Bret Easton Ellis

LA, 1981. Buckley College in heat. 17-year-old Bret is a senior at the exclusive Buckley prep school when a new student arrives with a mysterious past. Robert Mallory is bright, handsome, charismatic, and shielding a secret from Bret and his friends, even as he becomes a part of their tightly knit circle. Bret’s obsession with Mallory is equalled only by his increasingly unsettling preoccupation with The Trawler, a serial killer on the loose who seems to be drawing ever closer to Bret and his friends, taunting them with grotesque threats and horrific, sharply local acts of violence.

Can he trust his friends – or his own mind – to make sense of the danger they appear to be in? Thwarted by the world and by his own innate desires, buffeted by unhealthy fixations, Bret spirals into paranoia and isolation as the relationship between The Trawler and Robert Mallory hurtles inexorably toward a collision.

Gripping, sly, suspenseful, deeply haunting and often darkly funny, The Shards is a mesmerizing fusing of fact and fiction that brilliantly explores the emotional fabric of Bret’s life at 17 – sex and jealousy, obsession and murderous rage.

The Shards

hessensitive

alexi gunner

"It's about young people," I confirmed. I remember what Terry said to What do they do? Terry asked, glancing up at me as he kept eating. I didn't know how to answer this because it didn't matter to me what the characters did. They existed, and I just wanted to convey a mood, immerse a reader into a particular atmosphere that was built from carefully selected details. What did the young people do? This suggested there was a plot, a story that was going to resolve itself. They hung out, they listened to music, they had sex, they went to clubs, sometimes they consumed drugs, they attended parties in ansions where there were pools and tennis courts and Screening Rooms, they drove aimlessly around the city at night, their parents wer absent, they went shopping along Rodeo, they moved through the world alone, they stared at chandeliers high on acid.

Has the same apathetic, 'numbness as a feeling' vibe that Less Than Zero had which I find strangely enjoyable. The ending fell a little flat though the book was filled with suspenseful scenes providing a liberal amount of shock value. 

g.m.

Geoffrey Froggatt

** spoiler alert **
           I love Bret Easton Ellis. His novels have such a unique vibe and energy to them, and I fell in love with his bleak yet colourful storytelling ever since reading The Rules of Attraction in a single night. The Shards is a fictionalized, first person, retelling of the time when high schooler Bret Easton Ellis is coming of age and figuring out his sexuality, a story about the end of innocence, and the perilous passage from adolescence into adulthood, set in a vibrantly fictionalized Los Angeles in 1981 as a serial killer begins targeting teenagers throughout the city. The novel is prefaced by a sweetly sincere (or is it?) thank you note from the notorious author. The story proper begins with Bret Easton Ellis looking metafictionally back across time at the defining events that befell him and his friends in the autumn of 1981, during their final year in high school. I listened to the audiobook narrated by the author, and that instantly gave the story a closer sense of intimacy. I love the idea of fictionalized or exaggerated memoirs, simply because it’s interesting trying to decipher what was real and to what extent. I always wonder which glimmers of truth would shine through and what the author slips into the narrative. I always imagine people featured in fictionalized stories reading for their characters and discovering how the author truly feels about them and their time together. Despite growing up in such different environments, I felt connected with Bret when he spoke about the hidden world of growing up as a queer teenager in a time where you couldn’t safely be out and be yourself. Bret’s prose and his storytelling skills are powerful and immersive, even when there’s not much going on in the story, he has me in his grip. Bret’s secret non-relationship with a loner classmate felt impactful just because the dynamic was beat for beat the same to another toxic relationship I had in my youth. This story was very good and depicting the social mind games that go along with socializing with moody teenagers in a high school social scene. The passages where Bret discuss the power that being 17 in queer scenes has, and how the shift in attention from older queer men is both intoxicating and dangerous, hit home. Bret verbalized things about the queer experience that I hadn’t even thought to put into words.

“And I just stood there in the fading afternoon light, realizing at seventeen that I was already staring into my past - that the past had a meaning that would always define you. I remember this being one of my first moments nearing adulthood, when I realized how powerful memory was or at least it was the first time it hurt the most. And there was nothing I could do about the pain of the past, it just settled over me.”

The fictionalized murders that appear in the novel were an interesting choice, but it does give the story an urgency and quiet danger that I’m sure was felt in the author’s adolescence. The entire plot with Matt, Bret’s casual hookup and vague friend, felt heartbreaking, and even though that plot thread ends dramatically, I’m sure there was a certain metaphor to that story and the author was using this story to exorcise how he felt about that adolescent relationship and it’s ending. This book made me realize how tumultuous adolescence is for everybody, even if their lives seem vastly different to your own. I think that time in our lives feels so heavy because we’re all trying to figure ourselves out while navigating social mind games and feeling everything so intensely for the first time. I loved the honesty of how Bret’s privileged circle thought nothing of racism/homophobia/xenophobia because it was 1981 and the world was just different back then. So often do people tell themselves that they’d never engage in bigotry when looking towards the past, but the reality is that whatever the mainstream social norms dictate will be what people inherently follow and adapt their lives to. Most people will look the other way when given the option. I liked Bret’s honesty about his past self and the world back then, as many writers would have simply tried to rewrite history to make their past selves seem more likeable. The pacing in certain parts sometimes meandered, but it always felt intriguing with Bret’s excellent prose and narrative voice. There were certain parts that made me uncomfortable due to a character using another character’s mental health history as proof they’re dangerous, but that’s just a personal reaction as that subject hits close to home, the moments fit the narrative and setting. I loved how Bret’s character played off of Robert and how the two seemed to play mind games with each other before Bret tries to expose him. The way Bret could have easily been implicated in the murders and taken the fall for them was an intriguing plot thread. I was surprised at how dark and visceral the murders were, especially since we don’t see an attack until the end and only see the aftermath after the fact prior to this. 

Ellis is a true literary craftsman, and the novel’s imagery is lush and gorgeous. Fans of his earlier fiction will enjoy many of his signature strokes: murder, music, cocaine, Valium, obscene wealth, an unraveling narrator, brand names, palm trees, blood, stalkers, dogs, cults, disaffected teenagers, negligent parents. That being said, The Shards has an earnest vulnerability that his previous works have lacked. The novel is almost 600 pages long, and the narration loops back on itself in a way that not only builds suspense, but also creates a visceral sensation of the slowness of time for a 17-year-old who feels trapped in a life that is not his own. And yet, the length and repetitions can be so taxing that the reader wonders if the book could have been shorter and still achieved the same psychedelic, collage-like effect. This book is unique in that although the plot itself and pacing aren’t my favourite, the skill in the craftsmanship of the writing carried this entire novel. Even though this novel deals with a mix of real events and fictional, these characters and this story felt real in a way that felt significant. This is a novel that simultaneously occupies a few different spaces. Parts of it reads like a crime novel and others like a very dark, sexualized, drug-infused coming-of-age story. But there is also a lot of humor, a deep, scathing look at privilege, and a very personal exploration of the things that haunt us, the way distrust affects us, and how sex, growing up, jealousy, fear, and obsession can shape the life of someone at the cusp of their teenage years. Similarly, the story delves deep into what Bret sees as the performance of everyday life; the way everything is a narrative, a "pantomime," a "script." Lastly, and perhaps more noticeable than anything else, The Shards is a very personal work of metafiction in which Bret Easton Ellis shares not only a name with his narrator but also a novel (Less Than Zero), a plethora of identity markers and obsessions, and a school. On the surface, The Shards is a relatively simple story about an obsessive young man learning to navigate the interstitial space between being a teenager and adulthood. However, it's also much more; this is a novel about obsession, the masks everyone wears as they go through life, and how isolation exacerbates paranoia. I think Bret Easton Ellis did what he wanted to do with this novel successfully. I think the vagueness of the narrative reveals the meaning behind the title and the novel. I think certain characters are “shards” of the author’s personality, and there were different killers behind different murders and attacks. I think that the whole point of the novel is that Robert doesn't exist. Like Robert says in their first interaction: "When you talk to me you're really talking to yourself, dude". While I don’t think the novel recounts literal events, I think the author used the setting and narrative to examine the different pieces of himself and his identity. I think readers shouldn’t get too caught up in the true identity of the killer, as I think that this story is meant to be more than that. Though it is fun to speculate, I’m more interested in what the author was trying to process with this novel, and I like that I’ll probably never know the full truth of things. There are many details in this novel and I’m sure it’ll be just as impactful (if not more) upon a reread. Bret Easton Ellis' first novel in more than a decade is worth the wait, and I can’t wait to see what he does next.

“Our odds looked good: we were young and alive and strong and nothing could hurt us, and there wasn't anything clouding this perception, a fable about our place in the world, and we ignored the intrusive notions of fate and horror and hideous death that might kidnap us from the golden dome of adolescence we resided under.”

Kinda obsessed with this, and it convinced me that Bret Easton Ellis might actually be worth reading. It has everything I could ever want: a delusional narrator, the collapse of a friend group, is about a murder but isn’t /about/ the murder. Could not put it down and could not anticipate what came next. 

Jacque

Really liked this one. I’ve read all from Ellis and this one is the best so far I think. It’s the 80’s, it’s Californian bratty kids, drugs, expensive cars and bloody horror. 

Andreas Jennische

Los Ángeles, 1981. A sus diecisiete años, Bret está a punto de empezar su último curso de secundaria en Buckley junto a su exclusivo y sofisticado grupo de amigos: Thom, Susan y Debbie, novia de Bret, experimentan con el sexo, el alcohol y las drogas mientras aprovechan los últimos días de verano. Pero este sueño paradisiaco se desmorona con la llegada de un nuevo alumno: Robert Mallory es brillante, guapo y carismático, pero algo en él no encaja, y nadie más que Bret parece darse cuenta de que ese algo podría estar relacionado con la aparición del Arrastrero, un asesino en serie que amenaza a los adolescentes de la ciudad y a sus mascotas.

Los destrozos

Miguel Angel Palmer Salva

Lorenzo Caputo

A sensational new novel from the bestselling author of Less Than Zero and American Psycho that tracks a group of privileged Los Angeles high school friends as a serial killer strikes across the city. His first novel in 13 years, The Shards is Bret Easton Ellis at his inimitable best. LA, 1981. Buckley College in heat. 17-year-old Bret is a senior at the exclusive Buckley prep school when a new student arrives with a mysterious past. Robert Mallory is bright, handsome, charismatic, and shielding a secret from Bret and his friends, even as he becomes a part of their tightly knit circle. Bret’s obsession with Mallory is equalled only by his increasingly unsettling preoccupation with The Trawler, a serial killer on the loose who seems to be drawing ever closer to Bret and his friends, taunting them with grotesque threats and horrific, sharply local acts of violence. Can he trust his friends – or his own mind – to make sense of the danger they appear to be in? Thwarted by the world and by his own innate desires, buffeted by unhealthy fixations, Bret spirals into paranoia and isolation as the relationship between The Trawler and Robert Mallory hurtles inexorably toward a collision. Gripping, sly, suspenseful, deeply haunting and often darkly funny, The Shards is a mesmerizing fusing of fact and fiction that brilliantly explores the emotional fabric of Bret’s life at 17 – sex and jealousy, obsession and murderous rage.

Emma

Udit Desai

A novel of sensational literary and psychological suspense from the best-selling author of Less Than Zero and American Psycho that tracks a group of privileged high school friends in a vibrantly fictionalized 1980s Los Angeles as a serial killer strikes across the city Bret Easton Ellis’s masterful new novel is a story about the end of innocence, and the perilous passage from adolescence into adulthood, set in a vibrantly fictionalized Los Angeles in 1981 as a serial killer begins targeting teenagers throughout the city. Seventeen-year-old Bret is a senior at the exclusive Buckley prep school when a new student arrives with a mysterious past. Robert Mallory is bright, handsome, charismatic, and shielding a secret from Bret and his friends even as he becomes a part of their tightly knit circle. Bret’s obsession with Mallory is equaled only by his increasingly unsettling preoccupation with the Trawler, a serial killer on the loose who seems to be drawing ever closer to Bret and his friends, taunting them—and Bret in particular—with grotesque threats and horrific, sharply local acts of violence. The coincidences are uncanny, but they are also filtered through the imagination of a teenager whose gifts for constructing narrative from the filaments of his own life are about to make him one of the most explosive literary sensations of his generation. Can he trust his friends—or his own mind—to make sense of the danger they appear to be in? Thwarted by the world and by his own innate desires, buffeted by unhealthy fixations, he spirals into paranoia and isolation as the relationship between the Trawler and Robert Mallory hurtles inexorably toward a collision. Set against the intensely vivid and nostalgic backdrop of pre-Less Than Zero L.A., The Shards is a mesmerizing fusing of fact and fiction, the real and the imagined, that brilliantly explores the emotional fabric of Bret’s life at seventeen—sex and jealousy, obsession and murderous rage. Gripping, sly, suspenseful, deeply haunting, and often darkly funny, The Shards is Ellis at his inimitable best.

A novel

Janes Breitenbach

Roman

Mark Berger

"A story about the end of innocence, and the perilous passage from adolescence into adulthood, set in a vibrantly fictionalized Los Angeles in 1981 as a serial killer begins targeting teenagers throughout the city"--

The Shards

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