Glamorama

Glamorama

Bret Easton Ellis

This has definitely turned into the summer of Bret Easton Ellis! I only have one book left to read by him, but he does have another coming out next summer. I had pretty high expectations for this one before reading it, especially because I had read reviews online that compared it to American Psycho. However, in some places I found it to be a disturbing rehash of a lot of the same themes.

The plot (or narrative) follows Victor Ward (who is also a character in The Rules of Attraction) as he tries to repair his modeling career. To do this, he escapes to Paris for a few months (I think, the concept of time is not clear in this book). While there, he meets some old friends and unwittingly gets involved in a terrorist organization. You're probably thinking this sounds a lot like Zoolander. Well, it's much smarter than that, although I do love that movie.

The book's strength is again Ellis' writing ability. He handles a concept with which many of us thought at one time or another with incredible skill. Basically, Victor imagines that he is in a movie throughout the book. He imagines reshooting scenes with characters, speaking with the director about how to act when he is told certain information, and even where to go. He claims to receive a script every morning, which he reads sometimes but more often just chooses to be surprised. Eventually this costs him, because he messes up a few "scenes" and makes a dangerous situation worse.

The arc of the story is far too complicated to discuss here, but suffice it to say if you like fast-paced books, you may want to look elsewhere. Like American Psycho, the narrator describes what he sees with minute detail, whether it is the guest list at a party (the name dropping here is funny, but it can get old after a while) or a sexual encounter. The violence is also quite horrific at time as well, but because Ellis sets Victor up to be somewhat of a materialistic imbecile, I questioned Victor's attention to suffering.

This is certainly not a bad book, and if you like experimental literature that plays with style, time, and narration, I would certainly recommend it. I've reviewed Ellis all summer, so I won't repeat myself here. If I had read this before American Psycho, I might have been more impressed. When I finished reading it, though, I had the eerie feeling I'd seen most of it before.

Rating: 3 / 5