Less Than Zero (Picador Books)

by Bret Easton Ellis

In 1985, Bret Easton Ellis shocked, stunned and disturbed with his debut novel, Less Than Zero. Published when he was just twenty-one, this extraordinary and instantly infamous work has done more than simply define a genre, it has become a rare thing: a cult classic and a timeless embodiment of the zeitgeist. It continues to be a landmark in the lives of successive generations of readers across the globe.

Filled with relentless drinking in seamy bars and glamorous nightclubs, wild, drug-fuelled parties, and dispassionate sexual encounters, Less Than Zero – narrated by Clay, an eighteen-year-old student returning home to Los Angeles for Christmas – is a fierce coming-of-age story, justifiably celebrated for its unflinching depiction of hedonistic youth, its brutal portrayal of the inexorable consequences of such moral depravity, and its author’s refusal to condone or chastise such behaviour.

• ISBN10: 0330539329
• ISBN13: 9780330539326
• Publish Date: 1 April 2011 (first published 1 January 1985)
• Publish Status: Out of Print
• Out of Print: 26 January 2021
• Publish Country: GB
• Publisher: Pan Macmillan
• Imprint: Picador
• Format: Paperback (B-Format (198x129 mm))
• Pages: 208
• Language: English

Reviews

[Cameron Trost]

I'll give it more than zero, but just one. I don't usually give books one or two stars simply because I seldom finish books I don't like at all, and I don't review books I don't finish. With "Less Than Zero", I decided to read it all the way to the end, mostly because it's a relatively short novel. This is a novel about vacuous rich kids in California. The characters are of no interest and there isn't really a plot. There's nothing special about the writing style either. Reading this book is like sitting in a shopping centre and listening to the inane blabbering of jaded bourgeois brats. They do some namedropping and compare cars, they talk about how cool they are because they're drug addicts, and they try to work out who's getting their socks of with whom. It's all rather pointless, which may be the point. I'm not sure. If I'd been a vacuous Californian rich kid, I might have appreciated this book. I guess I'll never know.

[Michael @ Knowledge Lost]

25 years ago Less Than Zero was published by a 21 year old Bret Easton Ellis with reviews like "Oh, this is just nihilism. These people don't exist! There's nobody that rich and stupid and narcissistic!" (The New Yorker, June 1985). Reading it now, we all probably know self-destructive people like these. Less than Zero has developed a cult following and feels like you are reading a diary of a lost and unsure rich 18 year-old who come back to the destructive neighbourhood of his past. Though out the book you are unsure if Clay will even grow or learn from all this and it almost feels like he doesn’t.