Title: American Psycho
Author: Bret Easton Ellis
Genre: Horror
Format: Paperback
Length: 399 pages
Publisher: Picador
Publication Date: 6th March 1991
My Rating: ★★★ (3 stars)
Goodreads | Storygraph
Synopsis:
Patrick Bateman is twenty-six and works on Wall Street; he is handsome, sophisticated, charming and intelligent. He is also a psychopath. American Psycho is a bleak, bitter, black comedy about a world we all recognize but don’t wish to face and it takes us on a head-on collision with America’s greatest dream – and its worst nightmare.
My Review:
**Contains spoilers**
American Psycho is a 400-page book written in the first person. It tells the story of Patrick Bateman, a 20-something-year-old investment banker, who in his free time is a murderer. Ellis is a brilliant writer, and I had been meaning to read American Psycho since I first watched the film a few years ago. I thought the film was amazing, and so I knew that the book must be too.
This novel is a disturbingly dark portrayal of life in the ’80s, the characters in the novel are superficial, who cares about going to the hottest club and wearing the best designer clothes. It shows a detachment between them and society. It deals with a lack of empathy, and Ellis portrays that brilliantly. I shall warn you, if graphic and gruesome murders make you cringe, put this book down and never look at it again.
Bateman is the personification of this lack of empathy, he is by definition a psychopath. On the outside, he is good-looking and charming and very approachable. But inside, he is sadistic and fantasises about the different ways he can kill a person. He shows no feeling whatsoever towards other people. He murders cabbies, prostitutes, homeless people and their dogs, ex-girlfriends, colleagues etc. He has violent sex with these prostitutes, torturing them to death. It is sickening to read, but you want to know more. Towards the end, he suffers a psychotic break I guess you could call it, he struggles to separate his psychotic self with his “normal” self. It gets to the point where you as the reader, question if these events actually happened or if they were just his murderous fantasies.
The murders in the book are very brutal and descriptive. It can make you feel a little sick reading them. I don’t particularly think that Patrick Bateman is misogynistic and kills women because he doesn’t them. He also kills men, animals, if you could kill a machine he probably would. He is a serial killer, a psychopath, he doesn’t discriminate. If he wants to kill you, he will regardless of your gender, social class, ethnicity, etc. I think people, believe that he is misogynistic because of how brutally he murders the women and some of the things he says and he may be sexist and an arsehole but he doesn’t feel anything towards anyone. Back to the murders, there are some that make you need to stop, put the book down, look at cute pictures of kittens and then go back to it. The fact that Ellis is able to create this kind of horror and you can imagine it is awesome.
The main problem that I had with American Psycho is that it is overly descriptive. Every page seems to have paragraphs upon paragraphs of what the people are wearing and eating and doing. It made it very difficult to read and I found myself having to stop after a while because it was a lot to take in and it was repetitive. However, I do understand that this is the character of Bateman. He defines himself and others by what they wear, eat, do, etc. It’s just not something that I particularly enjoy.
Have you guys read American Psycho, tell me what you thought in the comments below.
