Item: Less Than Zero
Rating: 1.00
Author: camerontrost

by Bret Easton Ellis

With an introduction by Otessa Moshfegh, author of Lapvona.

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 become a rare thing: a cult classic and a timeless embodiment of the zeitgeist.

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.

Less Than Zero has done more than simply define a genre: it continues to be a landmark in the lives of successive generations of readers across the globe.

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.

Less Than Zero (Picador Books)

by Bret Easton Ellis

Reviewed by Cameron Trost on Sep 8, 2018

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