Not terby repeated I hopeI felt cheated when I read this load of contractual tripe. Mr Easton Ellis himself declared that he just tried to write a simple horror story. Last resort of a tired mind methinks. Not long after I read "One of Bret's finest works" I discovered a mountain of hard backed Lunar Parks in a Poundshop in Shrewsbury. That says it all.
Ellis's most humane novel to date!I finished this baby this morning and I am absolutely uplifted by this
as well as inspired.I have only read two of Bret Easton (Less than zero
and American psycho) Elis's novels but this is the best to date.It seems
to be a lethal cocktail mix of horror,comedy and drama.It claims on the
reverse of the novel that it's all true but I doubt it.
It begins with Bret's younger days in the 80s and his descent into drugs
and then his life with Jayne Dennis,his saviour and then transforms into
a Stephen King kid of tradition with his step daugters toy doll coming to
life etc,someone impersonating Patrick Bateman fro m American psycho.
`Lunar park` is tragic and excellent.Also very uplifiting and humane.It's
kind of fiction blended in with dfake auto-biography.I recommend this to any
fans of Bret Easton Ellis or anyone generally interested in his work!
DisappointingThe start of this was very promising, the first chapter being a fake autobiographical musing of the author's descent into drug addiction which launches us into BEE becoming a family man with an actress wife and 2 kids. From there it is downhill as he tries to paint for us a horror novel based upon Patrick Bateman, the protagonist of American Psycho allegedly based upon BEE's father, doing what Wes Craven did for the Freddie Crueger character in Wes Craven's New Nightmare. Its nicely written but dismally plotted and not in the league of Glamorama, American Psycho or even the less good The Informers. His daughter's Furby - here called a Terby to provide a supposedly witty wordplay climax - comes to life and starts killing animals (well we all new those things were evil) while a student who looks like his dad/Bateman appears starts copying the killings in American Psycho (I think though that the references to the AP text are completely fictional but I may be wrong). BEE being a reforming drug addict/alcoholic is not taken seriously until it is too late. That's about it.
Not a classicComing off the back of reading the underwhelming `Glamorama' (thematically interchangeable in many aspects with `American Psycho', the vacuous wealth, labels, lingering psychopaths, `was it all a dream'?, people seemingly in several places at once, reality confusion), I really wanted this to be good. One thing you can say with certainty about Ellis, he has elan - the Prologue is superb, and what he can be capable of - funny, profane, pacy, seemingly a whistle-stop autobiography of his life and career to date. Then what do we get? A substandard Dean R Koontz pastiche interwoven with the kind of self-indulgent psychobabble only years on the shrink's couch and/or too many drugs can bring. I guess we are supposed to believe this is all arch and parodic, but in scraping clean his own addiction experiences and weaving them into this confusing mess, he truly appears an author clean out of ideas/inspiration - rich, famous, lauded, complacent, too lazy to even try. Words cannot describe how poor this all was, so I will not waste any more.
Wow!I may be bias as Ellis is my all time favourite writer but i could not put this book down.
Like his previous novels, Lunar Park is intelligent, slick and cinematic and as usual the subject matter is painfully personal to the writer. I agree with other reviewers that at times it did feel like i was reading a Stephen King story but the overall tone is classic Ellis.
The only minus point i can think of is that i can't imagine it being as gripping and involving for a person who has never read any of his previous novels. If you're a fan, however, then it has to be a must read.
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