This is a book that is perhaps more interesting than good…

It’s a metafictional novel written from the perspective of “Bret Easton Ellis”, who may or may not correlate to Bret Easton Ellis. It puts you in an odd position, not wanting to be drawn into a nit-picking examination of what’s true and what isn’t, but making that not entirely irrelevant either. You aren’t quite sure if he’s cheating you or not. The separation is eventually formalised as a split between the narrator and The Writer. It also has the possibility of an unreliable narrator, echoing Patrick Bateman in American Psycho.

It requires a knowledge of his previous work, American Psycho at the very least, to fully appreciate the intertextual dimension of this book.

As well as an autobiography (or “autobiography”) it’s also a ghost story. It was, apparently, written to be essentially a “Stephen King genre novel”. It is genuinely frightening and creepy. Ellis has always been excellent at mixing the everyday creepy and the outrageously horrifying (which actually comes off as less horrific in comparison), and can easily write a “proper” ghost story like this.

The prose style is a bit of a mish-mash of his usual flat, glossy, cold style and a more tender voice, of a writer having a mid-life crisis. He’s never acheived this kind of tenderness before (it is theorised that the unexpected death of his best friend/lover during the writing affected the direction of the book, but it seems a bit presumptuous to assume anything about Ellis himself as he really reveals very little considering), but sometimes the switch between the voices is a bit messy. It’s much more sprawling and less tight than most of his previous work, though it does have a proper narrative, like Glamorama, unlike The Rules of Attraction or Less Than Zero. It’s sharply observational as always, but much of the sharp cruelty is directed either at himself or at a straw man of himself.

Anyway… I’m rambling. I really enjoyed this, though it’s very sprawling and imperfect and a bit different from his other work.

I have got to stop reading the trashy novels they give away free with magazines. But they’re so easy. As I spend a lot of my time reading difficult philosophy texts it’s quite a relief to read something trashy, junk-food for the brain.

(By the by, the book about hooking that is actually good is ‘Belle de Jour: Intimate Adventures of a London Call Girl’)

Now, I like postmodernism, even though it is a total swindle.

I am reading this in preparation for next term’s ‘Hegel and Marx’ module, which is taught by the author.

A very cute little dining-hall style Japanese cafe, in Soho. You can sit by the window and watch the people go by. Delicious, plentiful, fresh food. We had edamame, amazing vegetarian sushi with a variety of fillings in one roll, stir fry with rice, miso soup, salad with a delish and unusual miso dressing. Apparently they also do really nice fresh fruit juice blends (kiwi + strawberry, for instance). Highly recommended.

This is an amazing book. It am very sad to have finished it.

The prose style is detached, and reads a bit like Bret Easton Ellis (a favourite of mine) except it’s much more warm and funny. The story is gradually revealed, twisting as it goes, but without any clumsiness or irritation.

It’s the first Palahniuk I’ve read (though I’ve seen the movie of Fight Club), but I will certainly be investigating further