The Rules of Attraction

by Bret Easton Ellis

In "The Rules of Attraction," Bret Easton Ellis trains his incisive gaze on the kids at self-consciously bohemian Camden College, a small, affluent liberal-arts college in New England at the height of the Reagan 80s. He treats their sexual posturings and agonies with a mixture of acrid hilarity and compassion while exposing the moral vacuum at the centre of their lives. Racing from Thirsty Thursday Happy Hours to Dressed To Get Screwed parties to drinks at The Edge of the World, this is a poignant take on the death of romance.

Genres: Fiction, Contemporary, Dark Academia, Novels, LGBT, Literary Fiction, American

326 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 1987

About the author

Bret Easton Ellis is an American author and screenwriter. Ellis was one of the literary Brat Pack and is a self-proclaimed satirist whose trademark technique, as a writer, is the expression of extreme acts and opinions in an affectless style. His novels commonly share recurring characters.
When Ellis was 21, his first novel, the controversial bestseller Less than Zero (1985), was published by Simon & Schuster. His third novel, American Psycho (1991), was his most successful. Upon its release the literary establishment widely condemned it as overly violent and misogynistic. Though many petitions to ban the book saw Ellis dropped by Simon & Schuster, the resounding controversy convinced Alfred A. Knopf to release it as a paperback later that year.
Ellis's novels have become increasingly metafictional. Lunar Park (2005), a pseudo-memoir and ghost story, received positive reviews. Imperial Bedrooms (2010), marketed as a sequel to Less than Zero, continues in this vein. The Shards (2023) is a fictionalized memoir of Ellis's final year of high school in 1981 Los Angeles.
Four of Ellis's works have been made into films. Less than Zero was adapted in 1987 as a film of the same name, but the film bore little resemblance to the novel. Mary Harron's adaptation of American Psycho was released in 2000. Roger Avary's adaptation of The Rules of Attraction was released in 2002. The Informers, co-written by Ellis and based on his collection of short stories, was released in 2008. Ellis also wrote the screenplay for the 2013 film The Canyons.

Reviews

[Maureen · Rating 3 out of 5]

The following is a true story.

I was staying over at the boy's house. We were post-coital and all of a sudden he remembered he had to go to a friend's house and party with him for four hours. I opted to wait for him in his bedroom. This was uncommon because whatever, it was just sex, we didn't wait around for each other. But I was in between places, so I didn't have much of a choice. I went down to the kitchen and found The Rules of Attraction on the stove. I opened it up in the middle while eating a frozen dinner and drinking watermelon flavored Smirnoff. At first I thought the narrator was a girl. What a slut. But then a chapter in I realized it was Paul Denton. The book got sadder and sadder but I loved it. The boy came home and kissed me and noticed I was reading it. The next time he came over he brought it along with him and told me I could borrow it and smiled.

I finished the book two weeks later. I'd kept going, then read the back cover and raised my eyebrows when I saw that Brett Easton Ellis was a moralist. I started from the beginning. Everything changed. I finished it. I handed it back to the boy, along with a drawing I made for him. "What are we doing?" I asked him, because I thought he liked me. "Uh, I don't want a relationship right now. Maybe we should end this," he said, and I said, "No. Me neither. Yeah." He hugged me goodbye.

[Jeffrey Keeten · Rating 4 out of 5]

”So I stand against the wall, listen to REM, finish the beer, get more, keep my eye on the Freshman girl. Then some other girl, Deidre I think her name is, black spiked hair that already looks dated and trendy, black lipstick, black fingernail polish, black kneesocks, black shoes, nice tits, okay body, Senior, comes over and she’s wearing a black halter top even though it’s like forty below in the room and she’s drunk and coughing like she has T.B., swigging Scotch. I’ve seen her stealing Dante in the bookstore.”

Bret Easton Ellis, in describing this girl, gives us those extra descriptive terms that make us give Deidre a second look. Coughing, swigging, and stealing. Okay, so she is a bit trashy, a bit goth, a bit too easy, maybe, but any girl that steals Dante would definitely have perked my interest back in the day. The music is loud so I’d have to nuzzle up to her ear. She probably smells faintly still of the perfume she put on earlier, but her skin has probably also started to soak up some of the aromas from the party.

I’d tell her, I saw you stealing Dante.

Now Sean is way more worried about banging the cute freshman girl.... Why?... because she is garden-fresh, practically just hatched. She hasn’t been initiated into the Camden Liberal Arts college tradition of swill, sweat, and semen. Interesting enough, Camden is probably the most famous college in recent American literary history. Writers Ellis, Jonathan Lethem, and Jill Eisenstadt all attended the very expensive Bennington College in Vermont. All have used Camden as a fictional universe for their Bennington experiences. The author Donna Tartt also attended Bennington, but in her novel The Secret History, she uses the fictional name of Hampden.

Camden. Hampden. I do believe there is literary collusion going on. No Russians as far as I can tell were involved.

Sean has a stalker, a sweet secret admirer, who leaves him love notes in his mail box. ”It is simple. I watch him. He reveals himself in dark contours. Everything I believe in floats away when I witness him, say, eating or crossing the boundaries of a crowded room. I feel a scourge. I have his name written on a sheet of pale blue paper that is tissue thin.” She is a ghost throughout the book as we whiplash between different narrators who all reveal pieces of what has happened. Sometimes their accounts differ, and sometimes the omission of facts from one narrator, in particular, reveals much about how far they are from understanding what they truly desire. Sometimes they lie. The task for the reader is to evaluate what we are told until the truth becomes a glittering, but tarnished, pearl.

So I’ve sort of introduced Sean to you, as he is tucking Deidre into his back pocket in case he needs her while he attempts to catch the eye of cute freshman. As the plot develops, his life becomes more complicated as he finds himself trapped in a confusing, obsessive relationship (sexship) with Lauren. To add more spice to the caldron of lust, he also is having sex with...Paul? Is he? As this triangle acquires more weight, we start to understand the inability of any of these characters to get passed impulsive desires and find any meaning in love.

”’He likes him. He likes her. I think she likes someone else, probably me. That’s all. No logic.’”

Ask that same question of these people a week later and the corners of the triangle will point in different or all new directions. It is all fluid and meaningless, but not without psychological mutilation.

Remember the stalker?

”The seeds of love have taken hold and if we can’t burn together, I’ll burn alone.”

Going to class at Camden seems optional. It is certainly low on the list of priorities. These kids are being washed up on the shores of a hedonistic island, and if anyone is feeling inhibited, soon the copious amounts of alcohol, drugs, and hormonally driven lust have them dancing to the latest Talking Heads album along with the natives.

It makes me wonder, after these people are booted off the island, how anyone can reintegrate into regular society. Camden will leave these people morally decimated, distrustful, and with probably more than one nasty habit. Ahhh yes, the ‘80s.

Don’t miss the Dressed to Get Screwed party. The highlight of the year.

The book jacket says this is a vast departure from Bret Easton Ellis’s first book, Less Than Zero, which for a few chapters I was thinking what the hell are they talking about, but as I got deeper in the book, I started to realize that this book is actually significantly different from his first book. In Less Than Zero, his characters are soulless, people really beyond redemption in my opinion. In this book, he infuses some humor, some legitimate pain, and explores deeper themes about adolescents awkwardly trapped in an extended childhood and with no real idea why anyone would ever want to be an adult. They are rich, spoiled, and lost. LIke a spectre floating behind the scenes, we have the tale of the secret admirer who is the only person who seems to understand real desire, and sustainable love. The poignancy of her situation will make your heart strings tremble.

If you wish to see more of my most recent book and movie reviews, visit http://www.jeffreykeeten.com
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[Baba · Rating 4 out of 5]

A (college) term in the lives of a group of privileged affluent students at a small liberal arts college, where the story is moved on by short first person narrated chapters (from the point of view of one of the group). This highly acclaimed 'comic' novel comes across to me as more of a look back at how these people behaved in the 1980s, having the hindsight of the revelations made many years later.

Despite the content, the storytelling device of one person's point of view chapters works quite well, in providing a rounded and seemingly overarching sense of this soulless world of privilege and naked individualism - featuring the early Sean 'American Psycho' Bateman. 8 out of 12 fierce Four Star read.

2019 read

[Fabian · Rating 5 out of 5]

& so I thought that after college this would be less impressionable & a tad less impressive. Boy was I wrong. I am still completely enraptured by this novel in which characters DON’T change (breaking 1 of the main cardinal rules of all literature—to make protagonists experience change—Ellis is intrepid). The details in this are perfect and absolutely hilarious--80's encapsulated brilliantly. You end up rooting for the sleaziest of antagonists—nobody in Camden deserves redemption and most actions taken are wholly despicable. Yet—THIS IS college. The confusion, the sex, drugs, alcohol, suicide attempts, abortions, socials… it's all recorded here. I don’t think another writer has influenced me as much in the art of immorality (this includes [up]Chuck Palahniuk & even the Marquis de Sade)—in his use of effective, rapid, stylish, unforgettable prose.

A guilty pleasure that's not all too guilty--despite the explicit content & undercurrent of melancholia. An absolutely essential novel.

[Steven Godin · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've never really been a fan of multiple narrators in a novel. Switching character voices every 20-30 pages or so wouldn't have been so bad, but here it happens sometimes in as little as 2-3. To me it felt driving along a stretch of road that had traffic lights every 100 metres. I just want to get moving! There was no flow here. Pity, as my last outing with Bret Easton Ellis was simply superb. There was rarely a dull moment in Glamorama, and the shift in story about halfway through was one of the best and most unputdownable I've come across in years. One thing both books have in common though is young people. Bret Eaton Ellis is great when it comes to writing about people under the age of 30. Here we get a group of college students in the 80s, and I quickly noticed that some of his characters from later novels are in here too. So this is basically getting acquainted with them during their higher education. Not that the novel is about their actual education mind you, this is awash with drinking, taking drugs, partying, having sex and being in relationships all the way through. Seeing as there is no real plot, I could have read half of it and not missed much if I didn't read the rest of it. After a while it just became a drag and very repetitive. But it does capture what it intends to capture really well. Although not absolutely essential, I think it would have helped being somewhere around the age of the characters here - or if you just have a thing for spoiled, self-absorbed and tumultuous brats. Would I have appreciated it more if read in my 20s and not 40s? Probably. Although that wasn't a factor when reading Glamorama simply because it was a mesmerizing novel from start to finish and this simply was not. Makes me wish I'd read his fictional memoir 'Lunar Park' instead.

[mark monday · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ellis is one of those authors that seems to grow in stature as time marches on. i see him on so many Favorite Author lists and i just have to roll my eyes a bit. personally, he'll always be the author i laughed at on a regular basis: hilariously pretentious and embarrassingly convinced that pretension equals depth. American Psycho? sorry, the film version was a better portrait of capitalist consumerism and had the intelligence to re-route the author's misogyny so that it existed solely within the central psycho. Less Than Zero? well, it's very hard for me to muster any empathy for spoiled brats who are unhappy with their oversexed, well-fed lives - and who have the lack of tact to complain about their emptiness. gosh i guess this turned out to be a review of 3 books!

but The Rules of Attraction is something different, something special. its playfulness with narrative and perspective is actually rather brilliant. i'm not sure i've read another novel where fully one-third of the narrative was a jerk-off fabrication by one of the characters (one who isn't a psychotic serial killer, that is). perhaps prior to Rules, Ellis somehow exorcised all that repulsive self-pity that inundanted Zero and then replaced it with malevolent wit. and better yet, he puts his usual snarkiness in the mouths of characters who - although soulless - still genuinely face more life challenges than his prior student portraits.

most surprising of all, the nearly-marginal story of the suicide: bitterly ironic, entirely moving, and wonderfully written. and hey, there's even a teensy little light at the end of the tunnel that didn't feel forced. good job, Ellis. i never thought i'd say that phrase!

[Misal · Rating 5 out of 5]

At first glance, this book is pointless. It's an endless loop of drugs, sex, and parties. It has no plot, it begins and ends in the middle of a sentence, there are too many characters strewn about, too many labels, too many songs, too many places. You finish the book and for a moment you think 'wait - what? That's it?' but you realize yes, that is, in fact, 'it'. The apathy Ellis invokes in his readers, shows in his characters, is still masterfully done. He breezes past topics like suicide and abortion which, when you give the way they're treated some thought, make you sick. His narrative choices may seem haphazard with the shifting first person perspective, the shifting tenses (AND THE RANDOM PASSAGE IN FRENCH WHICH I STILL CANNOT UNDERSTAND AFTER GOOGLE TRANSLATE), but it allows him to show how self absorbed his characters are and how differently they view the same things, the same people. He slips in little clues that tie in with events that are mentioned in passing and if you're paying attention to seemingly random paragraphs and details, you get a greater sense of what Ellis is trying to get across to the reader. I am constantly left wanting to read more of his work.

[Jonathan Ashleigh · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book may have sounded contrived to some, but to me it was exactly the way I remember being and feeling in college. The dorm, cafeteria and party scenes are brilliant and so are the fast travel sections. When I recently read The Sorrows of Young Mike, it felt like a sequel because the characters were also nihilistic college students, horny and self-involved. It, along with The Rules of Attraction, touches on similar issues that hardly affect the main characters, as they are busy thinking about themselves.

[Meike · Rating 3 out of 5]

First published in 1987, Ellis' sophomore effort is a postmodern novel of manners illustrating the lives of rich college students at a mock version of the author's alma mater, Bennington School (Donna Tartt also attended this institution and used it in The Secret History). Sure, the text has the satirical elements that are typical for Ellis, but this is by no means an American Psycho - rather, the text explores the psyche of young people haunted by their childhoods and parental baggage (divorce, mental and physical illness, dysfunctional bonds and communication), which leads to a sense of purposelessness and disaffection, a void they try to fill with parties, sex and drugs: Less Than Zero, but with less of a punch.

The novel frequently changes its POV, mainly oscillating between the three main characters, and relies heavily on dialogue, with a lot of it just exposing exchanges of words without reaching common ground. One of the protagonists is Lauren, an artistically-minded senior who misses her boyfriend who left to travel Europe. Lauren has sex with several students and ends up in a love triangle with Sean and Paul. Sean is the brother of THE Patrick Bateman, so the main character of American Psycho, he is very into drugs and believes he loves Lauren - and maybe he also sleeps with beautiful Paul. The latter is bisexual and upholds that he hooks up with both Lauren and Sean. And there is also a cast of minor characters, among them Clay from Less Than Zero who of course modulates his signature line: "People are afraid to merge on campus after midnight". Well played, Clay.

I have to say though that while I generally love Ellis, this one starts out very slow and only picks up speed around the halfway point, and then gets some serious drive. There are also some lengths, and while the dialogue is meant to convey emotional emptiness, it still has to captivate - which it doesn't do throughout. The evocation of atmosphere is expertly done though, especially through the music references and description of people, and flashy sentences like "But what else is there to do at college except drink beer or slash your wrists?" (Lauren) give it the typical pop lit feel that would inspire a whole literary movement in Germany (Benjamin von Stuckrad-Barre, Christian Kracht, Moritz von Uslar...).

The Shards really shows how Ellis has grown. Will I still read his whole backlist? You bet.

[Joe · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was my introduction into the world of Bret Easton Ellis, and I fell hopelessly in love.
I couldn't believe that someone could put together a written work, which not only emanates the characters hyper-sexed-over-zealous-self-conscious-unaware-searching-for-love-not-knowing sadness, but uses language to reinforce its themes. It would seem confusing, but at my first read, it was what I was feeling at that moment (minus the drugs, those came later). Rules of Attraction, at its base, is a novel about communication and the inefficiency of words. It is also a meditation on reality, what is it to who? A theme that pops up in Easton Ellis's later works.
As Lillian has reminded me, it does start and end mid-sentence, only in the brillance of Easton Ellis's mind should a slice-of-life story cut in like any other voyeur, "mid-action" (just as simple as listening in on a phone conversation or looking through your neighboor's window). Easton Ellis makes the reader a voyeur, and yes, it made me feel dirty as it should, but a good dirty.

[Tylah Marie · Rating 1 out of 5]

My friend lent me this book and I was super excited because we're trying this new thing where we lend each other a book to read every month... and this was the first one of our new little reading adventure.

I was bored. Insanely bored. It felt like someone was literally yelling gibberish so fast into my ear that I almost couldn't understand them at all.

I tried to enjoy this. I did. I read 50 pages the first day and then I just decided to read the rest of it in one sitting because I knew if I put it down I would never pick it back up. I felt like I owed it to my friend to at least complete the first book that she was loaning me.

Not much else to say. I didn't like it. Not even a little bit. It didn't captivate me. I feel harsh saying this but... I would quite literally watch grass grow.

[Janie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This novel was just as entertaining now as it was in the late 80's. The desperate search for meaning without really trying, staying within the same gravitational circles and going nowhere. These kids won't learn. But it sure is fun watching black holes implode.

[maria · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 Stars

The Rules of Attraction is one of those stories that makes you feel slightly uneasy while reading it. It had the feel of both A Clockwork Orange and Trainspotting in the sense that it is so over the top and risqué. The Rules of Attraction is unlike anything that I have ever read before.

I had never read anything from Bret Easton Ellis before, although American Psycho has been sitting on my shelf for quite some time now. I came across The Rules of Attraction at a local thrift shop and I recognized the authors name which helped in my decision to pick it up.

The Rules of Attraction tells the intersecting stories of three prominent characters (Sean Bateman, Lauren Hyde & Paul Denton) as they experience their college years in the 1980’s. The story is told by jumping back and forth between short vignettes that showcase each of these characters perspectives. Every now and then, a minor character tells their story from their perspective through their own little mini vignette.

It is definitely no secret that the 80’s were a wild decade, but holy shit does this story ever make that time period sound completely over the top and insane. I have always been slightly disappointed that I didn’t get to experience the 80’s, mainly because the music during that decade contains some of my favourite songs and artists of all time. After reading The Rules of Attraction however, I’m wondering if I would have ever been able to survive going to college during this era.

I loved the idea of hearing the different character’s perspectives, especially when they were describing the same scenes. Rather than have the exact same scene play out repeatedly, each character is so fucked up on either drugs, alcohol or something in between, that their stories are all completely different. For example, when Sean believes that Lauren is in love with him, only to jump to her perspective to find out she just likes to have him around to keep her company while waiting for her “boyfriend” to return from Europe. It’s moments like these that actually make this story more realistic and believable. No two people are going to have the exact same interpretation of a moment. Everyone experiences things differently. I’m still unsure if the relationship between Paul and Sean ever even happened. Not knowing the definite outcome is something that might drive some readers nuts. Hell, it usually drives me nuts, but for whatever reason, it worked perfectly within this story.

The characters were all unique from one another. While a lot of their drug and relationship habits were similar, each character had their own individual voice. I can’t say that I particularly enjoyed Lauren’s moments. I found her a little annoying and not that interesting. There was just something about her that I wasn’t very fond of. I felt a little indifferent when it came to Sean. He started out interesting, but as the story went on he started to feel a little redundant. Paul however, was my absolute favourite. He felt real and relatable. While he seemed the most sane out of the three main characters, I think it may be possible that he was the most insane. Like I mentioned earlier, I still can’t tell if his relationship with Sean ever even really happened.

In terms of the minor character vignettes, I could have done without a lot of them. The random French paragraphs from Bertrand’s perspective felt out of place. I understood bits of it here and there, but I wasn’t about to go google translate the whole thing. The one vignette that I think was rather awesome and beneficial was that of Patrick, Sean’s older brother. Yes…Patrick as in Patrick Bateman…as in THE Patrick Bateman featured in Bret Easton Ellis’ later novel, American Psycho. I didn’t even realize the two books were connected, regardless of how minor, until I put two and two together and realized that the two characters shared the same last name.

One of the main characteristics about The Rules of Attraction that made it so unique was the fact that each character perspective was told using a different writing style. Sean felt very chaotic, Lauren felt very quick and to the point while Paul felt the most sophisticated. The writing was very quick and extremely fast paced to start, however, it kept that steady rhythm throughout the entire novel which started to get old. It was so fast-paced the entire time that there was no peak in the story.

When I first opened my copy of The Rules of Attraction, I thought I was missing a page as the first opening paragraph starts mid-sentence. Once I reached the end of the novel, the same things happens again except it ended mid-sentence. Once again, this is something that might piss off a lot of readers, but I found it to be quite memorable and unique. It felt to me as though this represented the idea that we as the reader are just witnessing a little snippet of these character’s lives. We jumped in and we jumped out, just like that.

I did enjoy The Rules of Attraction for the most part. It was definitely unlike anything I have ever read before. I enjoyed the quick and fast-paced nature of the writing. I’m really eager to read my copy of American Psycho as soon as possible. I’m curious to know if it will make any connections to the Rules of Attraction or if it is even told in the same writing style. If you are looking for something slightly fucked up and over the top, I would say that The Rules of Attraction is definitely for you.

--

Initial Post Reading Thoughts:

This is probably one of the most uniquely written novels I have ever read. The overall tone of the story reminded me a lot of A Clockwork Orange and Trainspotting. It's one of those stories that feels a little unsettling for some reason. The Rules of Attraction is definitely very risque and slightly over the top, but that's part of what makes it so alluring.

[Gabrielle (Reading Rampage) · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book made me so glad to be 30…

The blurb says that this book is about the “death of romance”… But I feel this is a little bit more complicated than that. Sure “The Rules of Attraction” follows four unspeakably awful undergrads as they get tangled up in the most fucked up love-triangle I’ve ever read. As they agonize childishly over their various experiences, disappointments and mistakes, it’s hard to feel for them: none of them have any moral compass, maturity, honesty or self-awareness. They project huge, unrealistic expectations on each other, but never vocalize them, then hold bitter grudges against each other for failing tests they didn’t know they were going through…

Is this hilarious or sad? I guess that depends on how cynical you are! Ellis knows how to write, so this snapshot of college life and it’s horribly gritty and immoral details is an interesting read, but it is also repulsive. But that’s just his style: if you have never read him before, you should know that vacuous, depraved and apathetic characters are his thing. The lenses of dark humour with which he looks at the college experience can be very funny: but it is only funny because it’s pathetic, and I am not sure I feel inclined to laugh at that.

That being said, the multiple POVs of the same events is fascinating and entertaining. I'm always mesmerized by the way people interpret the exact same moment in such a wildly different ways, and these kids being unable to communicate adequately, well... you can imagine how that goes!

Several readers and critics have pointed out the realism of what Ellis describes in this book, assuming that everyone to ever set foot on a college campus fell into a bottomless pit of weed, drunk blackouts and awkward sex. Maybe I am a huge nerd, but I went to college to get a degree… If the “Rules of Attraction” is as realistic as they say, I’m very glad I was not in that crowd.

Marginally better than “Less Than Zero”, not as good as “American Psycho”. I think my Ellis-reading experiment is over.

[GTF · Rating 4 out of 5]

'The Rules of Attraction' is a dark satire that follows the lives of hedonistic and unsympathetic college students. Centred around an unusual love triangle between its three protagonists, the novel is a multi-perspective tale that depicts different forms of desperation and abrasiveness. Packed with page-turning scandal and sharp narration, the book is a strangely intoxicating read that quickly moves from sensational events to bizarre tragedies. Overall, this novel largely portrays the world as a dog-eat-dog environment, and implies that the idea of being loved and cared about by your peers is totally daft.

[Ernst]

Ich habe das nicht gelesen, aber gestern die ziemlich gute Verfilmung gesehen. Aller Voraussicht nach werde ich das auch in Zukunft nicht lesen. Inhaltlich weiß ich ja nun einigermaßen Bescheid. Das Milieu ist mir aus anderen seiner Romane bestens bekannt und interessiert mich einfach nicht mehr so sehr. College, Drogen, Sex und eine Horde junger, schöner, verwöhnter Kids auf der Suche nach dem nächsten Kick oder so etwas wie ihrer Identität. Die polierte Oberfläche, die BEE zeigen will, und das ewige wer liebt/treibt es mit wem, kratzt mich einfach nicht mehr.
Nach Unter Null und Imperial Bedrooms bin ich dieser Szenerie überdrüssig und ehrlich gesagt war ich auch von The Shards weniger begeistert als erhofft.

Trotzdem bleibt er ein Autor zu dessen neuen Romanen ich jederzeit wieder blind greifen würde. Sei es nur aus Neugier, ob er mal was Neues wagt.

[Jessica · Rating 5 out of 5]

People who did not like this book simply did not understand it. While this book has the ability to stand on it's on, the real genius is how it acts ad a platform that allows ellis's characters (from all other works) to interact with one another outside the narcissism that confines their own stories. Those who complain that this book lacks plot or character growth, have failed to ask why that is. This book is an introspective account, told in first person narrative, from various (mainly three) perspectives. The setting is not Camden college, but in the minds of these young characters. Ellis brilliantly depicts how the events that take place over a few months time, are perceived and interpreted by those involved. The book begins and ends in the middle of a sentence, symbolically stating that perhaps the reader should interpret the work as a whole in the same way. This book is about the here and now, the present moments of these peoples lives. Any beginning or end would provide a context that might and most likely would

[Catkinson82 · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is the most depressing, nasty book I've read in a long time. I read it all in one go last night, since I have a hard time not finishing books once I start them, but I couldn't stand the thought of having to come back to it. There may be some literary merit to the book that I can't appreciate it because I'm so repulsed by the characters, but I rather doubt it. The book certainly captures the complete lack of affect and total self-absorption of the characters, as well as the compulsive, endless consumption without any enjoyment or desire, which characterized a certain set in the 80's. The description of shared events changes from narrator to narrator because they are all flattering themselves and are thoughtless of others. The narrators almost never describe the setting, the reader gets almost no picture of Camden college, because it doesn't matter to these idiots. Beauty, nature, architecture would fail to move them at all. (Victor's trip through Europe is a prime example of this) Also, everybody they know already knows Camden back to front. The college is taken utterly for granted, certainly has nothing to do with learning, it is just the faded backdrop for their repetitive evenings of drinking and screwing each other. Nobody really has real friends; they aimlessly, reasonlessly do things that should hurt their friends, but the friends don't really care about anything either, so no one is hurt. They are all numb. As a few of them say, "Nobody ever knows anybody." Nobody has goals or direction, no one even gets anywhere by accident, nobody has any hope. They don't even really care if they live or die, as evidenced by the casual attempts at suicide now and again.
The fact that there is even the barest trace of a resemblance between my life and the lives of these characters is deeply disturbing. I can't imagine wanting to read this book, if my life was like this, and I can't imagine wanting to read this book if my life was (thankfully) nothing like this. It's all just too ugly.

[Blair · Rating 4 out of 5]

At the beginning of the year, I decided that in 2020 I would devote some time to working through my sprawling to-read list, whether that meant actually reading the books or throwing them out. A second-hand copy of The Rules of Attraction had been sitting on my shelves for years, and I rather thought I might have missed the moment to read and/or enjoy it. Perhaps rather embarrassingly, though, I loved it. It's nihilistic, sure, but also SO well observed, hyper-quotable, and parts of it had me in stitches (especially the scene in which a group of students rush their friend to hospital only for a bizarrely incompetent doctor to declare him dead – while he's sitting up and talking). The characters are almost universally loathsome, but – and I wonder whether this is something I would've missed if I'd read it when I was 20 – there's vulnerability and naivety detectable in their desperate antics. The novel as a whole is fast, funny and brilliantly awful, but it's also somewhat more human than I was expecting.

TinyLetter

[Neil Walker · Rating 5 out of 5]

A tale of hedonism from Bret Easton Ellis, filled with sex and drugs.

Bret Easton Ellis is of my biggest influences as an author and this is probably the Bret Easton Ellis novel that most influenced Drug Gang. It contains similar themes and social commentary. To quote from the book itself, “I think we've all lost some sort of feeling.”

This postmodern masterwork gives great insight into the possible impact and outcomes of a nihilistic mindset.

[Matthew Ted · Rating 4 out of 5]

50th book of 2020.

This is probably the worst time to read Ellis, as he's so damn depressing. Disaffection is the perfect word for his books, the way you feel when you're reading them. (I must say, also, how great is this cover? Not sure why it is, but I think it's great.)

Despite this, by Goodreads standards, has the same rating as Less Than Zero, American Psycho and Lunar Park, I think this has been the best Ellis yet. Let me try to explain. American Psycho is just Less Than Zero on some serious, serious drugs - but bad drugs, the ones that give you the worst trips, like nightmares. This, funnily enough, actually being the novel between the two, is a nice middle-ground. There isn't too much violence, and though it's everything I expected, drugs, sex, depression, suicide... it's not quite as bad as what comes next for Bret Easton Ellis - though nothing is.

There's quite a nostalgic slope coming out of my University library; that's a funny way of describing it. But, I couldn't fathom the number of times I've walked down that slope talking to someone about books, or classes, or food, or money. In that respect, it's a nostalgic slope. The other day, I was speaking to a woman I've never met before. Middle-aged, quite quiet, so the conversation always required a lot of attention, and gentle. She was nice. She told me that she loved Bret Easton Ellis, which surprised me. I gave a spiel about my thoughts on Ellis (hearing how it sounded as I said it, and felt sick at myself) and she agreed with me. You don't want to look but you can't help yourself, was my main point. It's a window into another life, too. And I think Ellis gets flak because what he's writing isn't romantic. He's writing about a lost generation, like Fitzgerald and Hemingway did, but their generation didn't have copious amounts of sex, or do enough cocaine to kill an elephant, or wave machetes around. It's a difficult relationship with Ellis, it's awe, but also disgust. I guess that's what makes him so interesting.

Rules of Attraction is more obviously scathing. It's ironic. It's even playful. Here are some quotes... They aren't nice. I'll say that now.

A boy's thoughts on Kafka in a lecture:
'Well, like, the dude was totally depressed because, well, the dude turned into a bug and freaked out.
(He's not wrong, credit to him. Though maybe 'freaked out' is a little generous of Samsa's reaction.)

Norris pays and ask the shy, acne-scarred cashier if she knows who wrote 'Notes from the Underground'. The girl, who's so homely you couldn't sleep with her for money, not for anything, smiles and says no, and that he can look in the bestseller paperbacks if he'd like. We leave the store and Norris sneers a little too meanly, "Townies are so ignorant."

A particularly crude quote, from a poetry group:
'Yeah, I've been working on this concept that when Man fucks animals, He's fucking Nature, since He's becomes so computerised and all.' Stump stops and takes a swallow from a silver flask he brings out of his pocket and says, 'I'm working on the dog section now where this guy ties a dog up and is having intercourse with it because He thinks dog is God. D-O-G. . .G-O-D. God spelled backwards. Get it? See?'

Most interestingly are the character crossovers. One of our protagonists in this is Patrick Bateman's brother, Sean Bateman. Of course, Patrick Bateman is our American Psycho. He even has several pages from his perspective, though the voice doesn't quite match what we get later on, so Ellis maybe hadn't quite found out what he would become. The other interesting one, is Clay's several pages, who was our protagonist in Less Than Zero - he was the only voice we heard in that novel, compared to the many in this one. So all in all, a good Ellis book.
Does that make it a 'good' book? I'm not sure. Yes and no.
Do I like Ellis: yes and no.

[Daniel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another writer I’ve always delayed reading. This grew on me the longer it went on. 80s college kids. Different narrators, some who are frustratingly unreliable. Tons of sex. Booze. Drugs. Betrayal. People being awful to each other. Sounds like a fun time, right? Hahaha. Well, I’m surprised I liked it because the first third or so didn’t really grab me. I hated everyone in it. But, I was interested. It’s truly dark in parts, darkly funny in others.

Also, if a book had a soundtrack this would be a great one. Lots of my favorite bands were brought up or talked about. Talking Heads, REM, New Order, Roxy Music. Many more were mentioned. I kept putting the book down to listen to a song I hadn’t heard in years.

[Ash · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best books on insight. The setting makes this book even more pleasurable-a college campus in the 80s. We've all contemplated simple questions like "Does my best friend secretly hate me?" or "Does my boyfriend think about someone else when he's sleeping with me?". This book makes your insides squirm with embarrassment in the most hilarious form. There's so many great things about this book-the ending, the graphic sex scenes and how Victor is really a boring piece of shit. You never get attached to one cahracter, Ellis switches too fast between them, but it's what makes the book so good. You just laugh and feel sorry for all these lost assholes. I will always say "I'm sorry what did you say?" if someone asks me for quesadillas. Rock n' roll.
On a side note, if you plan on reading Bret Ellis in the full, read this first. All his characters have books of their own. The L.A. guy, he's in Glamorama. Bateman's brother Patrick, he's in American Psycho. I get upset when I read the best book first, but in this case you should.

[Lyubov · Rating 2 out of 5]

Too pretentious and pseudo decadent book even for me. I am more than okay with the suffering of the characters and huge amounts of sex but only if these things have some, any kind of meaning for the whole plot. And in The Rules of Attraction there is no such thing as meaning. I get it that Ellis wants to tell us exactly that about the lives of the so-called lost generation of the 80`s but I am sure that story could be told in much more elegant and why not interesting way.

[fantine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Spend a semester in the 1980’s at a remote New Hampshire liberal arts college where rules are nonexistent.

There’re the drama students that are vaguely gay, the unhinged fine arts students, the pretentious writers and poets. Everyone’s on drugs, depressed and yearning; for escape, for release, for connection, for more drugs. But majors change as fast as relationships and identity is fluid or perhaps nonexistent, boundaries not even worth considering.

Alternating perspectives establish these characters as having no real character. Sure they make decisions, often the poorest ones, but can we trust them? When events are recounted by another in not quite the same way?

‘I wasn't acting on passion. I was simply acting.’

This novel has cemented my obsession with the BEELU (Bret Easton Ellis Literary Universe) which in many ways reminds me of JD Salinger’s world of the Glass family; both in the weaving of characters and the metafiction element of the author’s presence amongst his characters. This kind of writing just really tickles my freaking fancy.

There are cameos galore: Clay post-Less Than Zero and not coping, Patrick Bateman’s compulsive liar brother Sean. Alternate reality Judy Poovey.

AND—
—as a Donna Tartt stan I can’t not mention the weird group of classics students ‘probably roaming the countryside sacrificing farmers and performing pagan rituals’ (this was published five years before the Secret History btw) ??. What I wouldn’t give to go back in time and spend a weekend at Bennington College... but only if I could take a taser or something

‘A great numb feeling washes over me as I let go of the past and look forward to the future. Pretend to be a vampire. I don't really need to pretend, because it's who I am, an emotional vampire. I've just come to expect it. Vampires are real. That I was born this way. That I feed off of other people's real emotions. Search for this night's prey. Who will it be?’

I see why Easton Ellis is controversial, why he is not for everyone. But he is so for me. I’d heard so much about how dark and twisted he was, and sure. But why would I want to read about the disillusionment and cruelty of the elite in a form that shies away from the horror? He commits fully, moreover his work is fucking funny. Like I was laughing out loud. And I think the reactions truly cement his satire skills because this feels blown up, dramatised, but in no way inauthentic.

Detached and hollow, but is the absence of something nothing? Or something else altogether?

[Rachel Louise Atkin · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was so good. Not as good as American Psycho, but better than Less Than Zero. Following a group of friends as Camden Collage it details their life of partying, drugs, booze and sex. It was seriously amazing. Clay was in it and so was Patrick Bateman which made me very happy. Plus Donna Tartt reference!

[Jaq · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rido anch'io, apro la porta, guardo Masur, che sta ridendo, ancora stupito, e poi chiudo la porta, programmando un'overdose.
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- Voglio conoscerti, - uggiola Sean. - Cosa? - Conoscerti. Voglio conoscerti. - Mi supplica. - Cosa significa? Conoscermi? - gli chiedo. - Conoscermi? Nessuno mai conosce nessuno. Mai. Tu non mi conoscerai mai.

[Kelly (and the Book Boar) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Find all of my reviews at: http://52bookminimum.blogspot.com/

He loves her, but used to do it with him, who used to do it with her, who is still pining away for a different him who is currently in Europe thinking about a different her, or is she still really hung up on the him who used to do it with her current him????? Told in a free association style of rambling diary-like entries, Sean, Lauren and Paul talk about the hits and misses in their respective love lives while attending college in New England.

While the first few pages may have you thinking otherwise, this is a much lighter side of Bret Easton Ellis. Dark comedy is a fine art, and this author does it well. Apparently there is also a movie version that was made into a gazillion years ago, but as I was not a fan of “Dawson” or the Van Der Douche it never hit my radar.

However, when doing a little googly-goo of said movie, I found out this happens:




Hmmmmm, maybe I should try and track down a copy. Just to see if it maintains the integrity of the book, of course.

Blame it on the fact that I have what I’m assuming is an undiagnosed case of Ebola and am unable to take over-the-counter cold medicine without lapsing into a 12-hour coma, I completely glossed over the fact that Sean’s last name was Bateman. It took until Page 237 and a chapter told from his brother Patrick’s perspective to put two and two together. What a deliciously wicked way to help explain the nuttery that was the Sean Bateman character. If you’re looking for something that is disturbing, but not something that requires a barf bag or a trip to the shrink like American Psycho might, this is a good selection.

[Ria · Rating 4 out of 5]

''He likes him. He likes her. I think she likes someone else, probably me. That’s all. No logic.''



Hella horny college kids. Also huge cunts, huge narcissists. The movie, which i adore and own on DVD, is way better.
Love the weird BEE *Bret Easton Ellis* universe.

''-I was in that class too.
-I didn't ever see u in there.
-That's why i failed it.''
Bruh, such a mood.

Fuuuuck, i miss uni. Yes granted i went to class and then after like 1-2hours left to go to a cafe but still. Online classes ain't fun. Haven't attended any but that's because i work.

[Jason · Rating 1 out of 5]

I preferred the movie. i never prefer the movie.