Reviews with content warning for Schizophrenia/Psychosis - American Psycho

I’m hesitant to say I liked this book due to the graphic nature of it. Simultaneously well-written while also being some of the most degenerate shit I’ve read in my life

Content Warnings

jayvdw's review against another edition

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challenging dark 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

2.5

This book is gross, slow, dark and twisted.

First off, the book is very slow, especially in the beginning. It fits the theme and sets the book's tone, but it doesn't read nicely. The book has some big themes and criticisms about 1980s America, which is very interesting and insightful. Patricks focus on clothing, brand, music and materialism really sets a mood whilst reading and depth to the characters. BUT IT'S FUCKING BORING. Personally, I skipped most of these, the long lists, I understand why they are there and that Bret intentionally puts them in the book to be boring and bore the reader.

The book is super super gross and not at all for the faint of heart. The book goes into detail about the murders and sex. It is very unsettling and I sometimes strayed away from reading for a few hours after certain chapters.

My favorite part of the book is clearly a few chapters near the end.

Spoiler

In these chapters we start the get clear indications that Patrick and thus the narration can't be trusted. I loved Chase, Manhatten chapter. The sudden switch from first person to third person in this chapter really showed me how psychotic Patrick is. This combined with the absurdity of the chapter really made me realize that Patrick is untrustworthy and made me question a lot of the things that happened in the book. This was supported by the idea that Patrick often says things about murder or rape, that the people around him just ignore. His trustworthiness is confirmed when his lawyer says to has had lunch with one of Patrick's victims.

Overall, I think this book is very interesting and learnful. Even in the modern day a lot of the themes are still present or even worse. The book is however a very boring read or very gross most of the time, due to this I gave it a low rating, simply because I did not enjoy reading it for most of the book, I also feel like the book could have been half the size. The ending was a let down in my opinion and a bit too vague. It would have been better if the ending focussed more on the trustworthiness of Patrick.

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vicplusnone's review against another edition

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challenging dark mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

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

4.0

Content Warnings

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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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.

Content Warnings

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

Content Warnings

diken's review against another edition

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dark tense fast-paced

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

4.0

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