| Title | : | Lunar Park |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0375727272 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780375727276 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 404 |
| Publication | : | First published August 16, 2005 |
| Awards | : | World Fantasy Award Best Novel (2006) |
Reality, memoir, and fantasy combine to create not only a fascinating version of this most controversial writer but also a deeply moving novel about love and loss, parents and children, and ultimately forgiveness.
Lunar Park Reviews
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I read several reviews of this book before reading, most of which denounced it as being awful and I have to say, I'm surprised.
I tore through it in 3 days. I saw it as a near brilliant bit of mind f*ckery, so many psychological themes and commentary on modern life for me to gleefully go searching on Google to tear up and figure out. All that and horror, too! (I read somewhere that he was influenced by Steven King, in writing this one. Indeed. I have to say, I like the Ellis version of King even better.)
I don't necessarily agree with those that say Ellis clearly hates himself. He might. Or he might also just have had an idea for a book like this and is a brilliant writer with a ... very "interesting", shall we say, mind.
But I go back to the commentary on modern life. Having recently become a member of the suburban parent crowd, I had a great time reading his descriptions of the very sort of parents & parenting style I'm avoiding. There was one quote, in particular, that I loved: "What happened to just wanting your kids to be content and cool?... These parents were scientists and were no longer raising their kids instinctually - everyone had read a book or watched a video or skimmed the Net to figure out what to do."
I also found it incredibly clever to write a novel based on, or rather heavily referencing, your previous novels, in this way. I'm one of those people who, after watching movies (sometimes before), likes to tear the plot apart and understanding the meaning, where it all came from. In some ways, this felt like a very trippy readers guide to American Psycho. It's Cliff Notes on steroids. American Psycho just became that much more interesting to me and I plan on going back to not only read it again but watch the movie again, as well, given this new insight.
Yes, I'm a little confused and unsure of some parts - I've come to expect that from Ellis. But I like a book (or movie) that has me researching and discussing with other readers, trying to figure it all out. To me, the books that deserve bad reviews are those that I've forgotten the moment I close the cover and put it down.
I can see how this is definitely not a book for everyone. For me, there were many of my favorite elements. There were several passages that had me thinking, "I really wish they'd make a movie out of this," just for the visuals. (I'm a big fan of psychological horror with lots of blood and gore. Dare I say this almost falls in line with the J-Horror genre?) -
This novel could have been really something but it turned into a real dog’s breakfast. Crap all over the place. What a mess.
Reading Lunar Park was like watching one of those jovial interviews with major serial killers you can find on youtube. The reporter is alarmed/mortified/astonished to find himself quite liking this monster who slaughtered 17 human beings. You get this kind of dialogue -
- Hey Jeff, can you explain a little what would be going through your mind when you were drilling holes in those guys’ heads to make them into sex zombies?
- Oh, you know, pretty much the same that would be going through your mind when you’re trying to finish a tricky bit of DIY, John.
- Aw, that so, Jeff?
- Yeah, pretty much, John!
(they laugh ruefully.)
For the first 40 pages, Lunar Park sideswipes you with what appears to be a bizarrely truthful autobiographical account of BEE’s own life and career. Then it veers off into pure fiction when this version of Bret marries a famous movie star and winds up playing father to her two children. This first part is lots of fun. BEE portrays himself as a charming disarming kinda coke-guzzling drug-snorting alcoholic stumbling foggily through his revoltingly affluent day with attendant wife, kids, servants and girlfriend.
I was intrigued. I was thinking : Bret, where are you going with all this? It kept me turning the pages, and they were very easy to read, and even quite funny.
At this point the book appeared to be three things at the same time
- A psychodrama about fathers and sons, laced with sadness
- A light amusing satire of very rich parents, with every damn kid in the neighbourhood medicated up to the maximum legally permitted
- An increasingly vicious hateful self-portrait, circling brilliantly and fascinatingly around the psychological black hole that is American Psycho
But then it shimmies into a fourth thing which takes the rest of the story over and this is where the book drives over the cliff and smashes to bits on the rocks below, as it becomes a lame Stephen King story, or, since I’ve never read one of SK’s supernatural books, I should say, what I imagine rather contemptuously to be something SK might come up with : fiction written by the main character “Bret Easton Ellis” starts to come to life! Yes – it seems that Patrick Bateman himself has been freed from American Psycho and is stalking the pages of Lunar Park, and up to his old tricks too.
Yawn.
Yawny-yawn yawn yawnioh ho hmmmm.
Oh , also, we get the device of a child’s toy which (also) comes to life and turns homicidal. This takes up the last half of this novel.
How many times have these two devices been used before in horror fiction?
6,214. No, wait - 6,793. I was using slightly out of date figures.
Anyway, A LOT.
Bret, was that the best you could come up with?
By page 390 Bret is channeling Ghostbusters! And a little later, An American Werewolf in London!
HOW THIS NOVEL COULD HAVE BEEN GREAT
Throughout this long tale, the fictional BEE is haunted by the even more fictional Patrick Bateman. Just as, I guess, the real BEE is haunted by his own misogynistic horror of a novel. Here he is on page 181, not wanting to think about American Psycho :
I closed my eyes again. I did not want to go back to that book. It had been about my father (his rage, his obsession with status, his loneliness), whom I had transformed into a fictional serial killer… I had moved past the casual carnage that was so prevalent in the books I’d conceived in my twenties, past the severed heads and the soup made of blood and the woman [er, let’s skip that sentence]… Exploring that kind of violence had been “interesting” and “exciting” and it was all “metaphorical” anyway – at least to me at that moment of my life, when I was young and pissed off… I was “transgressive” and the book was really about “style”
When (in Lunar Park) it seems that some crazy guy is pretending to be Patrick Bateman and copying each murder from American Psycho, BEE comments:
This was the moment that detractors of the book had warned me about : if anything happens to anyone as a result of the publication of this novel, Bret Easton Ellis was to blame… and that’s why the National Organisation of Women had boycotted the book… I thought the idea was laughable – that there was no one as insane or vicious as this fictional character out there in the real world. Besides, Patrick Bateman was a notoriously unreliable narrator, and if you actually read the book you could come away doubting that these crimes ever occurred. There were large hints that they existed only in Bateman’s mind. The murders and torture were in fact fantasies fueled by his rage and fury about how life in America was structured and how this had trapped him. The fantasies were an escape. This was the book’s thesis. It was about manners and mores, not about cutting up women. How could anyone who read the book not see this?
I appreciated that this all sounds like a desperate attempt by BEE to convince himself that he had not written a horrible misogynistic novel. (And is the explanation adopted by AP's many fans). Now – if Lunar Park had continued to probe this clearly-still-open wound within BEE, and maybe ask why, in describing BEE’s father’s rage, or Patrick Bateman’s fury at how life in America was structured, it had to be demonstrated through the torture and dismemberment of women, and not by some other means (say, planting bombs in subways – there are many ways to express a general rage), then we would have got something fascinating. But it was not to BEE. Instead, a lot of supernatural malarkey which – once again – is all about BEE’s relationship with his father and (fictional) son. In other words, it’s all about him. What a narcissist.
TWO AND A HALF STARS
I liked the satire, I liked the sudden-left-turn weirdness (until it became ridiculous), it wasn’t boring at all. It was stupid (for all its preening intelligence) but it wasn’t dull.
YELLOW LEGAL PADS
a yellow legal pad that she would mark up and casually refer back to (p288)
What is it with Americans and their yellow legal pads? If I had £1 (=$1.23) for each time somebody uses a yellow legal pad in an American novel I could afford that world cruise. Don’t they ever come in any other colour? No blue legal pads? Always yellow? Always legal?
-
"How lonely people make life. But also I realized what I hadn't learned from him: that a family - if you allow it - gives you joy, which in turn gives you hope."
I’m a pretty big BEE fan, and I love his cool, detached writing style, and how all his books are slightly deranged. I love how the protagonists are always a bit off – a big part of you detests them, a little bit of you feels sorry for them, and a tiny piece of you is jealous of the seemingly glamorous lives they live (the sex, drugs, parties, dining at Spago with supermodels stuff…not the ax murder Patrick Bateman stuff).
Lunar Park is a bit different, because while I felt the expected pity and disgust toward the main character in the beginning of the novel, toward the end he made a turn for the better and I found myself somewhat invested in him. The story follows an accomplished and somewhat unhinged author (named, err, Bret Easton Ellis), as he tries to settle into a “normal life” of marriage and fatherhood. The book is semi-autographical, in that the background of the main character is based on the author’s real life (several references to and quotes from BEE’s past novels are cited); but the story itself is mostly fictional.
The satire and social commentary BEE is known for is definitely not missing from the book. Whereas his past books commented on the casual drug abuse in the 80s and 90s by social upscale slackers, I found it interesting that the most shocking form of drug use (abuse?) in Lunar Park is by children, by prescription. But this is just a side note to the main story of Lunar Park, which is basically a ghost story. And it’s really quite scary – complete with ghosts, stalkers, poltergeists, a demonic Furby-like doll coming to life, and an appearance of Patrick Bateman.
Overall, there were parts that didn’t seem to fit together quite right, and the ending left me slightly confused about certain things, but the story kept me riveted. It was almost refreshing to read BEE’s writing after having a break from him for so long (I hadn’t read one of his books since college), and I think he has a truly original voice. -
Hear ye, hear ye: I am SUCH a liar, you guys! I've always admitted to having read the whole B.E.E. collection, but have lied. This one makes it... done. Complete! I am very VERY much done with Ellis at this point in my life. & it couldn't have come sooner.
The one striking thing about this one is its description of the fall of the once-mythical, once-impressive B.E.E.: once famous and rich & relevant, he grabs at past glories in a very saddening fashion, grabbing at straws really, trying to relive/transplant various episodes of his once victorious and literary career. Esp. borrows heavily from American Psycho.
This is very lame. I've been curious of where to place this book on the bookshelf... Top Shelf? (Rules of Attraction (#1), American Psycho (#2), Glamorama (#3))... Mid-Level? (Less Than Zero [#4])...
OR(!!!) the trash, alongside other dried turds such as The Informers (#5) & the most horrible of all, Imperial Bedrooms.
That's right. You may probably guess. -
That's all six of his novels now read. He hasn't written a novel for quite a few years now, and I do hope, after reading Lunar Park, we get more. This might not have had the same impact that Glamorama and Less than Zero had on me, but I think it's a better novel than American Psycho. I'd put it as my third favourite. There were parts that seriously creeped me out. Like, for example, when a demonic Terby doll crawled inside the anus of a pet dog and took it over - couldn't help but think of Chucky from Child's Play. It's written as a sort of postmodern narcissistic ghost story with Bret Easton Ellis the narrator in his own book. There are nods towards the suburban horrors of Wes Craven and John Carpenter, and the writer Stephen King. But you know you're in a Bret Easton Ellis novel all right due to the Xanax, Klonopin, alcohol, Prada sweatshirts and tan loafers, to name but a few things. It is also, like American Psycho, a hall of mirrors. Even detective Donald Kimball makes an appearance. Or does he? Underneath though, the novel reverberates strongly with Bret's past of the abused child of a hateful father, which he failed to confront, and thus comes back to haunt him - literally.
There is a killer re-enacting the murders of Patrick Bateman, who apparently was based on Robery Ellis, who died in 1992. Here, there are two phantoms plaguing BEE - one from beyond the grave, and the other from the pages of American Psycho. It wouldn't be the same without the satire, and that comes in the form of a sort of family sitcom. Along with Bret, the writer, who is; or at least was, in the process of writing his next novel called Teenage Pussy, and who is very much falling off the wagon, there is the fragile marriage to his wife, Jayne, her six-year-old daughter, Sarah, fathered by another man, and the 11-year-old resentful son, Robby. He isn't doing to well when it comes to the business of fatherhood, due to his constant drug abuse and the fact he is trying to woo a student at the college where he teaches because she happens to be writing her thesis on his work.
And then; if there wasn't enough to chew on already, a lot of spooky supernatural shit starts to kick in . . . -
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“You dream a book, and sometimes the dream comes true. When you give up life for fiction you become a character.”
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:
“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.”
For the lovers of American Psycho (a/k/a MEEEEEEEEEE!) Ellis confirms the argument we’ve been making about the book for eons:
“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?”
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.
“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.”
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?
Patrick Bateman??
The author himself???
Or could it be the most horrific creature of all . . . the FURBY?!?!?!?!?!
You’ll have to read it for yourself to find out.
My endless thanks go to
Snotchocheez for the recommendation. You did good! -
I saw a guy on the tube in London reading this and noticed he was near the end. I wanted to stand up and say, "Hey, it's creeping you out, isn't it. Isn't it?! ISN'T IT!!!?" But you just can't live your life that way. It's inappropriate.
Bret Easton Ellis, on the other hand, can do whatever the hell he wants. And he does. Putting yourself in a novel is either the ballsiest thing you can do, or the assy-est. In this case, both. But let's put aside the fact that Ellis is writing a tale about semi-pseudo Ellis. It's also a damn disturbing ride, and the fact that he had the nerve to treat himself the way he treats all his other characters, facing off with self-disemboweling dogs and "the world is more horrible than we pretend" madness, is just cold, man. Cold. -
I feel funny now. No, this novel wasn't a how-to-be-a-comedian manual under the guise of some kind of fucked up, deranged horror. I feel FUNNY funny, strange funny, like someone touched me inappropriately and I don't know how I feel funny. Halfway through the book, I put it down and eyeballed my partner and started throwing existential crisis theories at him. I have this problem with depersonalization and derealization where in heightened states of anxiety you detach from your reality or your sense of self. Mostly it's triggered by standing in shopping centres and being overwhelmed with rage, disgust, fear and hunger but sometimes it's triggered by someone fucking with my head. As Bret Easton Ellis did with me with Lunar Park. Is this real, what is real, that's not real, is he in a psychotic meltdown, oh fuck, what's going on, somebody GET MY DAUGHTER'S FURBY OUT OF THE FUCKING HOUSE
No, just joking, I have more taste than to buy my daughter a furby let alone fill it with my haunted past so that it turns into a soul sucking demon bird crazed, fuck what is going on here. Alternating fear, discomfort and amusement. I didn't know how I felt. My confusedness is showing in my review. Okay, if you're a parent, one of your kids probably has a toy that creeps you the fuck out. You can't get rid of it because that would just be reinforcing the fact that a)you are insane and b)gutless. My daughter has this troll in a pink princess dress that creeps out anyone who touches it. My sister in law visited recently and she picked it up thinking it was some type of obese barbie doll but upon flipping it over, she was faced with the horrors of all horrors and she promptly dropped it. This doll definitely does things to me in my sleep, it probably watches me shower, swims in my urine when I forget to flush the toilet, is that little tickle on my foot at night that I imagine is the cat WHEN I KNOW IT REALLY ISN'T.
You may have thought I went off on a tangent there. You were right but a problem shared is a problem halved and now I feel better. -
There’s a story behind the film Adaptation: scriptwriter Charlie Kaufman had a hard time adapting The Orchid Thief, so what did he do? He wrote a film about him having a hard time adapting The Orchid Thief, writing himself into the script, creating for himself a twin brother, dedicating the finished piece to the sibling who didn’t exist. Author Bret Easton Ellis, creator of American Psycho and other “transgressive” novels, wrote himself into his novel Lunar Park, conjuring for himself a family, a film actress wife, a quiet neighborhood in the suburbs, a son. A series of brutal murders, a haunting, a loss. I write stories but I could never imagine writing myself into one of them, even as an exercise. Of course every writer writes himself into his stories, his fears, his joys, but how terrifying to see your own name on a page, to see yourself as a fictional character running away from fictional horrors. Honesty can be very frightening, so with Lunar Park Ellis was being very brave. Ian McEwan asks, How can a novelist find atonement when, in his novels, he is God? But Ellis found atonement. There was one long passage in the novel that ends with From those of us who are left behind: you will be remembered, you were the one I needed, I loved you in my dreams. Writing these words, would it be too much to say that Ellis found freedom? Perhaps, upon finishing the novel, he had forgiven everyone and everything that had to be forgiven, and in the process also found absolution.
I think this is a remarkable book. -
Lmao what did I just read. This was a complete fiasco. This was like if you smushed every Bret Easton Ellis book into one and then added a sprinkle of Stephen King weirdness and timesed the metafiction by 100. Bret was the main character but he was also the writer but he was also interacting with characters from his books who were both real and fictional on very different levels. And he was also being haunted by a demon. And there was a rabid dog. And a lot of themes about being a parent. Oh and Jay McInerney was in it too.
Basically this book started out really good and then it was a mess but it was a good mess. -
3.5/5
I'm not the most well-read guy on Bret Easton Ellis, not by a long shot. And I should be better read considering I enjoy the guys writing style quite a bit. I like the minimalist style, and I enjoy his brand of satire.
But it was interesting to me how he made a memoir that was mostly fiction, and used that to examine a bunch of different themes such as family or even writing. That he made it a suburban gothic horror makes it even more fascinating.
I won't pretend to understand everything as it's a bit of a psychological mindfuck, but I got the general idea. I enjoyed the beginning where he looked back at his career and enjoyed it the entire way through. I wouldn't say I was really grabbed most of the time but I was also never bored.
As a horror it mostly succeeds. There were actually a couple scenes that I really liked that scared me. When he goes on his computer and finally watches the video, that was the high point for me. It creeped me out. It's obvious Ellis is a talented writer because he pulls off psychological horror, satire and a memoir all in the same book. It's true that most of the book isn't really true, but it's still cool to think about what part is drawn (and clearly exaggerated) from his real life.
Lunar Park isn't a favourite of mine but it was a good read, and the mish-mash of genres especially appealed to me. Check it out, it's not nearly as bad as some of the reviews here say. But keep in mind that I also liked Glamorama. -
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... -
So I've spent this year developing a love/hate relationship with Bret Easton Ellis' work. I don't understand why his books fascinate me or even why they work as compelling fiction, yet I keep reading them because his voice is so distinct. Disturbing, empty, and shallow most of the time, but distinct. Then along comes Lunar Park. I spent 90% of the book hating it, wondering why I was still reading it, and then found the ending beautiful. No. Really. I didn't think Ellis could write something that would fit under my (admittedly very personal) definition of "beautiful" anything. Knowing he wrote this before Imperial Bedrooms (see my two word review for my opinion on that one) renders it even more puzzling. Oh whatever. Obviously I can't articulate the feelings finishing this book has aroused. I liked it. I don't know why.
-
My girlfriend is reading this book right now, so at night I always see the front cover as it hides her pretty face.
I've always been a fan of Bret. I loved Less than Zero, American Psycho, and Imperial Bedrooms. I didn't like Rules of Attraction ( good movie but the novel was too faggy love drunk for me.) And I hated Glammora and the Informers.
All in all, he's had an impressive career and I have read a few of his novels multiple times. American Psycho sticks out as his real masterpiece in contemporary transgressive literature.
That book was genius and I find it interesting that people label it misogynistic. To me it was a clear indictment on materialism, he objectified woman as a way to expound on that indictment but it had NOTHING to do with women, the same as it had nothing to do with designer clothing. I think Norman Mailer said it best, that Bret was taking on deep Dostoyevskian themes.
Most people that hated American Psycho hated it for legitimate reasons. The people that hate Lunar Park don't seem to understand it at all.
SPOILER ALERT
Lunar park is a deep, visceral, and brilliant novel. It is in fact much deeper than American Psycho, yet its darkness is washed out by sentimentality.
It starts out with a quasi-memoir of his past novels and early success. He skillfully included enough facts to make this seem like a legitimate recap of his life so far, although the tone becomes satirical by the end of the section.
His whole career dating back to his debut novel and including American Psycho have been about two central themes: apathy and narcissism. So it's only natural that he would move on to make the ultimate statement and turn the lens on himself, painting an apathetic and narcissistic caricature of what people believe Bret Easton Ellis would look like.
The tumultuous relationship with his father is brought up within the first few pages, drawn from sincerity you can feel, and if you're paying attention, making all the other career and lifestyle narration seem disingenuous.
Now the hyperbole fades back into supposed realism, but what it really is, is this crazy metaphorical and multifaceted look inside his brain.
Nothing past the first chapter should be taken literal and the supernatural stuff supports this.
Bret's character becomes his father, the alcoholism and disconnect are simply statements about their failed connection.
His marriage with jane is just a facade created by his dads disapproval of Bret's sexual ambiguity, and how unhinged his view on the nuclear family is because his own was so badly broken.
Robbie is emblematic of Bret's youth, of being misunderstood and having to deal with a father he felt lived on a different planet than him.
Clayton is Brett in the purgatory stage, when he found his own independence and wealth, and became an elusive and ghoulish figure to his disdainful father.
Brett Easton Ellis is such a talented writer that he throws in sophisticated social commentary, masquerading as lame and campy gimmickry. The turby doll, the video tapes, the general paranoiac tone, are all statements about post 9/11 hysteria and how far removed we had become in a very spooky time. -
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. -
This was a life changing sort of read. There is an underlying theme to this book which is... 'take time out to appreciate the people you love the most'. So cliche - but this is the strong concept I grasped from this book.
This was so well written by a deranged madman of an author that I am dying to get to know more about. I plan to read every last one of his books.
This is like a train wreck of a memoir, slowly metamorphing into a sci fi horrific fascinating story. It is pretty dramatic and heartwrenching at times though it has some witty humor. Kept me on the edge of my seat. At the end of the book I had to sit and marinate for a long time to grasp WTF just happened... and it was truly life changing. :) -
4.0 Stars
This was such an unsettling piece of horror. I really enjoyed the meta aspect to this story that blurred the line between fiction and fact. The protagonist is one of the most unlikable characters I have ever read. This is clearly done on purpose, but be aware if that's an issue for you. I recommend reading American Psycho before this one, but it's more a companion novel than a straight up sequel. Overall I really enjoyed this one and I would strongly recommend it. -
LUNAR PARK is a bit of a departure for Bret Easton Ellis in that it's more of a traditional page-turner than anything else he has previously written. It's also a lot less cynical and gratuitously shocking than most of his previous work. In the novel, Ellis himself is the main character, and he does an brilliant job of blurring the lines between autobiography and fiction. Interestingly, he seems to take especial delight in presenting as negative an image of himself as possible, making for a highly amusing--but not terribly sympathetic--narrator. The story is an odd mix of dark comedy and horror, but, as this is a Bret Easton Ellis novel, the book is also replete with rich subtext, poetic descriptions, and copious amounts of scenes portraying addiction and drug abuse. Apart from the ending, which left me a little confused on some points, I found LUNAR PARK to be a memorable, thoroughly enjoyable novel, and one of Ellis' best.
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Finished my re-read of this. I'm still going to call this my favorite BEE book, with Glamorama as a close second.
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Bret Easton Ellis writes himself into a horror novel as a suburban dad, and there’s also a murderous Furby. I mean, you either want to read that or you don’t; there isn’t really any inbetween.
I say that, but I actually went into this knowing/remembering nothing but that it was horror, which was enough for me to be intrigued. Especially as it starts off innocuously, seeming like a kind of semi-autobiographical account of the author’s life with a few details altered, and I couldn’t imagine how it was going to manage the switch in genres. Turns out, this switch is handled superbly, better than I could have hoped. The story as a whole is absolutely nothing like I expected. It’s quite funny at times, but it’s not flippant. It does such strange and brilliant things with material that would sound insubstantial and possibly terrible if I tried to outline it here. The impression I’m left with is of being trapped in a nightmare in this sprawling suburban house, a setting that appears to have imprinted itself on me: I can recall it in vivid detail; I feel like I’ve seen it.
I only chose to read this (and the less impressive
Less Than Zero) as prep for
The Shards, but I’m so glad I did. I could easily never have read it – the length seemed daunting, the themes fuzzy – and the thought of that makes me shudder a bit, because it’s so much the kind of book I’m constantly looking for! Now, it feels like one of those stories that lives in a part of me, will always be with me.
TinyLetter |
Linktree -
'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. -
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.
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Wow, actually really not very good.
First off I'm feeling a bit baited-and-switched. I should have done my homework, but the edition I picked up and browsed in the English-language section of a Copenhagen bookstore gave every indication of being some kind of sincere memoir. The first twenty or so pages of this book seemed to be exactly that, and I had just gotten really curious about Ellis' life, but in Copenhagen a cup of coffee costs ten dollars so I don't even want to know what Lunar Park sells for.
But then, later on in my trip, I realized I could just e-purchase the e-book version on my Epple ePad for less than the price of a cup of coffee. Thanks, future! So I did that, and on a train from Copenhagen to Siegen I dug in ...
... and realized that no, this book I just bought isn't the story of Bret Easton Ellis' life, this is some squished-together combination of a James T. Frey-style false fantasy memoir and a really poor Steven King impersonation.
Ellis' signature detachedness really fucks him up here, because as he (eventually) undertakes a ghost story, crossed with a demon story crossed with some other scary story -- there are three (3) different diabolical evils that show up in his life at the same time, and it's never really explained how they'r related -- and as the author Ellis describes the character Ellis groping through a trademark drug haze to come to grips with the threat to his trademark overfunded and mood-stabilized family, and as he's sitting there describing stuff that's supposed to be scary, it's not once the least bit frightening. Really it's kind of awkward watching it fall so flat.
There are some good bits. The tribe of the western rich that Ellis followed through school and into banking has here grown older and began to raise families, while the fictional Ellis is trying to "start over" by marrying his old girlfriend and masquerading as a yuppie parent. The (ostensible) author Ellis describes exquisitely the weirdness of what privileged people and their children call "normal" these days. His observations on that level have always been brilliant.
But then there's a whole lot of suck. For the whole final third he's just trying, trying, trying to build a sense of dread, foreboding, uncertainty ... all those things that good horror writers know how to do. And he's failing, failing, failing. He likes to telegraph little telling factoids (chilling factoids!) to foreshadow the upcoming misc horrors, but he refuses to be subtle -- he keeps backing up and explaining exactly why the factoids are so chilling.
Sometimes authors write not knowing what happens next, and the not knowing infects the writing with a tension and mystery. But this is a case of someone stringing together a lot of scary horror story scenes that don't quite link up, and then trying to bury that mess under another mess of more and more mystery and strangeness, hoping all along that there's an ending in there somewhere, but the final revelations are pretty mild and pointless: your estranged dad is haunting you! But really he's just trying to warn you that you're trapped in a badly plotted book.
I know Bret Easton Ellis can write much better books than this. This seems like a weekend meth project. "I know! I'll write a Stephen King novel ... about me!" Maybe he's low on drug money. It certainly seems written for Hollywood. I don't doubt he's already sold the film rights, and if that film gets made Ellis will have one more meta-notch in his meta-belt. But frankly this book is a disappointment. I give him credit for trying something different, but when writers get so big that they can push their mistakes past their editors, through their publishers and onto the public, it's time to move on. -
This monstrosity is about to make me take Less Than Zero off of my favorite books list. Could this book have been worse? I don't know. I really am not sure how. If we refer back to my list of things Douglas Coupland did to screw up JPod, BEE here does them all and then some, by adding in less pornography than Glamorama (remember the like 20+ page threesome in the middle? That was like, one of the least arousing things one could ever read, where with every page turn it was like, PLEASE let them be done having sex already? Can't you describe the people dying in the plane crash again?) but bringing in nearly as much violence as in American Psycho, mostly by making us relive the kills from the aforementioned tome plus adding in some new ones.
With a more-famous, possibly more-drugged-up version of himself as the main character, BEE sinks to new lows with:
a) impossibly dated pop culture references (look at the date this piece of crap got released, yet in the book his kids dress as Posh Spice and Eminem for Halloween. Um, not exactly timely!);
b) violence to the extent that I actually almost threw up. Like I actually clamped my hand over my mouth at one point, and I am not exaggerating this at all;
c) life history of his own famousness and drug use that I mentally narrated by thinking to myself "don't care, don't care";
d) the death of his (admittedly horrible sounding) father perpetrated by possibly
I) the author himself
II) Clayton from Less Than Zero
III) Patrick Bateman from American Psycho.
I've read all his other books so god knew I'd read this one, but I finished it wishing I really, really hadn't. If I can keep you from reading it, I've done my job. -
Este Easton Ellis se parece más al de American Psycho que al de Los Confidentes o Menos que cero y eso me gusta porque cuando el tío de pone a narrar lo hace más que bien. De momento, sin perder sus señas de identidad, esta historia de terror promete.
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It seems like at least 40% of the book is about how you just can't trust Bret Easton Ellis. The horrific story of an untrustworthy narrator is a good trick if you can pull it off, but I'm not feeling like Lunar Park pulls it off as Will Self's My Idea of Fun, Jim Thompson's After Dark My Sweet, or The Usual Suspects. Though the book is creepy in places, I never found it scary. Though the book is intended to be a parody of suburban life, I do not find that part of the book compelling, funny, or particularly pointed. The use of brand names pushed me into anachronism fact check territory, which I did not enjoy. There were interesting story elements here. They did not come together for me. I did really want to like this. But I just didn't. I only read about 60% of this before I got really really sick of hearing about fictional Bret Easton Ellis.
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I can understand why this wouldn't necessarily be favorably reviewed. Aside from the events referred to as having happened that are clearly fictional, this novel could be read as an actual memoir (for much of it, not all of it). As our narrator Ellis continues to suffer from the effects of many issues, including addiction and withdrawal, his established unreliability takes us off the deep end with a bizarre twist that flips the whole work on its bloated spine. However, I loved it, despite being fiction I was more absorbed in this than any of his other works. I was likely easily sold because I have two sons, and I would never echo the circumstances of Ellis' nor his fictional son's. 5 out of 5 Klonopins.
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That was...odd...very odd
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I heard a lot of great things about this book, but i wasn't that impressed. It was just a little too over the top. Admittedly, this over the top aspect made it really amusing; the plot is basically that Bret Easton Ells (by writing himself in as the protagonist, he 'does an impression of himself') is in his 40's and still throwing big parties during which he offers mediocre coke to his guest and then steals away to his office to do enormous lines of much better coke. He's got a wife and kids and doesn't really care too much about them-- their existence in his life is more than anything else an example of his futile attempt to get sober. Basically the story begins to unfold when he tries to get a Furby for his daughter, but they're all sold out. So he asks his coke dealer to get him one, which leads to a lot of, well, fucked up shit. Without giving away too much, the book's most interesting characteristic is that it somehow slides from autobiography into a tongue-in-cheek Stephen King parody (the horror scenes of which involve the Furby). Funny, but not nearly as good as his other books.
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Another amazing Bret Easton Ellis book. As sad and scary as a closed down cinema.
