Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1153 in Books
• Published on: 2006-11-03
• Binding: Paperback
• 416 pages

Synopsis
Patrick Bateman is twenty-six and works on Wall Street; he is handsome, sophisticated, charming and intelligent. He is also a psychopath. Taking us to a head-on collision with America's greatest dream - and its worst nightmare - "American Psycho" is a bleak, bitter, black comedy about a world we all recognize but do not wish to confront. "Serious, clever and shatteringly effective." - "Sunday Times." ""American Psycho" is a beautifully controlled, careful, important novel...The novelist's function is to keep a running tag on the progress of the culture; and he's done it brilliantly...A seminal book." - Fay Weldon, "Washington Post." "For its savagely coherent picture of a society lethally addicted to blandness, it should be judged by the highest standards." - John Walsh, "Sunday Times." "That the book's contents are shocking is downright undeniable, but just as Bonfire of the Vanities exposed the corruption and greed engendered in eighties politics and high living, "American Psycho" examines the mindless preoccupations of the nineties preppy generation." - "Time Out."

Customer Reviews

The most pointless book I've ever read.
Yep, without doubt.

It's shocking, no doubt, but mainly in its inanity...

The constant references to Labels, restaurants, bars and clubs, the obsession with physical fitness, the racism, the sterotypical 'Wall Street workers', the gratuitous, graphic violence and sex all become deeply tedious VERY quickly...

And... as soon as they do you realise there's no story in this book.

I thought I must have missed some deep meaning in this 'work', but I suspect the point the writer thought he was making is so 80s that it really doesn't have any meaning today anyway.

Other reviewers talk about how it's poking fun at the Yuppies - Duh... if you don't get that in the first 3 pages you're probably on a life support machine.

This book could be subtitled "Irony for Dummies", it's so heavy-handed.

This is one of only two books that I've given up on part way through (and don't bother to say it all comes clear in the last third as it's now recycled into something useful, like toilet roll... Actually I'll admit I skim read the last 100 pages after originally writing this and THEN recycled it - The last 100 pages were rubbish too...)

It read like it was written by a 14 year old trying to upset his parents.

Waste your life, if you wish, but I'll not waste another second on this...

I'll never let a stranger perform oral sex on me, ever!
I'm a bit confused as to why other readers have said this is a black comedy, I laughed once! Perhpas if i had read this in the early nineties it may have resonated with me more. But it didn't. The only thing that kept me going, was the wanting to know "where is the stuff of the reviews read?"
I'm not a page skipper, but I did indeed skip through a lot of the boring detail over designer labeling. There were no descriptives other than Bill Blass and the rest of the unheard of (to most of us) hoards of designers.
I feel fobbed off when a writer leaves the ending with no ending, I need closure, American Psycho doesn't leave that. I wanted him caught and beaten to a pulp as nasty as the pulps he had beaten his victims to. What does that say about me!! This book will, if it hasn't already stop many people in their tracks when thinking about having some wild or spontaneous sex with someone we really don't know. So it might do for the human race what condoms and AIDs warning couldn't. There may be less STD's around now if it was written a lot sooner. I for one will never ever have oral sex with a stranger or even half stranger again. I will seriously think twice about perhaps three times before I even go in for a cup of coffee. What sort of impression does this book leave with society's young people, the impressionable ones. There's already enough machete weilding tenagers out there now. I wouldn't be suprised if most of them had read this book. The gore and torture only gets worse the deeper into the chapters you go. BUT and thank god at least he stops yabbering on about designer labels and his bloody 100 assorted different face creams, we actually get some good writing in parts, I enjoyed maybe a page until the torture started again. Oh and the chapters on his favourite music, well if I'd wanted a music review I'd have gotten a copy of rolling stone.Its an inconsistent read, for example: as he leaves us at the end of one chapter about to go on a date with (lets say) Evelyn. At the start of the next chapter the girl has a new name a differnet girl! Oh and he gets called by all sorts of names throughout, to the point where i started thinking, has this guy got multiple personalities not just the two, Mr Boring and Mr Psycho. His head is in such a mess that I as a reader was just as confused..I'm sorry to damn it as he's had rave reviews for this peice of work. But its not funny, its sick and I do wonder what goes on in the minds of the reviewers so far that find it an amusing read. Yes it is a banal and superficial world he portrays, but its not done well. Or perhaps i'm just not sick enough.

I love this book
I only read this book after I seen the film, which is portrayed wonderfully by Christian Bale. The book itself is the blackest of comedies with a hint of sarcasm about it. The violence in American Psycho, which is described down to the closest of details, is only a small part of the book as a whole. The rest of it is about the day-to-day life of an American businessman who is rich, good-looking but rarely happy and those are the most entertaining parts for me.

You may find it heavy going having to read the over-described details on everything from fashion to electrical products, but trust me, it gets easier. As I write this I struggle to pinpoint exactly why this book is entertaining, it just is. It's funny, quirky, sarcastic and plain sick all at once and it can play tricks with your mind. The interaction between characters is comical, as everyone is so self absorbed that half the time they don't know who one another are. But that doesn't really matter: having the right suit, business card and restaurant reservations are important. It's the 80's and image is everything to yuppies living in New York city.