The Shards by Bret Easton Ellis | Book Review
A book review of The Shards by Bret Easton Ellis.
★★★
The Shards by Bret Easton Ellis was my most anticipated book for this year. The premise sounded exactly like something that I would enjoy in a good horror or thriller novel: serial killer, strange cults, 80s vibe, and hopefully a good plot twist/ mindfuck at the end. What I got instead was a bit different, and yes, I dare say disappointing. So keep in mind this review is going to be less positive than most of the reviews found online. The novel isn’t bad but it is definitely not mindblowing (and in my opinion way too long…).
Starting with the positives, the novel does contain a specific atmosphere which is probably only found in Los Angeles during the 80s. Most of the details in Elli's writing were focused on creating this vibe by telling the reader every soundtrack that the main character listened to, every watched movie, and all the street names. Another interesting aspect is the fact that Ellis is actually the main character himself; a rich teenager in LA trying to survive his senior year in high school. At the beginning of the book, we encounter Bret at his current age but soon enough we fall down the rabbit hole of his mind and start to experience his teenage years; meeting his friends and enemies, driving around LA mindlessly without a goal, fucking or fantasizing about it, and stalking other characters.
It is not a slow year for him, many things are happening in his life and surroundings. A new boy starts attending his school during senior year, a violent cult is harassing the city, and there is probably a serial killer on the loose targeting young girls. As an aspiring writer, Bret jumps from speculations to drastic conclusions and makes every situation more dramatic than it has to be. At the same time, he is working on his first real novel Less Than Zero. The overlap between reality and fiction is an interesting concept which I liked and sometimes found confusing.
The looking back into the past trope usually works fine if it is done well. One of the books that does this perfectly, in my opinion, is Penpal by Dathan Auerbach. In The Shards as well, I felt like I traveled back in time with Bret to see his youth. I just was not that interested. Reading about spoiled rich kids and their problems is not exactly my thing. I honestly don’t know if some people used to live this way, but it all sounded too unrealistic for me: the empty villas with no parents, abuse of drugs on a daily basis, and of course… no consequences whatsoever. Weird.
A work of fiction may afford to feel unrealistic if it is still good. So, I was waiting for the right moment. The plot twist… that never came. Even if it did, it was just too late. At the end of the book, I did not really care anymore. The last hundred pages did contain some suspense, but the novel is just way too long. On multiple occasions, there were too many explanations and a lot of the details sounded repetitive. The street names in LA don’t say much to me and I don’t need a whole Spotify list of music, which I will never look up myself (I understand that this critique is more a personal preference, but still, it was too often mentioned).
Lastly, the biggest issue for me was the dialogue. In most scenes, it did not add anything to the story and again it was often unnecessarily long. In every conversation, our main character had to ask ‘’What do you mean?’’ even though it was ridiculously obvious what the other character meant.
I would like to end on a good note: the unreliable character trope is nicely done! This did save the story for me after all. If the book was shorter, with less detailed descriptions of LA and more to-the-point dialogue, then the sociopathic character of Bret would have been mindblowing.
I do understand that Bret Easton Ellis has a specific writing style and maybe The Shards was not the best introduction to his work. Next, I will read American Psycho which sounds like a better start to me.