Christina Reviews *Less Than Zero* by Bret Easton Ellis

          “This is the game that moves as you play . . .”
                                         --- X (the epigraph for Less Than Zero)

          This was one of those books I was required to read for grad school.  It’s not a book I would have probably been drawn to on my own, even though it was written by an author whose work I was somewhat familiar with.  Hey, I saw American Psycho and Rules of Attraction.  They were good.

          This is one of those hedonistic, kids-on-drugs stories.  Clay is an 18 year old college student who returns home for Christmas vacation.   And from that point on, his time and money goes up his nose.

          He hangs with his friends.  He keeps tabs on his friend Julian, in particular.  Julian is into some scary crap, and I suppose Clay is concerned.  Who knows why he cares.  He doesn’t seem to care much for anyone or anything--- least of all his girlfriend Blair.  As Blair puts it at one point in the novel:  “ ‘I don’t know if any other person I’ve been with has been really there, either. . . But at least they tried (204).’”

           The novel is broken up into short scenes, and I like that.  It makes it easier for me to read.  This was a very easy book to read in that sense.  But it is not a pleasant book to read.  Not everyone will be able to stomach it.  For example, there’s a scene where Clay walks out on his friends watching a snuff film and that was tame compared to some of the other stuff in this book.  I didn’t really like the book.  It’s kind of like a train wreck.

           I saw the movie.  The only thing it had in common with the book was the main characters’ names.  Bret Easton Ellis once said that the movie didn’t have one line of dialogue from the book.  Not one.  I don’t think that a movie has to be an exact replica of a book.  But if you’re going to dilute the message so much and turn it into a story that bears so little resemblance to the source material that it might as well be St. Elmo’s Fire Part II, then call it St. Elmo’s Fire Part II.  Don’t call it Less Than Zero. 

          That’s just lame.

          I give this book three stars.