Finished my re-read of this. I'm still going to call this my favorite BEE book, with Glamorama as a close second.

4,5⭐

No artist is ever morbid. The artist can express everything

The author as central character in a book of fiction is becoming more the reality these days, and Lunar Park by Ellis takes this transgressive sub genre to another level. The reality part starts by Ellis recounting his evolution as a writer: his early success at 21 while still in college with his debut novel Less than Zero, the celebrity life in the Brat Pack of the literary elite in New York fuelled by powerful drugs and lots of sex with males and females alike, the controversial publication of his third novel, American Psycho, that took him to new heights of fame and controversy but also to the lower depths of the drug culture and to the blunting of his creative genius. Reality then gives way to a fictitious memoir in which Ellis is in a battle to save his family from a serial killer who is out to get him and his family. Lunar Park is thus focused the rebirth of the literary brainiac, Ellis, and is a blend of fact and fiction, dwelling on the unabashed revelations of self destruction wrought by one to whom much was given.

In this novel, Ellis is married to a celebrity movie star wife (the fiction), with two kids (one his own and the other his wife’s from another man). He is trying desperately to be the good dad that his own father was not. And yet his bid to stay clean of drugs unravels and strange happenings start occurring around his family: a man who resembles Patrick Bateman of American Psycho starts re-appearing, the car his dead father drove keeps popping up in the most unexpected places, teenagers from the area are disappearing, and a serial killer is killing people off in a copy-cat style to what was written in the first draft of American Psycho, a version known only to Ellis. It’s like the publisher said, “Bring it on, man – let’s have a real cross-genre novel here – let’s have a dysfunctional family story with a shot of horror, a touch of the supernatural, a boat load of drugs, a hint of murder, and let’s give the reader an experience akin to bopping in and out of a hallucinatory drug trip.”

Plot notwithstanding, and the plot harkens to a Stephen King novel, the larger commentary of the book is on the neuroses of the rich and famous, where kids are in therapy by the age of six, where they are fed uppers and downers ad nauseam, and the mark of their generation is a perennial tremor in the hands. The adults are no better, guzzling drugs by the bucket load. Ellis cranks up the pace from a rather languorous start with a lot of back story (on himself) to a thriller laced with short sentences, dreams punctuated with reality, horror mixed with humour, until we are confronted with the real bad guys, all of whom live in Ellis’ head and in his past.

I found the weaving of fact and fiction into the novel interesting and was left with the question of how much of oneself does a novelist have to inject into his work before he himself becomes a parody? The other question I had was how much drugs and alcohol did Ellis actually imbibe in order to be still coherent enough to write this well-plotted story? Or did he, being a celebrity writer, have an army of script doctors and nurses around to help him? Interesting musings to be left behind after reading this book...

Buying this book immediately upon seeing it was worth it for the first chapter alone, in which Ellis writes an abbreviated hysterical parodic autobiography, half-true, half obvious fiction, half who knows? He details the inspiration and reception each of his books had, so obviously the reader will be rewarded for having been familiar with those. The story goes on to paint him as taking a lot of anxiety medication to ease his discomfort and insecurity as a husband/father, and ultimately takes a turn toward horror with him believing the house to be haunted and his daughter's Tomogacci to be alive and murderous. His wife in the novel is an actress he made up and had a website created for, and he also includes fellow writer Jay McInerney as his friend who shows up at a party. Um... I just wish BEE would write more often. What a prick.

This is amazing and weird

Ein für BEE Verhältnisse ziemlich bekömmliches Stück Literatur. Ungemein spannend, sehr originell und krass gut geschrieben; und endlich mal ein BEE unter 700 Seiten, paar Nebenwerke ausgenommen. Ich glaube das ist mein BEE Favorit bislang (2025).

Ellis is the king of unreliable narrators.

There's a dog in a BEE story. Spoilers ahead.

So, I almost stopped because there's a dog and I know from the beginning that things will not end well for this dog. My feelings of dread increased every time the dog survived an encounter with the "thing". By the time I neared the end I just couldn't deal. I skipped over the dog's part even though it was during the climax of the book. I had to. My sympathy for the main character was already stretched thin from the way he treated Victor the dog.

But the rest of the book was awesome. Bret Easton Ellis does horror. And a fictional memoir. And a psychological thriller. And satire.

With a Furby.

Find all of my reviews at: http://52bookminimum.blogspot.com/

n   “You dream a book, and sometimes the dream comes true. When you give up life for fiction you become a character.”n

What is Lunar Park???? Brett Easton Ellis claims it to be his homage to Stephen King (and you will see later in this review that it did indeed bring to mind one particular King character) – but when I really need to break it down to basics I’m going with Lunar Park is what would happen if American Psycho and Fight Club and The Amityville Horror and Cujo all had a baby.

This book is Ellis’ “memoir,” if you will. The story begins with a review of his quick rise to the A-List with the release of Less Than Zero and follows with the recognition of the almost immediate downward spiral that came with that success and which Ellis found himself looping through for years.

Ellis takes ownership that American Psycho was a sort of “beginning of the end” with respect to his mental state. For the haters of American Psycho, he issues an apology of sorts:

n  “I was not about to put myself through that experience again – of revisiting Patrick Bateman . . . Exploring that kind of violence had been “interesting” and “exciting” and it was all “metaphorical” anyway – at least to me at that moment in my life, when I was young and pissed off and had not yet grasped my own mortality, a time when physical pain and real suffering held no meaning for me.”n

For the lovers of American Psycho (a/k/a MEEEEEEEEEE!) Ellis confirms the argument we’ve been making about the book for eons:

n  “The murders and torture were in fact fantasies fueled by [Patrick Bateman's] rage and fury about how life in America was structured and how this had – no matter the size of his wealth – trapped him. The fantasies were an escape. This was the book’s thesis. It was about society and manners and mores, and not about cutting up women. How could anyone who read the book not see this?”n

Ha! Take that suckers!

Once Ellis is done summarizing his past, he takes us to the near present. Now attempting life as a (not so) straightlaced married man and father of two, Ellis lives in the ‘burbs of the upper East coast and is starting a new novel (which, from its description, sounds more like Chuck Palahniuk’s latest). Ellis knew it would be a struggle to go from ultimate sinner to wanna-be saint, but he had no idea what ghosts would come back to haunt him – morphing Lunar Park from a “Where Are They Now????" to a tale of true horror.

n  “I was living in a movie, in a novel, an idiot’s dream that someone else was writing, and I was becoming amazed – dazzled – by my dissolution.”n

If you want a book that comes out of the gate revving its engines and raring to go, Lunar Park probably isn’t what you’re after. However, if you want a slow burn that is the reading equivalent of a full course meal, I highly recommend this one. Ellis proves that when you get rid of all the hype and hoopla surrounding his books, he is above all else a master wordsmith. I was glued to this one to the last page and delighted in trying to figure out “who was the bad guy?” *dun dun dunnnnnnn*

Was it a ghost?

n  n

Patrick Bateman??

n  n

The author himself???

n  n

Or could it be the most horrific creature of all . . . the FURBY?!?!?!?!?!

n  n

You’ll have to read it for yourself to find out.

My endless thanks go to Snotchocheez for the recommendation. You did good!

His most self-indulgent book to date. The beginning chapters are perfect because it's somewhat autobiographical until it's not. The novel went from reality to fiction and that's where it felt flat.

this diva

Lunar Park llegó muy bien recomendado a mis manos, pero la precedente media lectura de Psicópata Americano no me dejaba aproximarme a la última novela de Bret Easton Ellis sin resquemores y recelos. Pero yo soy insistente y me gustan los retos.

Es bueno leer Lunar Park sin saber nada del libro ni del autor. Pero Bret es ya autor de culto así que supongo que muy pocas personas llegarán a leerlo vírgenes. Digamos que yo con Bret tuve unos escarceos que no pasaron de los previos con Psicópata, así que con Lunar estaba casi pura. Por lo tanto, para quien no ha leído nada de Bret le recomiendo que lea de inmediato Lunar Park sin leer una sola línea de las que vienen a continuación y se hagoa solito su propia opinión.

El principal gancho y atractivo de Lunar es su archicitadas influencias autobiográficas.

Lo confieso: llegó una parte del libro en que me puse a investigar sobre Bret para ver qué era cierto y qué no, y quiénes eran quiénes. Para mi fue divertidísimo descubrí algunas cosas morbosas de la vida de Bret que a la final no le pusieron ni le quietaron nada al libro en sí mismo. No pierdo de vista que es un comportamiento obsesivo y necio; porque ¡vamos es una novela! ¿qué importa dónde empieza la realidad y dónde termina la ficción? Pero este es el primer aspecto empírico de Lunar Park.

Por allí leí que este aspecto autobiografico-ficción es llamado “metalectura” y me parece que le va el término.

Pero, creo yo, que el mayor atributo de esta novela es esa propiedad sagrada que tienen algunos libros de no dejarse soltar.

Lunar Park se le pega a uno en las manos. Yo me encerraba en el baño para que me dejaran leerla en paz, ojo que la leía también fuera del baño: caminando, en el metro, al medio día en el almuerzo, antes de dormir porque Lunar tiene un ritmo magnifico que va de interesante, entretenido, curioso a vertiginoso.

Por último Lunar Park da miedo, pero del sabroso.

Tengo que enfatizar que esta es una experiencia absolutamente subjetiva y depende claro de que le libro de verdad me gustó y me dejé enganchar en el ambiente que construye el autor, seguro que hay miles de personas que ni sentirán coquito; pero yo sí me crispé en su debido momento, y ¡eso no tiene precio! Para todo lo demás existe Mastercard.

En total tenemos una novela – que evidentemente está escrita a la perfección – que se publica en un momento estratégico de la vida del autor después de ocho años de su último libro, que te engancha prometiéndote escandalosas revelaciones de su vida, que luego te confunde al empezar a enredarse con personajes de otros libros y personajes de la vida real cuyo ritmo se centra en las patologías más temidas de las relaciones padre-hijo y creador-creatura, que te pone de punta con unos acontecimientos que desbocan en absurdos, sobrenaturales y aterrorizantes; y termina cerrando como Diox manda – es que estas obras tan ambiciosas terminan poniendo al torta al final – con un capitulo emotivo que no es lo que parece ni está dirigido a quien se dirige.

Cito al Blog Sueños a Pila “Y Lunar Park guarda lo mejor para el final: las últimas 14 páginas conforman uno de los mejores finales alguna vez escritos. Y el libro termina pero no, perdón, esos libros con finales así no terminan nunca. Se convierten en epifanía pura.”

Es hacia el final donde se puede percibir el tono realmente “personal” del libro que más allá de una realidad tangible se dirige hacia una realidad profundamente humana y emotiva que el autor sabe aprovechar en pro de alguna “redención” pendiente que es solicitada.

Demonios, acabo de encontrar una reseña mejor que la mía en Página12y en LeerGratishay una reseña donde no le echan tantas flores; siempre es bueno leer a los detractores.