Tuesday, July 20, 2010

Imperial Bedrooms (2010)

Bret Easton Ellis is a writer who is becoming more interesting as he ages. I loved his last novel, Lunar Park, and Imperial Bedrooms, a pretty twisted sequel to Less Than Zero (his first book) is along the same lines, a sort of autobiographical horror novel. In LP, the main character is named Bret Easton Ellis, and that character inhabits an over-the-top haunted house, full of literal and figurative ghosts. In his latest novel, Ellis returns to the characters from Less Than Zero and revisits them in the present day. The result is a genuinely chilling detective story, and a sharp moral rebuke to anyone who might have read Ellis's first novel and romanticized its excesses.

3 comments:

  1. Does he ever mention why he named the book after an Elvis Costello album?

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  2. First off, because it's a sequel to a book named after a Costello song. But it also fits well with the book.

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  3. Oh yeah, I forgot "Less Than Zero" was an Elvis Costello song. Duly noted.

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