Rating:
Summary: A Book Full of Dirty Purity
Review: This is one of the most gorgeous books I have ever read. Ellis is a smart enough writer not to make it gorgeous in the conventional sense, one where swelling sentences and gushing adjectives are mistaken for beauty. Instead, Ellis uses sheer simplicity and straightforward dialogue to convey just how deeply jaded the characters in the novel are. Every character is longing for something more, but trying to go after it in a self-destructive and obsessive compulsive fashion. It is a dead on accurate portrayal of college life, of the religion of namedropping, gossip, misdirected desire, and the search of a place to belong. The characters are expertly drawn and given voices that have more emotion and chracter in them than those found in most films. It is funny and sad at the same time. When you finish the book, you realize it starts in the middle of a sentence and ends in the middle of a sentence, a subtle yet heartbreaking technique that suggests people have felt this way since the beginning of time and that they always will.

Rating:
Summary: A Fun Book, Not a Great One
Review: Fans of Ellis will enjoy this novel. It's quick-paced, enticing, funny and depressing. It's neither as good as American Psycho, nor as tedious as Glamorama; neither as adolescent as Less Than Zero, nor as glum as The Informers. Perhaps this is a good summer book--impossible to put down when you're reading it, but impossible to remember once you've finished. (A film version starring Johnny Depp, John Cuzak and Claire Forlani is due out in January by Fineline Features.)

Rating:
Summary: Realistic View. Boring Subject Matter.
Review: The characters are homogenized. The subject matter is right on the mark in reference to reality... but who can take interest in these lost degenerates? The story of empty young adults has been told before but the setting of this book is special... True to life. Parents don't send your kids away to College! But you can see the same thing on MTV spring break. The style of prose is ridiculous... Ellis takes himself way too seriously. Good reference for parents and serious students considering campus life, but not something to remember as great lit. One of BEE's better efforts, but all of his novels are horrible, so that would make this book just a waste of time.

Rating:
Summary: A true glimpse at college life.
Review: Ellis usually writes about horrific things from out of nowhere to facilitate his reputation as a splattercore writer charading as one of the contemporary greats. But here Ellis captures a darkness that is indeed real and for this he must be given merit. His characters all have the same voice just as in any of his other novels. There is nothing to be learned from this novel although some may take it as a warning. Orwell warned of a Totalitarian future in 1984 and Ellis warns upper Middle class parents about sending their kids away to college.