American Psycho (1991)

Patrick Bateman is a Wall Street yuppie in the late 1980s. He is also a brutal serial killer. There are several recurring themes here (and when I say recurring, I mean it is mentioned at least thirty times): returning video tapes, the Patty Winters Show, deciding where to have dinner, cocaine, all yuppie men are interchangeable and everyone is constantly mistaken for everybody else, women are clueless and needy, tanning, going to the gym, alcohol, decaffeinated espresso (I know - what?), excessive luxury, and brand names, brand names, brand names. I cannot stress that last one enough: Bateman describes every single person's outfit by brand name and sometimes even the department store where it was purchased. There are scenes of extremely graphic sex, usually followed by scenes of extremely graphic violence. I'm not a very sensitive person, but there were a few times when I was seriously worried about losing my lunch. Now, there are some amusing bits. I kind of liked the overly dramatic business card comparison. The random chapters of musical critique (Whitney Houston, Huey Lewis & the News, and Genesis) were interesting but I haven't a clue why they were included (though in the movie they are used as lectures while killing people, which is actually kind of funny). My main issue with this book is that absolutely nothing happens. Seriously: the same thing happens chapter after chapter after chapter and there is no progression of plot, no change in any of the characters. This could have been a short story and still gotten its point across. A waste of time. ( )

Masterful writing but the obvious effort of form over substance took this book down a notch, in my opinion.

(Personal note: Reading this book during the same time period that the movie version of Les Miserables is being promoted to death probably added more to my appreciation than I should admit in public) ( )

This book is TRUE. I live on an island of bankers, investment brokers and trust companies lawyers and all of them are drunken, mad psychopaths with Jack Nicholson laughs and a propensity for getting into a lot of trouble at weekends.

They drink and they snort and they screw and they sail and they make loads of money and every now and again some of them disappear never to be heard of again. The women, the secretaries and admin staff come out from the UK husband-hunting but quickly find they are the rare prey of these mad psycho partiers and they too tend to disappear.

Deported or murdered? YOU decide!

The investment bankers from the VP Bank of Luxembourg are by far the worst. Going drinking with them usually ended up with some of the guys diving naked off the side of someone's yacht and then screaming they've lost their Rolexes. Several local divers made quite a good living diving close to the party boats and recovering watches, wallets and rings on Monday mornings. If they knew who owned the property, they'd get a reward, if they didn't they sold it. I used to enjoy all that. Now I have a bookshop, but then I had a bar. I kind of wish I had a bar, that kind of bar again.

Oh, book review. I did enjoy the book and later the film. So true to life... except for the murders, I think. ( )

ebook

This was, frankly, bizzarre! ( )