Reviews with content warning for Cannibalism - American Psycho

I don’t know whether to rate this a 5 or a 1. I really enjoyed the writing, particularly toward the beginning and very end of the book. Ellis does a great job of slowly introducing Pat’s descent into madness and stepping up the stakes chapter by chapter. However… I will also never read this again. Nor will I ever recommend it to someone else.

The satire is SEARING. It is so good, a disturbing point being made with terrifying clarity. However I still found it difficult to stomach the increasingly atrocious violence. And at a certain point - even the recognizing a point being drawn about it being senseless, repetitive, overwhelming — it just became too gratuitous. I had to skim large sections of it.

I knew going in that I was signing up for body horror but i didn’t expect it to be so… creative..

I’m going to go pick up a comfort read now.

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ro_lux's review against another edition

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dark tense medium-paced

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

4.5

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booklord666's review against another edition

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dark funny lighthearted

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

4.0

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agalla_'s review against another edition

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dark tense fast-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

5.0

The goriest book I’ve ever read, hard to put down, the prose is chaotic and deeply unsettling and unexpectedly funny- very very good novel

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translesbo's review against another edition

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challenging dark mysterious tense slow-paced

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

4.25

Well. I finished American Psycho. It became more and more horrifying as I read on. Specifically somewhere around 280 pages in, it seemed something broke in Bateman. He's a fascinating character and the book...has a lot to say about many things. Violence, neoliberalism, capitalism...just like Bateman, I was in a daze as I read through that last 100 pages, knowing I was almost to the end, but not really sure of what I was expecting to find there.

I think im satisfied with what the ending implied, though, at least for Bateman. He is still free, that isn't a spoiler as its mentioned on the back of the book, but he's so transformed and unhappy, deluded and alienated from his own life that its fair to expect that he'll self destruct- probably sooner rather than later.

And of course, you don't even really know if most of what happened in the book even was real. He did certainly kill a lot of people, but...it's like when it comes to his immediate circumstances, he's trapped. No one sees him, nothing he does happens, and the ending comes back around to the beginning like a snake eating its own tail. Surely time has progressed but the only effect it has on his world is the further deterioration of his mind.

I think also, another thing this book had to say is just how despised the upper and middle classes of america really are. Everyone he or one of his colleagues has any connection to, does not see them as human beings, and this is their own faults. They're like real demons come from hell to play in the faces of humanity- but we must interact with and make deals with them to survive, even if these interactions carry with them a significant risk of death and devastation.

Truly, Bateman and his kind are the worst of us.

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