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American Psycho
Tue Oct 27 14:42:11 GMT 2009
"Abandon All Hope Ye Who Enter Here": the opening words of American Psycho are an explicit statement of intent, and indeed the novel that follows those words is more or less a descent into hell, not only for the characters that people Ellis' lurid depiction of 1980's Wall Street, but also for the reader. Bateman, the novel's psychotic protagonist, flips from obsessive detailing of the banality of his yuppie lifestyle to visceral descriptions of brutal murder in a matter of paragraphs: a disarming juxtaposition that occurs throughout the book, and yet manages consistently to surprise the reader. Bateman's insanity remains as shocking as his arrogance, vanity and tedious obsessions remain familiar, reflections and echoes of our own lives. We see ourselves in the blood-flecked face of the psychopath, and as such are forced to look for evidence of the psychopath within ourselves: by no means an easy examination to undertake, but one that makes for a novel that compels as it terrifies, titillates as it sickens. Certainly not a read for the faint of heart, but a brilliant, perspective-altering book nonetheless.