Less Than Zero |  | Author: Bret Easton Ellis
Publisher: Vintage
Category: eBooks
This item is no longer available
Rating:  247 reviews
Sales Rank: 2425
Format: Kindle Book
Media: Kindle Edition
Pages: 208
Number Of Items: 1
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
ASIN: B003O86QD0
Publication Date: May 28, 2010
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Product Description
Set in Los Angeles in the early 1980's, this coolly mesmerizing novel is a raw, powerful portrait of a lost generation who have experienced sex, drugs, and disaffection at too early an age, in a world shaped by casual nihilism, passivity, and too much money a place devoid of feeling or hope.
Clay comes home for Christmas vacation from his Eastern college and re-enters a landscape of limitless privilege and absolute moral entropy, where everyone drives Porches, dines at Spago, and snorts mountains of cocaine. He tries to renew feelings for his girlfriend, Blair, and for his best friend from high school, Julian, who is careering into hustling and heroin. Clay's holiday turns into a dizzying spiral of desperation that takes him through the relentless parties in glitzy mansions, seedy bars, and underground rock clubs and also into the seamy world of L.A. after dark.
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 247
 Less than Zero September 5, 2010
Tutor
After all the hype, I expected more. At this moment, it is too depressing to read.
 Great Novel! September 5, 2010
striker
Someone recommended this book to me because of its influence on Bloc Party's "Song For Clay (Disappear Here)" from the album "A Weekend In The City". Considering they are one of my favorite artists I figured the book must be pretty good.
I am very glad I purchased "Less Than Zero" because it instantly became one of my favorite novels I have ever read. I would recommend this to anyone who enjoyed "The Catcher In The Rye" or enjoys Bloc Party.
 "What About Me?" - Less Than Zero, 25 Years On August 23, 2010
D. Scott (Athens, GA USA)
I loved the movie Less Than Zero when it first came out, but I just got around to reading the book now, 25 years later. I must admit that this is a difficult review to write, and I have been thinking about it for a while.
Less Than Zero is laughably outdated and full of vapid, two dimensional people, but isn't that the point? I cannot figure out if Bret Easton Ellis skillfully crafted Less Than Zero this way to make a point, or if it is a device used to cover up the characterization and storytelling shortcomings of a very young writer (amazingly, he wrote it while still in college). Still, here we are 25 years later reading and debating it, so the answer probably lies somewhere in between.
Now that I am a parent myself, Less Than Zero's portrayal of the children of the Los Angeles elite in the mid-1980's is both disturbing (rampant casual sex and use of hard drugs) and downright shocking (a snuff film, a gang rape of a heroin-drugged 12-year-old, and sightseeing trips to an alley to see a dead body that no one bothers to report to the police). The most unsettling thing of all, though, is the characters' utter indifference to it all.
I see the point that Ellis is making about a society of "too much, too soon" here, but it is very hard to swallow the assertion that these people are so completely devoid of any knowledge of or caring about what is right and wrong that they would just stand by passively and watch these things go on without doing anything about them, like watching so much cable television. You mean to tell me that there is hardly one parent in the entire book that even cares to tell their kids what country they are visiting while on vacation? Or one who cares if their children suddenly disappear for days on end with no explanation? Again, I get the author's point, but the incredibly huge generalizations Ellis uses in Less Than Zero lose their effectiveness upon closer scrutiny.
Great read for the younger crowd!!! August 22, 2010
Mud
It is a great read for the younger crowd for sure. Older people will enjoy it but you really need to be born in the middle to late 70's - early 90's to really get a kick out of this book.
It is very well written as is all of Bret's books.
A+++ Read
Pick it up today!
 LA June 29, 2010
Kenneth W Long Jr
This is a very scary book! One of the earlier scenes in it has the protagonist hooking up with another man. (Both of the guys are drunk.)
After that, it's all about alienation (and drugs.) Clay's best friend from high school, named Julian, has become addicted to heroin and has to become a male prostitute to pay people off. In one memorable scene, Clay stays in a hotel room while Julian is hooking up with a man.
In another memorable scene, Clay is at his drug dealer's apartment and watches a snuff film, where two teenagers are raped and killed by a big black guy with a chain saw.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 247
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