A review by natbaldino
Lunar Park by Bret Easton Ellis
5.0
Fans of Bret Easton Ellis' nihilistic, morally degenerate works Less Than Zero and American Psycho will find in Lunar Park an older Ellis who has begun to deal with finding something to grasp on to in the emptiness of the not only the world around him, but the world he has created within his interweaving works.
This work is an especially self-aware work, perhaps the best Ellis has ever done. Known for brilliant first-lines, Ellis is the main character of his own work, the book beginning with him being told "you do a really good impression of yourself," and as the novel continues with the same meta, uncanny dissonance, it becomes impossible to distinguish Ellis the character from Ellis the author as his world collapses around him and he is forced to confront his past (“But this was what happened when you didn't want to visit and confront the past: the past starts visiting and confronting you”) and the ghost of his father, an issue that had plagued all of Ellis' previous work (Ellis himself has said that the sociopathic Wall Street murderer Patrick Bateman of American Psycho was based off of his father). As supernatural forces like a Terby doll destroy his house and family, character Ellis works through realizing the consequences of being a writer, particularly of creating a world of nihilism and emptiness in which he himself forgets is fiction.
The story is hilarious, emotional, socially relevant, and even more surprising of Ellis' work, resolved and poignant. This is an Ellis who has realized there is meaning in the typically nihilistic world he sees around him, and this is perhaps Ellis at his best since Less Than Zero. If anything, this is a book I'd recommend for any Ellis fans who want to see a deeper, more self-critical side of him.
This work is an especially self-aware work, perhaps the best Ellis has ever done. Known for brilliant first-lines, Ellis is the main character of his own work, the book beginning with him being told "you do a really good impression of yourself," and as the novel continues with the same meta, uncanny dissonance, it becomes impossible to distinguish Ellis the character from Ellis the author as his world collapses around him and he is forced to confront his past (“But this was what happened when you didn't want to visit and confront the past: the past starts visiting and confronting you”) and the ghost of his father, an issue that had plagued all of Ellis' previous work (Ellis himself has said that the sociopathic Wall Street murderer Patrick Bateman of American Psycho was based off of his father). As supernatural forces like a Terby doll destroy his house and family, character Ellis works through realizing the consequences of being a writer, particularly of creating a world of nihilism and emptiness in which he himself forgets is fiction.
The story is hilarious, emotional, socially relevant, and even more surprising of Ellis' work, resolved and poignant. This is an Ellis who has realized there is meaning in the typically nihilistic world he sees around him, and this is perhaps Ellis at his best since Less Than Zero. If anything, this is a book I'd recommend for any Ellis fans who want to see a deeper, more self-critical side of him.