Author of the highly controversial American Psychoand the exceptional debut Less Than Zero takes himself and his early fame as the core to this bizarre and powerful examination of an author out of control. Just look at the reviews.
The most exciting novel Bret Easton Ellis has written since American Psycho, and the publishing sensation of the year. Imagine becoming a bestselling novelist while still in college and almost immediately famous and wealthy, and then seeing your insufferable father reduced to a bag of ashes in a safety-deposit box, even as your celebrity drowns in a sea of vilification, booze, and drugs. Imagine having a second chance, as the Bret Easton Ellis of this remarkable novel is given. Now married to the mother of his previously unacknowledged son and living in the suburban hinterlands, Ellis here recounts the unraveling of this new life. He glimpses a disturbing (fictional) character at his fateful Halloween party, and a car identical to his late father's; his stepdaughter's doll violently "malfunctions", and their house undergoes bizarre transformations. Connecting these aberrations to graver events - a series of grotesque murders, and the epidemic disappearance of young boys - Ellis struggles to defend his family even as his wife, their therapists, and the police insist that his apprehensions are rooted instead in substance abuse and egomania.
Bret Easton Ellis is the author of four previous novels and a collection of stories, which have been translated into twenty-seven languages. He divides his time between Los Angeles and New York City.
