Bret Easton Ellis - Imperial Bedrooms (2010)
Novel – 180 pages - my copy (hardback; 2010) bought for £8 from Waterstone’s, Drake’s Circus, in July 2010
- 3 nods out of 5 -
Brett Easton Ellis has made a career about on an ability to shock his audience: from the drug fuelled parties of a teenager wasteland to the mad and psychotic killings from the hands of Patrick Bateman. Blood has seeped from axes, from children toys and even a cash machine. But what becomes of a middle aged Ellis? Is the reader to expect this is the end of those terrors?
Of course not. Ellis responds to the forties by resurrecting his earliest characters from Less Than Zero, bringing them with him into a mid-life crisis of bloody proportions. Imperial Bedrooms follows Clay as he comes to terms with life on the wrong side of forty in the L.A. of the twenty first century.
The most striking aspect of Ellis’ latest novel is the appearance of an actual plot line, reflecting a continuing trend in his writing style, following on from the publication of Lunar Park in 2005. Ellis’ previous novels had characters meandering about, bumping into one another (amongst the drug taking, slashing and general feelings of apathy); whereas in Imperial Bedrooms we get the structure of a genre, that of thriller. The reader follows Clay during an unravelling, we watch as he picks up clues, the plot – if the Worm may indulge – indeed thickening. Unfortunately, most of this ‘plot’ is Clay talking to people on his iPhone, reading texts on his iPhone, sending off emails on, yes, you guessed, his iPhone.
There are the usual themes of Ellis’ fiction: alienation, loneliness, and the blurring of dream and reality. It follows the tone of Lunar Park, but Imperial Bedrooms is a poor successor. Less Than Zero had its youth to define and justify it; whereas the forty-something Clay has no redeeming qualities. The evil and twisted ending sex scenes – fitting for the pages of American Psycho itself – leave the reader confused, more than enlightened. But is this the novelist’s overall purpose? In the book’s opening pages, Clay himself disputes all that came before, the novel and the resulting movie of Less Than Zero, reacting to the previous ‘moral compass.’ Is Imperial Bedrooms, then, Ellis’ attempt to set the record straight? Who is to know amongst the confusion; all that is clear is the lack of guilt, the absence of remorse. Here, King Hedonism resigns supreme.
Imperial Bedrooms is a book of obvious limitations. But its thriller aspect, its overall short length – especially when so many books these days are bloated (Glamorama included) – make this a page turner and worthy 3 nodder.
Novel – 180 pages - my copy (hardback; 2010) bought for £8 from Waterstone’s, Drake’s Circus, in July 2010
- 3 nods out of 5 -
Brett Easton Ellis has made a career about on an ability to shock his audience: from the drug fuelled parties of a teenager wasteland to the mad and psychotic killings from the hands of Patrick Bateman. Blood has seeped from axes, from children toys and even a cash machine. But what becomes of a middle aged Ellis? Is the reader to expect this is the end of those terrors?
Of course not. Ellis responds to the forties by resurrecting his earliest characters from Less Than Zero, bringing them with him into a mid-life crisis of bloody proportions. Imperial Bedrooms follows Clay as he comes to terms with life on the wrong side of forty in the L.A. of the twenty first century.
The most striking aspect of Ellis’ latest novel is the appearance of an actual plot line, reflecting a continuing trend in his writing style, following on from the publication of Lunar Park in 2005. Ellis’ previous novels had characters meandering about, bumping into one another (amongst the drug taking, slashing and general feelings of apathy); whereas in Imperial Bedrooms we get the structure of a genre, that of thriller. The reader follows Clay during an unravelling, we watch as he picks up clues, the plot – if the Worm may indulge – indeed thickening. Unfortunately, most of this ‘plot’ is Clay talking to people on his iPhone, reading texts on his iPhone, sending off emails on, yes, you guessed, his iPhone.
There are the usual themes of Ellis’ fiction: alienation, loneliness, and the blurring of dream and reality. It follows the tone of Lunar Park, but Imperial Bedrooms is a poor successor. Less Than Zero had its youth to define and justify it; whereas the forty-something Clay has no redeeming qualities. The evil and twisted ending sex scenes – fitting for the pages of American Psycho itself – leave the reader confused, more than enlightened. But is this the novelist’s overall purpose? In the book’s opening pages, Clay himself disputes all that came before, the novel and the resulting movie of Less Than Zero, reacting to the previous ‘moral compass.’ Is Imperial Bedrooms, then, Ellis’ attempt to set the record straight? Who is to know amongst the confusion; all that is clear is the lack of guilt, the absence of remorse. Here, King Hedonism resigns supreme.
Imperial Bedrooms is a book of obvious limitations. But its thriller aspect, its overall short length – especially when so many books these days are bloated (Glamorama included) – make this a page turner and worthy 3 nodder.
