American Psycho

Okay, so when I decided to pick up American Psycho, EVERYONE expressed their love for this book so I was excited to dive in. That's the last time I listen to people. This book is a hot mess. I could even go as far as saying I hated it. Let's start with the elephant in the room. I'm convinced the author is sexist. I know, I know the whole point of Patrick Bateman is to showcase that he's a sexist pig, but when you have zero strong female characters, basically no female characters with even a smidgen of personality outside being dumb, shallow eye candy for a serial killer and his obnoxious friends, that says something. His constant use of “hardbody” is annoying, as well as his basic descriptions of women in the novel. He could have put in a little more effort considering he doesn't shy away from excessive detail in other areas of the story. Also, I looked into interviews with the author and he openly says sexist comments, including comparing his younger self to Patrick Bateman. He also openly expressed his discontent for a woman directing the movie American Psycho. Considering a few of his books revolve around the themes of hurting, raping, and degrading women, that further enforces my opinion. If it quacks like a duck...

That aside, the book is a drag for the first 75%. Ellis overloaded American Psycho with an obnoxious amount of designer labels and details. The novel becomes tedious to get through. Once again, I understand it was done for character development but we get the point after the first 50 pages of detail overload. The excessive detail along with the absolute boring dinner conversations that brought minimal to the plot bored me. Let's be honest here, his writing isn't anything special. I'm not a fan of an author basically “telling” the entire story.

The gore was alright, however some of it was unrealistic and random. Often times it feels like Ellis wrote the actions of Bateman just for shock value and I wasn't impressed. The graphic scenes didn't bother me, but it came off sloppy and disorganized.

I'm going to have to pass on reading anything else from Ellis. I can only imagine how much worse it gets.