Less Than Zero Book Review

So I said I'd do a couple of book reviews. Here's the first

Less Than Zero - Bret Easton Ellis

People are afraid to merge on the freeways in Los Angeles.
The opening line got my excited in the same manor that Palahnuik's Diary did with Just for the record, the weather today... - both are taken and used by bands for song lyrics, and, in Less Than Zero's case, Bloc Party dedicated an entire song to the book in the beginning of their 2007 album, Weekend in The City - Song for Clay (Disappear Here). Listening for the first time in a while it has a new meaning to me, and matches the tone of the book perfectly. Anyway this is a book review.

The novel, Ellis' début written at the age of 19, follows the protagonist Clay around LA during a Christmas break from his college, as he goes to various parties, doing drugs and having sex.

With a book such as this it is honestly hard to find meaningful compliments. The dialogue was sparse and rarely lead anywhere, none of the characters were particularly likeable and, crucially, there was nothing of a meaningful plot present in the entire story. I don't mean this in the way that nothing happened in Catcher in the Rye; a novel to which it is frequently compared - Catcher made up for it's lack of plot with the complex and confused feelings of the narrating Holden Caulfield which pervade the text. By contrast, Less than Zero's Clay is distanced from the reader and seems at times cold, emotionless. What is left is a nihilistic and at times shocking tale of a sex, money, and drug addled youth (One that I can't say I can relate too well to). But despite it's innumerable flaws, there is something curiously memorising, even hypnotic about the writing - the 'Disappear here' motif and the 'wonder is he's for sale?' foreshadowing - that really makes this novel stick in my mind.

I can see people really hating this, but it's well worth a try.

**** 4 Stars