Imperial Bedrooms by Bret Easton Ellis
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
Do you remember when Bret Easton Ellis was a ground-breaking new author who wrote novels that shook you to the core, that angered you and made you feel like you were reading something new and unique? I know that’s how I felt when I read American Psycho – it was a horrible look into a killer mind, one that stayed with me for a long time after I finished reading the book.
I’ve read two books by Ellis recently, Imperial Bedrooms and Lunar Park. They both have the same problem in that there’s nothing really new in them. Lunar Park at least has the meta enjoyment of Ellis being haunted by his own creations, but Imperial Bedrooms is merely a ‘where are they now’ of the Less Than Zero cast. And you know what, I don’t care. It’s boring, all of it.
The whole book can be summed up as blah blah people suck blah blah Hollywood is heartless blah blah sex blah blah violence blah blah paranoia blah blah betrayals and so on. It’s a huge pile of nothing, that was not challenging or even remotely interesting.
There was one thing gained from reading Imperial Bedrooms however: I now know better than to bother with another novel by Bret Easton Ellis. If there was any doubt before they are now blown completely away – Ellis is irrelevant. He has nothing new to say, and he’s not even saying the old stuff in a new way that makes it feel remotely fresh.