Reviews with content warning for Classism - American Psycho

I'm never reading this book again, it made me so much. I did enjoy it though, which I can't believe. The main character is disgusting but so interesting and I like the social commentary.

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mangooo_spagetti's review against another edition

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challenging dark mysterious reflective tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

Slow paces book that does everything it’s trying to do. Reading this book also has dropped my rating of the movie significantly, both because of it’s failure to convey the fact the Patrick Bateman is not cool, and for it’s decontextualized ending. They made the movie into a thing that has a beginning, middle, and end of a story, wheras the book is more of something with movements. Like an orchestra. The first introduces you to his life and is by far the funniest, which fades gracefully into the second, the longest and most brutal. The second begins with his killing Paul Allen, and the American psycho movie does that just fine. But the thing the movie is missing is the third. The third movement where patrick bateman shows us just how crazy he is, and gets more delusional, and the story more fragmented and experimental. The clear image of this wallstreet buisnessman who wants so desperately for people to see how crazy he is, and how terrible of a person he is, but either he doesnt do anything and just sits there delusional dreaming about how such a terrible world would not care. Or they genuinely dont notice or care.

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maddypat's review against another edition

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Even with seeing the movie adaptation of this book, I was extremely underprepared for what the book actually had in store. The violence is too extreme for me to get through. The first murder --

Spoiler

a defenseless homeless man and his dog

-- put tears in my eyes, and I felt physically sick. Every page after that scene had me on edge, and not in a fun "wow this is a thriller!" way, but a "I hope I don't read anything else absolutely horrific" way. I applaud people who can stomach it and be able to appreciate the book for what it is, but I just can't get through it without feeling miserable.

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phibs's review against another edition

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dark funny reflective tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

Bret Easton Ellis constructs a completely believable world in which characters blindly and vapidly consider their wants first, regardless of circumstance. Characters are made interchangeable, all entirely selfish, two-dimensional yuppies in a grim satire of 1980s Wall Street consumerism.

Although Ellis manages to deftly weave grim comedy throughout, his postmodernist critique remains explicitly crude and vile, leading the reader to question how necessary Ellis’ innumerable graphic depictions of wanton violence against women were to the narrative at large.

Director Mary Harron certainly cherrypicks the best of Ellis’ novel to adapt for cinema, leaving the novel little more than a compendium of desensitised butchery and $300 ceviches.

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brennahinshaw's review against another edition

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dark tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

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