The announcement of n  The Shardsn' January publication kicked my ass into finishing Bret Easton Ellis' backlist, and with this, I am officially caught up.

For whatever reason, Lunar Park is the novel of his I've avoided the longest. I'm not sure why, given that my track record with metafiction and autofiction is a mostly-positive one. Maybe because I've heard it referred to as a Hamlet retelling, or because it's a family story and I tend not to be that interested in either retellings or family stories.

Or maybe because it's one of those books where you probably shouldn't read until you've finished all his other books and can pick up on the fact that the dog is named after the main character in Glamorama (and that the Terby-dog scene is, I think, a callback to a very, very horrible scene in Glamorama that to date still makes me nauseous to think about) or that Jay McInerney's presence in this book is a reference to the fact that Jay McInerney's characters have appeared before in Ellis' novels. These references were fun to pick out, especially given how recent most of Ellis' bibliography is in my head.

So I liked the metafiction aspects, and I thought the characters were done very well. Oddly, the best way I think I can describe the way Ellis writes characters is that, spiritually, they're very similiar to the way Waugh writes characters. They have the same knack for capturing people in only a few sentences, natural ears for dialogue, and talent for satrizing society without seeming out-of-touch. Despite the fact that I was a child when this book was published (right around Sarah's age, actually), his satire of early-mid 2000s culture, especially around children, made me weirdly nostalgic. I remember my mom banning Bratz Dolls because she thought they dressed, shall we say, inapproriately, the sight of tube-tops and mini-skirts and shirts with words like "Sassy Girl" and "Baby Doll" in glittery bubble-letters being sold in the kid's section at Target. And so much faux fur and animal-print, 70s hookers would be jealous. Just 2000s kid things, I guess.

What didn't really work for me was when the novel turned, towards the middle-end, into a fairly conventional, Stephen-King-esque horror story. I've liked Stephen King, but him and Ellis rest in two different categories of authors, and it does feel a bit, beneath him maybe (God, I sound so snobby), to write a story like that. Also I'm starting to realize that maybe I just don't love conventional horror stories. All of this to say that I could do without Terby (Also Y, Bret is terribly, terribly, horribly dumb and he should be ashamed of himself for that one).

I did think Ellis' writing shone at times, particularly in the parts about his relationship between his (presumably real) father and (fictional) son. There's real pain in there, I think. I also have to mention that his characterization of himself is, well, unflattering at best. If this is accurate to how he feels about himself, it's interesting how someone who clearly hates himself so much doesn't come across as doing so at all. In the interviews I've watched and read, my impression of him has been an affable guy who likes to talk to people and probably has a screw loose somewhere. But at the same time, he writes very dark fiction almost exclusively about terrible people and has stated that a lot of his books and characters are drawn from his own experiences, and his own personality- including Patrick Bateman. I guess what I'm saying is, from a psychological perspective this book is fascinating.

If I were to rank all my personal enjoyment of BEE works, I'd say: 1. Less Than Zero, 2. The Rules of Attraction, 3. White, 4. American Psycho, 5. Lunar Park, 6. Glamorama, 7. The Informers, 8. Imperial Bedrooms. If I were to rank them in terms of whether you, the unknown everyperson, should read them I would say: 1. American Psycho, 2. Less Than Zero, 3. The Rules of Attraction, 4. Glamorama, 5. Lunar Park, 6. The Informers, 7. White-Imperial Bedrooms (tie).

In diesem Roman jongliert BEE wieder gekonnt mit biografischen Fakten und Fiktion. Und obwohl man seinen Stil hier erkennt, ist dieses Buch anders als seine restlichen Werke. Hier hat man eine Mischung aus BEE und Stephen King. (Wobei King für mich der Meister des Horrors ist.) Ich denke jedoch, dass Horrorelemente in diesem Buch eher einem anderen Zweck dienten: Nicht den Leser zu erschrecken, sondern eigene Vergangenheit mit ihren Dämonen in Bildern zu fangen. Für BEE (realen und seinen Alter-Ego in diesem Buch) war dieser "Dämon" sein Vater.
  
 Der Roman dreht sich auch um Vater-Sohn-Beziehung und um Vergangenheit,  Gegenwart und die Zukunft. Diese Familienthematik steht im Mittelpunkt, denn der Protagonist, der 40-jährige Schriftsteller Bret, versucht sein Familienleben zu retten und die Beziehung zu seinem (ungewollten) Sohn aufzubauen. Das ist für den Autor ungewöhnlich, denn bis jetzt hat er sich etwas anderer Thematik bedient. Nichtsdestotrotz bekommt man hier Sarkasmus, den man schon von anderen Büchern kennt. So nimmt BEE seine Werke und derer Kritiken unter die Lupe, somit auch die Leserschaft und die Auswirkungen des Erolgs auf den Schriftsteller. Satirisch besprochen werden auch Vorstadtsleben und Essenstreffen der reichen Schnörkel, Schule und Erziehung, Paartherapie und Psychotherapie.

Außerdem bekommt man hier gewohnte Paranoia, Drogen- und Alkoholexszesse, Verfolgungswahn, Depersonalisierung; aber auch Spukhaus, Geisterjäger, angreifende Kuscheltiere und einen Serienmörder, der sich für Patrick Batemann hält.

Dieses Buch bezieht sich stark auf "American psycho", deshalb sollte man den skandalösesten Roman zuerst gelesen haben.
Ja, wenn man den Autor mag, soll man "Lunar Park" auf jeden Fall lesen. Vielleicht gefällt es nicht jedem, weil es so anders ist. Wenn man jedoch mehr als Horrorszenen und Gewalt sehen möchte, kommt man auf seine Kosten, denn unter dem ganzen Schnichschnack versteckt sich mehr, als man auf den ersten Blick erkennen würde.

Ich habe den Roman genossen, und nachdem ich die letzte Seite zugeschlagen habe, hätte ich ihn am liebsten von Neuem angefangen zu lesen.

After getting my fill of Ellis' banality, narcissism and misogyny upon reading "American Psycho" (along with "Less Than Zero" and "Rules of Engagement") I vowed never to read another of his books. The author once touted as the Voice of my generation (Gen X) never qualified as such for me. The only reason I decided to read this one was a glowing review on the back of the book by none other than the arbiter of pop culture (gasp!) Stephen King. I at least had to see what made Uncle Stevie gush. The first forty pages of "Lunar Park" didn't exactly bode well; predictably (narcissistically), Ellis talks about his personal life and his experiences in writing his first four novels. Big shocker: Bret lives the life of his protagonists in "Less Than Zero"...yay! (read: BOORRRING). And then he throws a curveball in there...the "autobiography" starts turning into a mea culpa of sorts, admitting how horribly banal and stupid "American Psycho" was, and where he was coming from as a writer when he wrote it, and then recounts 14 days of his (fictional) life when he is haunted by demons and Patrick Bateman-wannabes and...wow...I was at times blown away by his eerie prose (out-"Kinging" Stephen King even) while grasping at love and family. If you are like me and thought you'd never pick up a B.E.E. book again after being disgusted by "American Psycho", trust me, give "Lunar Park" a try. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised.

'Reservoir Dogs' and 'Pulp Fiction' are two of my favorite films. So in 1996, when 'From Dusk Til Dawn' was released, I was in line on opening night. For the first hour, I watched what was undoubtedly the finest work Tarantino had produced to date, and I eagerly anticipated a typically dramatic conclusion... but something went horribly wrong: FDTD degenerated into a B-grade vampire flick. For ten horrific minutes, I tried to convince myself that one of the characters had fallen asleep, been knocked out, ANYTHING which would allow the on-screen action to be dismissed as temporary, someone else's nightmare, a prelude to the rest of the film rather than What The Film Had Become.

'Lunar Park' reminded me of 'From Dusk Til Dawn', except the pleasant prelude didn't last quite as long. The first chapter was brilliant, as Ellis, whose main character is a fictional creation named -- wait for it -- Bret Easton Ellis -- pokes a goodly amount of fun at himself, his career and the state of his life.

Then the book falls horribly flat... before getting worse. This is a creepy cocktail of heavy drinking, excessive drugs, doped up children, and creepy hauntings. Ellis' writing itself is as good as ever, but thematically, he's a mess. For those who loved some or all of 'Less Than Zero', 'The Rules of Attraction', and 'American Psycho', but were disappointed by 'The Informers' and 'Glamorama', this book represents a continuation of trend. He covers a lot of interesting bases, but runs them out of order. As such, this book represents the third strike for Ellis.

One caveat: on your next visit to your local book store or library, hang around and read the first chapter: it's a brilliant satiric synopsis of Ellis' entire career. Sharply written and bitingly acerbic, it's a must-read for any Ellis fan. Just don't read the rest of it, and certainly don't pay for it.

Difficult to assign a blunt 'stars out of five' rating to, this was slow and unlikeable for the majority of the first half, before vacillating between amazing and amazingly silly in the second half. The three-star rating I give this overall is not to reflect my opinion on this as 'average', it's an uncertain compromise for a book I was eventually uncertain about.

This novel is pseudo-autobiographical in tone, dealing with a writer called Bret Easton Ellis who became famous at a young age for writing the challenging and shocking books that the author actually wrote ('Less Than Zero', 'American Psycho', 'The Rules of Attraction' especially). The opening quarter of the book is heavy on the set-up of this character as a drug-addled, alcoholic, unreliable, unlikeable, wreck of a man. I found this part of the book hard to get through - a lack of sympathy with the character/narrator (I remained unsure for a long while about which parts were truth and which were fiction) meant I just found this all showy and vulgar and uninteresting.

The second half of the book was a lot better, as a story is woven out of the protagonist's attempts to restore his relationship with his new wife and her kids (his formerly estranged son and stepdaughter) and in adjusting to the death of his father some time previously. Without mentioning spoilers, the 'main' story is a complex and unusual one, clever and challenging - but (key for me) I felt the author did get away with it, despite the very strange plot.

So overall, I am very glad I read it. I just felt very bogged down with the first part of the book, and am not convinced whether this was necessary to set-up the character as he was, or if it could've been trimmed/lessened without any loss of impact in the latter half of the book.

Brett Ellis’ explosive entry into the celebrity spotlight provides him with a charmed and enviable lifestyle. This begins to sour as his excesses in drugs, drink and sex take hold.
When he tries to get clean, marries his old girlfriend and struggles to establish a relationship with her daughter and his own estranged adolescent son, that’s when the fun starts. He is haunted by the ghost of his tyrannical father, and by the serial killer in American Psycho, his first novel, Patrick Bateman, who has taken on a shadowy human form.
In this roller coaster ride, complete with many horrible events, it may be hard to know who is what and what is really going on, but it doesn’t matter. This novel is impossible to put down.
The last three beautiful, lyrical pages had the desired effect, and justified reading the rest.

Si resulta que los lectores creen que el mundo es estúpido y superficial y mezquino, entonces [Bret Easton] Ellis puede escribir una novela estúpida, superficial y mezquina que se convierta en un comentario mordaz e inexpresivo sobre el mal estado de todas las cosas.
David Foster Wallace sobre American Psycho, entrevista para Review of Contemporary Fiction, 1993.

La temprana muerte de DFW nos arrebató, además de unas cuantas buenas novelas, el mejor beef literario que la literatura norteamericana había tenido desde, yo qué sé... el de Hemingway vs Faulkner, por ejemplo.

El caso es que siendo yo más admirador de Wallace que de Ellis, mi opinión siempre ha pivotado hacia esa idea sensiblera de que la literatura posmoderna debía ser capaz de superar la ironía y el juego inocuo para volver a tratar temas serios y humanos con emoción y convicción.

Resulta que Lunar Park es, de las que yo he leído, la obra de Ellis que más abiertamente trata temas humanos, y lo hace alejándose de la inexpresividad y tacañería narrativa que caracterizaban a Menos que Cero. Resulta que además lo hace siendo —entre otras cosas— una novela de terror, género que en EEUU se considera absolutamente menor. Esta transición le valió en su día críticas y comentarios irónicos. Ellis era un escritor serio y no se comprendía su deriva hacia la literatura "de género". Ya sea por jugueteo posmoderno (destrucción de la distinción entre "alta" y "baja" cultura) o por sincera admiración, el caso es que Ellis citó a Stephen King como una de sus mayores inspiraciones a la hora de escribir Lunar Park. Esto provocó que Stephen King leyera el libro y escribiera un artículo defendiéndolo con una última frase que resume las virtudes de esta obra de forma fantástica: "Este es un libro que progresa desde lo oscuro y lo banal a la luz y la epifanía con sorprendente fuerza y convicción".

Nunca sabremos qué opinaba Wallace de este libro, pero ojalá le reconociera a Ellis el mérito de escribir desde la posmodernidad y el terror una novela que trata sin pudor temas verdaderamente humanos.

4,5⭐

this is definitely the most avant-garde/experimental book ive ever read. Not being able to separate reality from fiction is a part of most horror/gothic novels like this but the fact that this is not only marketed as an autobiography, but also appears to be one for the most part is very unsettling.

I don't know if I would have liked this if I hadn't read this for school. I definitely would have never picked it up. But im super glad I did cause I genuinely thought this was an extremely creative, innovative book.

Darkly comic and genuinely horrific in places, this novel is Ellis's best work since his debut, Less Than Zero. Writing in the first person as a bizarre alcoholic, drug-addicted parody of himself, Ellis takes us on a dark journey into his celebrity lifestyle: married to an A-list Hollywood actress, father of a son he's estranged from, living in upstate New York

There are various plot strands ranging from Ellis's troubled relationship with his dead father, the disappearance of a number of boys from his son's school, to the activities of a serial killer who is apparently copying the killings from Ellis's earlier novel American Psycho.

The book is a fantastic read, easily the most enjoyable Ellis novel I've read. Yes his trademark cynicism is there along with the sense of fear and dislocation, but there is a new maturity to some of his writing, especially at the end, which is both moving and elegiac.

This is not a novel for a first timer to dive into. You'd be better off starting at the beginning with Less Than Zero. But for those who have read his earlier stuff, I'd recommend this.

Första halvan är riktigt bra. Andra halvan när Lunar Park förvandlas till en blandning av Stephen Kings The Dark Half (som är en av Kings böcker som jag gillar minst) och en monsterfilm med Exorcisten-vibbar är den inte lika bra. Jag antar att jag gillar Ellis som mest när det håller sig inom ramen för vad som faktiskt kan hända. Men när Lunar Park är bra så är den riktigt bra. Ellis skriver: ”En författares fysiska tillvaro är i grunden statisk och för att kämpa mot denna begränsning måste vi dagligen konstruera en värld och ett jag som är raka motsatsen.” Och det summerar boken ganska bra. En sak är säker, jag kommer läsa allt som Ellis har skrivit framöver!

I'll admit, Ellis, I wasn't expecting this. I don't know, a bit of me wants to give you 4 stars for this, it got very weird and very Stephen King, but I loved the normal bits. And the beginning about you. I found it interesting reading a novel where Ellis is the narrator, too. An interesting book and one I've wanted to read for a long time.

I'm going to say 4.5, but 5 here on Goodreads as I read it in 2 days despite the length.