I read several reviews of this book before reading, most of which denounced it as being awful and I have to say, I'm surprised.I tore through it in 3 days. I saw it as a near brilliant bit of mind f*ckery, so many psychological themes and commentary on modern life for me to gleefully go searching on Google to tear up and figure out. All that and horror, too! (I read somewhere that he was influenced by Steven King, in writing this one. Indeed. I have to say, I like the Ellis version of King even

"How lonely people make life. But also I realized what I hadn't learned from him: that a family - if you allow it - gives you joy, which in turn gives you hope."I’m a pretty big BEE fan, and I love his cool, detached writing style, and how all his books are slightly deranged. I love how the protagonists are always a bit off – a big part of you detests them, a little bit of you feels sorry for them, and a tiny piece of you is jealous of the seemingly glamorous lives they live (the sex, drugs, par...

This novel could have been really something but it turned into a real dog’s breakfast. Crap all over the place. What a mess. Reading Lunar Park was like watching one of those jovial interviews with major serial killers you can find on youtube. The reporter is alarmed/mortified/astonished to find himself quite liking this monster who slaughtered 17 human beings. You get this kind of dialogue -- Hey Jeff, can you explain a little what would be going through your mind when you were drilling holes i...

Hear ye, hear ye: I am SUCH a liar, you guys! I've always admitted to having read the whole B.E.E. collection, but have lied. This one makes it... done. Complete! I am very VERY much done with Ellis at this point in my life. & it couldn't have come sooner.The one striking thing about this one is its description of the fall of the once-mythical, once-impressive B.E.E.: once famous and rich & relevant, he grabs at past glories in a very saddening fashion, grabbing at straws really, trying to reliv...

I saw a guy on the tube in London reading this and noticed he was near the end. I wanted to stand up and say, "Hey, it's creeping you out, isn't it. Isn't it?! ISN'T IT!!!?" But you just can't live your life that way. It's inappropriate.Bret Easton Ellis, on the other hand, can do whatever the hell he wants. And he does. Putting yourself in a novel is either the ballsiest thing you can do, or the assy-est. In this case, both. But let's put aside the fact that Ellis is writing a tale about semi-p...

My girlfriend is reading this book right now, so at night I always see the front cover as it hides her pretty face.I've always been a fan of Bret. I loved Less than Zero, American Psycho, and Imperial Bedrooms. I didn't like Rules of Attraction ( good movie but the novel was too faggy love drunk for me.) And I hated Glammora and the Informers.All in all, he's had an impressive career and I have read a few of his novels multiple times. American Psycho sticks out as his real masterpiece in contemp...

Brett Ellis’ explosive entry into the celebrity spotlight provides him with a charmed and enviable lifestyle. This begins to sour as his excesses in drugs, drink and sex take hold.When he tries to get clean, marries his old girlfriend and struggles to establish a relationship with her daughter and his own estranged adolescent son, that’s when the fun starts. He is haunted by the ghost of his tyrannical father, and by the serial killer in American Psycho, his first novel, Patrick Bateman, who has...

Finished my re-read of this. I'm still going to call this my favorite BEE book, with Glamorama as a close second.

That's all six of his novels now read. This won't live as long in the memory as Glamorama, American Psycho or Less than Zero, but it was still a really good novel and the least uncomfortable compared to those three. Although, there were indeed parts that seriously creeped me out. Like, for example, when a demonic Terby doll crawled inside the anus of a pet dog and took it over - couldn't help but think of Chucky from Child's Play. It's written as a sort of postmodern narcissistic ghost story wit...

Find all of my reviews at: http://52bookminimum.blogspot.com/ “You dream a book, and sometimes the dream comes true. When you give up life for fiction you become a character.” What is Lunar Park???? Brett Easton Ellis claims it to be his homage to Stephen King (and you will see later in this review that it did indeed bring to mind one particular King character) – but when I really need to break it down to basics I’m going with Lunar Park is what would happen if American Psycho and Fight Club

I feel funny now. No, this novel wasn't a how-to-be-a-comedian manual under the guise of some kind of fucked up, deranged horror. I feel FUNNY funny, strange funny, like someone touched me inappropriately and I don't know how I feel funny. Halfway through the book, I put it down and eyeballed my partner and started throwing existential crisis theories at him. I have this problem with depersonalization and derealization where in heightened states of anxiety you detach from your reality or your se...

There’s a story behind the film Adaptation: scriptwriter Charlie Kaufman had a hard time adapting The Orchid Thief, so what did he do? He wrote a film about him having a hard time adapting The Orchid Thief, writing himself into the script, creating for himself a twin brother, dedicating the finished piece to the sibling who didn’t exist. Author Bret Easton Ellis, creator of American Psycho and other “transgressive” novels, wrote himself into his novel Lunar Park, conjuring for himself a family,

Lmao what did I just read. This was a complete fiasco. This was like if you smushed every Bret Easton Ellis book into one and then added a sprinkle of Stephen King weirdness and timesed the metafiction by 100. Bret was the main character but he was also the writer but he was also interacting with characters from his books who were both real and fictional on very different levels. And he was also being haunted by a demon. And there was a rabid dog. And a lot of themes about being a parent. Oh and...

3.5/5I'm not the most well-read guy on Bret Easton Ellis, not by a long shot. And I should be better read considering I enjoy the guys writing style quite a bit. I like the minimalist style, and I enjoy his brand of satire. But it was interesting to me how he made a memoir that was mostly fiction, and used that to examine a bunch of different themes such as family or even writing. That he made it a suburban gothic horror makes it even more fascinating.I won't pretend to understand everything as

The author as central character in a book of fiction is becoming more the reality these days, and Lunar Park by Ellis takes this transgressive sub genre to another level. The reality part starts by Ellis recounting his evolution as a writer: his early success at 21 while still in college with his debut novel Less than Zero, the celebrity life in the Brat Pack of the literary elite in New York fuelled by powerful drugs and lots of sex with males and females alike, the controversial publication of...

So I've spent this year developing a love/hate relationship with Bret Easton Ellis' work. I don't understand why his books fascinate me or even why they work as compelling fiction, yet I keep reading them because his voice is so distinct. Disturbing, empty, and shallow most of the time, but distinct. Then along comes Lunar Park. I spent 90% of the book hating it, wondering why I was still reading it, and then found the ending beautiful. No. Really. I didn't think Ellis could write something that...

This was a life changing sort of read. There is an underlying theme to this book which is... 'take time out to appreciate the people you love the most'. So cliche - but this is the strong concept I grasped from this book. This was so well written by a deranged madman of an author that I am dying to get to know more about. I plan to read every last one of his books. This is like a train wreck of a memoir, slowly metamorphing into a sci fi horrific fascinating story. It is pretty dramatic and hear...

'Reservoir Dogs' and 'Pulp Fiction' are two of my favorite films. So in 1996, when 'From Dusk Til Dawn' was released, I was in line on opening night. For the first hour, I watched what was undoubtedly the finest work Tarantino had produced to date, and I eagerly anticipated a typically dramatic conclusion... but something went horribly wrong: FDTD degenerated into a B-grade vampire flick. For ten horrific minutes, I tried to convince myself that one of the characters had fallen asleep, been knoc...

After getting my fill of Ellis' banality, narcissism and misogyny upon reading "American Psycho" (along with "Less Than Zero" and "Rules of Engagement") I vowed never to read another of his books. The author once touted as the Voice of my generation (Gen X) never qualified as such for me. The only reason I decided to read this one was a glowing review on the back of the book by none other than the arbiter of pop culture (gasp!) Stephen King. I at least had to see what made Uncle Stevie gush. The...

LUNAR PARK is a bit of a departure for Bret Easton Ellis in that it's more of a traditional page-turner than anything else he has previously written. It's also a lot less cynical and gratuitously shocking than most of his previous work. In the novel, Ellis himself is the main character, and he does an brilliant job of blurring the lines between autobiography and fiction. Interestingly, he seems to take especial delight in presenting as negative an image of himself as possible, making for a highl...