Item: Imperial Bedrooms
Rating: 4.00
Author: knowledgelost

by Bret Easton Ellis

Clay is a successful screenwriter, middle-aged and disaffected; he's in LA to cast his new movie. However, this trip is anything other than professional, and he's soon drifting through a louche and long-familiar circle - a world largely populated by the band of infamous teenagers first introduced in Bret Easton Ellis's first novel Less Than Zero. After a meeting with a gorgeous but talentless actress determined to win a role in his movie, Clay finds himself connected with Kelly Montrose, a producer whose gruesomely violent death is suddenly very much the talk of the town.

Imperial Bedrooms follows Clay as his debauched reverie is interrupted by a violent plot for revenge and his seemingly endless proclivity for betrayal and exploitation looks set to land him somewhere darker and more ominous than ever before.

While this books works on its own, it is really recommended reading Less than Zero to get the most out of Imperial Bedrooms. This book is set 25 years later, Clay has seemed to have moved on but when he finds himself back in Hollywood, he is sucked back into this world. My problem with Less than Zero as probably the fact that I read it 25 years too late; so it felt dated and I was probably too old to get the most out of it. Imperial Bedrooms seemed to be a better book, I’m not sure it’s the fact that Bret Easton Ellis has improved as a writer, or that it didn’t feel dated. Ellis has a very unique style of writing, very descriptive making the characters feel very shallow in a well thought out way. He uses this tactic in American Psycho a lot and it made me feel like I was going psycho; so this book just ended up been an entertaining and interesting book to read.

Imperial Bedrooms

by Bret Easton Ellis

Reviewed by Michael @ Knowledge Lost on Aug 16, 2011

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