Review: American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis

American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis

My rating: 1 of 5 stars

Synopsis: In American Psycho, Bret Easton Ellis imaginatively explores the incomprehensible depths of madness and captures the insanity of violence in our time or any other. Patrick Bateman moves among the young and trendy in 1980s Manhattan. Young, handsome, and well educated, Bateman earns his fortune on Wall Street by day while spending his nights in ways we cannot begin to fathom. Expressing his true self through torture and murder, Bateman prefigures an apocalyptic horror that no society could bear to confront.

I was undecided about what rating to give American Psycho, but thinking about the last 200 pages of the novel, I decided one star was more than enough. The first half of the book was really great. I loved reading Patrick Bateman describing every character’s outfits, and their superficial lifestyle really was visible through the characters’ actions and the things they talk about (clothes, women, more clothes, other people). But the gore just got out of hand about 200 pages into the novel. I’m sure the author’s point could have come across without all those painfully detailed description about decapitation and torture. I saw no point in many of those scenes, and seriously, (highlight for spoilers),that whole chapter named ‘Tries to cook and eat a girl’, had no point other than being ‘edgy and daring’ or whatever. What was the point of that?

It’s a shame, because there was real potential here that just fell flat.