Customer Reviews
an original idea - By: SJSmith, 26 Aug 2008 
Whereas I found `American Psycho' an easy & absorbing read, I found this much harder work. Although rewardingin the end it took a while to get into. The part on the cruise ship became confusing for me & I was uncertain at times when we were focusing on a real plot or not. I enjoyed the concept of the camera crew, always having your lifein the spot life etc but then I felt it lost something. If you don't reflect too much & try to analyse as you are reading it then this is a great read. I found myself trying to link characters together & once all the pieces of the jigsaw started to fall into place it was as if one of them wasn't quite right & you had to start all over again. However, it is a clever thriller & you never know which character to trust. Your ideas are continually blown to pieces as another piece of the puzzle is unravelled.
I loved the chapters going downin number, like a countdown. But a countdown to what exactly? A new script, a new scene, a new conspiracy? Both clever & intriguing to read this novel rather surprisingly sucked mein & even though at times I didn't have the foggiest idea what was going on, I wasin the full long journey. It's difficult to work out Victor with his change of surnames - can we change our identity so easily & become someone different? Or is it something new to hide behind, to prevent us from having to reveal what lurks underneath the skin? Bret Easton Ellis takes celebrity culture & slowly picks away at it to let us see what exactly goes on behind the images we see on screen &in print.
I've had this book lounging on my shelves for quite a few years now, (6 to be exact) & I finally decided it needed to be read. I wish I'd read it sooner! Although not quite five stars for me, I'd happily recommend this novel & I certainly look forward to reading the other Ellis novel I own - The Rules of Attraction. It's a clever book & it's one that needs time devoting to it. You can't pick this up & then put it one side whilst you read another. It'll keep reminding you that it needs to be read! Devote some time to it & you will be rewarded with an intelligent & interesting masterpiece.
Dullarama - By: P. M. Stoddart, 18 Jul 2008 
First things first - i have never been totally convinced by Ellis's minimalist literary style. It can work brilliantly, such asin his scabrous 80s satire American Psycho, but it can be irritatingly banal, peripheral & boring such asin career nadir, The Rules of Attraction. There can be no doubting either that Ellis is capable of insightful, superb passages of prose, of which there are manyin Glamorama. No, the real problem with this novel is that there is no real plot, development, story or indeed characterisation whatsoever. Just a seemingly unconnected series of dots & anecdotes thrown together on a whim. It is a book unsure of what it's saying & how to say it.
Perhaps that's the point, the fact that it's all style & no substance ? Well, maybe, but Glamorama is long-winded, boring, mostly nonsensical gibberish & like it's major characters - lazy, self-obsessed, & one-dimensional. Yes, I know the characters are supposed to be shallow morons, but surely an author as skilled as Ellis can offer us more than who's sleeping with who, who's listening to whose albums, who's wearing what & where ad nauseum for 500 pages ? Ellis dissects this dull & superficial morass of models, would-be stars, hangers-on & beautiful people with easy laughs, preferring to mock & embarrass, instead of providing any sort of social insight or comment on our fixation with celebrity. So these people are vain, moneygrabbing, insecure, boring, careerist, starf@@ckers who'd shop their own mothers to get ahead ??? Really ? Who'd have thought.
Save the odd brilliant set-piece, witty one liner & typical Ellis propensity for sadism and/or violence, this is a confused, contrived, & unedifying mess. He's written worse, but is capable of far, far better.
Career Low Point - By: G. A. Reeves, 09 Jul 2006 Most of the negative reviews have nailed this book on the head: it's a rambling & pointless trawl through the fashion industry with brief interludes of international terrorism. Sounds confused? It is. And it leaves you with nothing except disappointment & mild confusion.
I won't give it one-star because there are a couple of incredibly powerful, & very violent, scenesin the book, which are describedin wonderfully stark prose, reminding me of DeLillo's colder, more sinister moments. One of these is a description of a 747 exploding mid-flight & the subsequent damage to the people on board. However, it is difficult to stomach & - unlike American Psycho, The Informers, etc. - you're not entirely sure that Ellis is justifiedin being so graphic. Also, Victor - the protagonist - is irritating, & the humour derived from his various shortcomings (low intelligence, vacuity, etc.) does not compensate for this.
I feel that Ellis wrote the book not because he wanted to but because he was contractually obliged to do so. Forget about this career low point & buy Lunar Park instead.
Are you guys reading the same book? - By: Mr. J. Timms, 26 May 2006 
I think possibly some of the other reviewers here are confused about what this book is about and, possibly, what Bret Easton Ellis is about. To say the book is 'confused' is entirely missing the point.
Ellis' work is a little like pointillist art; no one dot means anything but the overall effect is astounding & the power behind the barrage of discontinuous threads that hold this work together is undeniable. Style is the utmost principle throughout because that's the world he's trying to convey.
Even if there was no plot at all this would be worth reading just for some of the dialogue & portraits of a slice of society at its flimsiest.
Nothing to get hung about - By: Mr. David Cheshire, 01 Aug 2005 Or, nothing is real, as John Lennnon sang. Which is what this book is about, & the use of pop lyrics to tell the story as well as interminable lists of fashionable clothes, magazines, furniture, fashion shows, drinks, drugs & above all people, celebrities, minor celebs, would be celebs... well you get the idea. These lists create a curiously potent sense of realism. Whether this will workin twenty years time, but, hey, who cares. Anything can be changed & manipulated, faces, photographs, events, relationships & above all identities, & what would be the best cover for that most secretive of occupations, namely terrorism, but celebrity itself? The writing is powerful & enthralling, the social observation merciless, the plot bewildering yet fiercely logical, the characters grotesque yet human, the off-hand comments trite yet profound. You could try listing the lists, but the point would be? Gripping to read, impossible to explain or review. When is the next one out? You'll need to be seen with it.
