Less than zero

by

208 pages

English language

Published July 10, 1985 by Simon and Schuster.

ISBN:
9780671543297
OCLC Number:
11650489

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4 stars (1 review)

Returning to Los Angeles from his Eastern college for a Christmas vacation in the early 1980s, Clay "reenters a landscape of limitless privilege and absolute moral entropy, where everyone drives Porsches, dines at Spago, and snorts mountains of cocaine ... A raw, powerful portrait of a lost generation."--Back cover, Vintage Contemporaries ed. (1998).

30 editions

reviewed Less than zero by Bret Easton Ellis

Disappear Here.

4 stars

I read Less Than Zero after reading American Psycho about a year ago. This is an incredibly powerful book with solid motifs and themes - it almost feels like a prototype of Ellis's future work. Clay's lifestyle, as described, is completely alien to me, personally. Still, Ellis is so effective at conveying the emptiness and the disconnect at the core of these youths' psyche that I cannot help but feel for them despite their overwhelming privilege. The plot isn't exactly linear, but Ellis manages to gets his point across nonetheless. Overall, Less Than Zero is an impressive endeavour for such a young author that I greatly enjoyed reading.

Subjects

  • Young men -- Fiction.
  • Drug addiction -- Fiction.
  • Friendship -- Fiction.
  • Generation X -- Fiction.
  • Los Angeles (Calif.) -- Fiction.