Glamorama

Rating:
Summary: CRAZY--SEXY-COOL!!
Review: I read Ellis' LESS THAN ZERO while a freshman at Harvad University and got totally hooked on similar works of fiction describing a particular aspect of contemporary culture. This is why I also enjoyed similar works such as Joseph Green's PSEUDO COOL, Jay McInerney's BRIGHT LIGHTS BIG CITY, and Tama Janowitz's SLAVES OF NEW YORK. Ellis is amazing in his ability to tell a story that leaves you with the memory of an important destination. Highly Recommend!!

Rating:
Summary: Great first third, Ellis is a big talent.
Review: The plot was banal, the juxtaposition of glamour and violence became tedious but the night club opening that ends act one is so well written that F.Scott Fitzgerald would have been jealous. Ellis is funny, sophisticated and he is above all, brave. The inside jokes and the names he chose to drop cracked me up. For anyone who has spent any time in the N.Y.,L.A. scene it was like thumbing through an old address book.

Rating:
Summary: B.E.Ellis at his best,I lived the characters twisted mind
Review: Not since Holden Caulfield have i been so inside the world of a character as Victor Ward. This book reads with frightening realism. It gets you completely intoxicated in its world,farfetched scenarios become not only predictable but unavoidable. QUITE A TRIP, I RECOMMEND IT GREATLY!!

Rating:
Summary: The first 150 pages are "brill," not the rest.
Review: Ellis fans will certainly want to read "Glamorama." As far as being a 5 star book, though, you would seriously have to be kidding yourself. People love to assume that if you don't love his work, you don't "get" him. The truth is the first part of the book is very good and could probably survive on it's own. After that you will find yourself stopping several times and asking "what the hell is going on here?" Ellis has gone a bit to far with the plot of "Glamorama." It's like trying to combine "Less than Zero," "American Psycho," and any Tom Clancy novel. He is very good with the first two, but he is no Clancy.

Rating:
Summary: Enjoyable contemporary fiction
Review: A great read from Bret Easton Ellis that lives up to the expectations of Less than Zero and re-established him as one of the best contemporary writers today. I rank Ellis up there with D.M. Roman (the author of Fried Calamari) as the leaders in contemporary fiction. While Glamorama meanders in the last third of the book, it is still a very worthwhile enjoyable read.

Rating:
Summary: For Bret Easton Ellis Groupies
Review: Well, as soon as I saw it was available I grabbed this book and devoured it. On one level, Ellis has not progressed from the discourse he displayed in American Psycho or the Informers collection. Same narrative style and approach. However, there's nothing wrong with that approach if you were impressed with it the first time round. Glamorama has been criticized for its awful dialogue - that's missing the point. If the way Patrick Bateman saw the world made you laugh, so too will Victor Ward's outlook. If you like the sense of humour and observations of his other works, go for it. If you like your books to keep it straight and simple, avoid this one.

Rating:
Summary: Bret does it again..
Review: It is simple: You either like him or not.I do.Glamorama describes the celebrity-life in a way that shakes, stirs and shocks. The main character Victor is so hollowly described, and his life empty and without substance that you wonder where the author got his inspiration. As the plot goes along, and you find yourself in a different world, you ask yourself "How did he (Ellis) manage that?". Reading Ellis' books are like reading MTV. Tempo,tempo,tempo and always in the fast lane. Just like MTV, Bret Easton Ellis is here to stay. Read the book, and become hypnotized.

Rating:
Summary: An excellent book. Want more from Ellis
Review: Ellis writes in a style that is new to me. I had read American Psycho prior to Glamorama and was chilled by the characters disregard for others. The same here but more so from the supporting cast. Victor is just caught in the maddness because of his shallow nature. He comes around at the end and actually shows us that their is a human being inside.

Rating:
Summary: Glamorama is an ambitious and darkly comic American novel.
Review: When I read American Psycho the first time, I was almost as appalled as the rest of the hysterical reviewers. I discounted his literary merit just like everyone else. But when I re-read it 3 years later, I laughed my ass off. The point: I guess you either get what Ellis is up to or you don't. I didn't at one point and I'm happy I got beyond. Glamorama is indeed a very DeLillo-esque book, full of shadow worlds and paranoia, but reads with a unique comic tone I've come to really enjoy. It is also his most balanced and full work to date. And yes, you ninnies--he is a moralist, and, in a very traditional American novelist who reminds me (don't laugh!) at times of Fitzgerald, Hawthorne, and Flannery O'Connor. I believe it's time to take another, less emotional, look at Ellis.

Rating:
Summary: One More Psycho-step in the right direction
Review: In Glamorama Ellis does himself one better than his controversial dark Satire American Psycho. HE shows the promise of a young Don DeLillo, William Gaddis or Paul Auster. But while the piece attempts (sometimes quite successfully) to intertwine the real with the surreal it doesn't always hold up. That being said this is a helluva an effort by a still young writer who - if his writting continues to mature - should soon find a plate at the table with the "big-boys." Victor Ward's (the lead character) frcatured world is a mix of reality itself, his reality and the reality he perceives which keeps hims barely on the plus side of the insanity fence. Ellis's Americam Psycho was a step forward (though I'd more highly reccomend Paul Theroux's Chicago Loop). And with his latest effort he takes one more step in the right direction. I'm reminded at times of different authors when I read this book: along with Delillo, Auster, and Gaddis; there's also a hint of early Robert Stone and Mario Vargas LLosa as well as Roberto Cortazar. Well worth reading and makes me anxious to watch the maturing process.