A review by sunsetcypress
The Shards by Bret Easton Ellis

dark mysterious tense slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

If dear old B.E.E. were in high school today, he would be writing dead dove fanfic (self-fic? you can bet he'd have a lot of self-insert OCs) about his own life traumas like an unhinged teenage girl posting on AO3. I'm positive he would have no idea what I'm talking about, but, even so: incredible that I, a millennial, and he, a gay male gen Xer, can somehow speak the same language -- across generations! This is my first Bret Easton Ellis read and, brothers, it sure did not disappoint.

I can understand how his style wouldn't be for everyone and I hesitate to recommend it because of that, but it certainly hit the jackpot with me. In more concrete terms, his prose integrates elements that some readers might find abrasive or annoying - but I simply think them funny or even endearing. He is constantly repeating certain ideas or themes  (WHAT HAPPENED TO ME. TO US. IN THE AUTUMN OF 1981. DURING OUR SENIOR YEAR AT BUCKLEY.) (???!!) (THE HOUSE ON MULHOLLAND DRIVE - this is just his own house, but it's never "home" or "my house", it's always THE HOUSE ON MULHOLLAND DRIVE) (~~~PARADISAICAL~~~) (((EMPIRE)))) (THE TANGIBLE PARTICIPANT) etc. He is constantly describing in great detail what everyone is wearing all the time, is regularly referencing songs or movies or the pop culture of the time, going so far as integrating the lyrics themselves to describe a certain mood or feeling (is that not the most teenage girl-ish thing you can think of?) (affectionate). He is eternally horny and jacking off, yearns and daydreams all day, writes in run-in sentences that go on forever because he gets distracted or is trying to shove as many images and concepts in the same breath. For instance, there is an entire scene in which he meticulously describes going to see "The Shining" when it came out, his relationship with the book, the whole anticipation and wait for the movie, whom he invited, the car he drove there, how the theater looked like, how long the line was, where he sat etc. For that reason, the book's pacing is rather slow, which other readers might find frustrating, but for me this choice was excellent and really helped built up the atmosphere of creeping fear and paranoia until its convulsive resolution. I read a comment on one of the subreddits that resonated with me - saying how B.E.E is one of the few people that can accurately capture the teenage voice without sliding into YA territory and it's indeed all there, in the casual selfishness and self-absorption, the hedonism, the breakdown in communication - the drama of it all.
 
As a slice of life, this novel is, again, fantastic. The picaresque descriptions of Los Angeles during that specific interval of 1980-1981 were so compelling, even for someone like me, who has no interest in that city whatsoever. But BEE's voice and his genuine attachment to those places radiate off the page and I soon found myself on Google Maps, looking up all the many geographical locations he regularly mentioned. The depiction of early 1980s LA high society really exhibits the concept of "empire" that appears throughout the text - the unbridled extravagance, self-indulgence, the excessive drug consumption, regular driving under the influence of all kinds of substances (alcohol abuse being the mildest thing), the frequent unprotected sex, the unlimited money these teenagers had access to, the lack of parental supervision to the point of quasi-abandonment etc. This period was before the Reagan administration's escalation on the war on drugs and it was only in the summer of 1981 when HIV/AIDS was beginning to get press attention -- and it wasn't even known by that name yet, but by "pneumonia" and later "GRID". A very stark contrast to how society changed just a few years later. When Bret is talking about the "end of a dream", it doesn't just convey the end of adolescence and the entering into the world of adults. The world of "The Shards" really feels like sitting on a precipice. And there is a wistful, melancholy, somber quality to the prose, despite its sparsity and lack of embellishment, that deplores the loss of innocence - not in the sense of moral purity, but of the simplicity bestowed by being untroubled and light-hearted and free. 

Of course, this book being autofiction will always grip readers by making them ponder what exactly is lifted straight from real life and what is pure hyperbole. The serial killer plotline is definitely fiction, but there are parts of the book that feel very real and a lot to unpack - like the author is trying to process his own personal traumas of the past. Are the Trawler and Robert Mallory artistic exaggerations of some real past drama that led to the dissolution of the author's social circle? The text certainly invites the reader to consider all manner of speculation, both in the Watsonian and the Doylist sense.
Did Bret attack Susan and Thom? Did he have anything to do with Matt's murder or the Trawler? What exactly was Robert's involvement?
etc. In my interpretation,
it was a conflation of circumstances: the Trawler & his cult, Robert and Bret all committed separate crimes. The Trawler was definitely involved with the murdered girls and home invasions, while Robert killed his mother, raped his stepsister and pushed Terry off the second floor landing. One thing is for certain in regards to our narrator Bret, though: he most definitely convinced himself that Robert was to blame and he deliberately went to his flat with the purpose of killing him. It also seems possible that he was indeed Susan's and Thom's attacker, although the book is purposefully ambiguous to the point that answering questions and developing theories only ends up raising more questions. For example, it is mentioned that Robert stabbed Bret in the forearm, which might have made Susan believe it was the wound she inflicted on her attacker.
 

One last point of criticism I've encountered is the alleged flatness of the female characters. I, for one, did not feel that at all: it was more like our unreliable narrator is simply a gay, closeted teenager, who is trying to navigate his own issues surrounding social acceptance in a largely homophobic environment and, as a result, cannot genuinely and completely access the inner worlds of his female friends. But Debbie and Susan are precisely suggested to have these interior landscapes that go beyond the images they are projecting. Debbie has an entire life independent of her boyfriend, with her own interests, different social circles and family issues, while Susan's offhand remarks and perceptiveness suggest that she is more cerebral than the aesthetic narrator Bret associates with her - "numbness as a feeling". Whenever there is a crisis, she seems to be the first one to act: when Robert is having his breakdown in the pool, when Terry screams she is the first one to exit the room,
she maintains sufficient composure when attacked to run out of the house and cry for help
etc.

In any case, beyond the whodunnit, the novel does pose an interesting question about The Writer's need (or anybody's, really) to construct logical narratives out of the random occurrences in their lives, sometimes to the point of self-delusion and also as a counter-weight to what our protagonist considers superficial, soulless "scripts" that people follow out of a need for social conformity or empty politeness (i.e. replacing one fake narrative imposed from the outside with a different fake narrative originated from the self, that somehow feels "truer" because it is an own creation).

Last but not least. Gay rights!!!

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