Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #21669 in Books
• Published on: 2006-11-03
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 496 pages

Synopsis
The centre of the world: 1990s Manhattan. Victor Ward, a model with perfect abs and all the right friends, is seen and photographed everywhere, even in places he hasn't been and with people he doesn't know. On the eve of opening the trendiest nightclub in New York history, he's living with one beautiful model and having an affair with another. Now it's time to move to the next stage. But the future he gets is not the one he had in mind."Does for the cold, minimal '90s what "American Psycho" did for the Wall Street greed of the '80s. You name it, he manages to get it all in" - "Vogue". "Gets under the skin of our celebrity culture in a way that is both illuminating and frightening" - "Daily Telegraph". "A Bonfire of the Vanities - "Glamorama" is more like a Semtex attack on our superficialities" - Face". "An epic that takes his blank surrealism into a realm equalled only by DeLillo" - "Arena". "A master stylist with hideously interesting new-fangled manners and the heart of an old-fashioned moralist" - "Observer". "Brilliant...He is fast becoming a writer of real American genius" - "GQ". "An American masterpiece" - "Scotland on Sunday".

Customer Reviews

an original idea
Whereas I found `American Psycho' an easy and absorbing read, I found this much harder work. Although rewarding in the end it took a while to get into. The part on the cruise ship became confusing for me and 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 life in the spot life etc but then I felt it lost something. If you don't reflect too much and try to analyse as you are reading it then this is a great read. I found myself trying to link characters together and once all the pieces of the jigsaw started to fall into place it was as if one of them wasn't quite right and you had to start all over again. However, it is a clever thriller and 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 down in number, like a countdown. But a countdown to what exactly? A new script, a new scene, a new conspiracy? Both clever and intriguing to read this novel rather surprisingly sucked me in and even though at times I didn't have the foggiest idea what was going on, I was in the full long journey. It's difficult to work out Victor with his change of surnames - can we change our identity so easily and 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 and slowly picks away at it to let us see what exactly goes on behind the images we see on screen and in print.

I've had this book lounging on my shelves for quite a few years now, (6 to be exact) and 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 and I certainly look forward to reading the other Ellis novel I own - The Rules of Attraction. It's a clever book and it's one that needs time devoting to it. You can't pick this up and 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 and you will be rewarded with an intelligent and interesting masterpiece.

we'll slide down the surface of things
There's been enough stylish reviews of this book so I'm going to make it short and sweet. As a fan of Ellis' work for almost 10 years I can say that this book did not need to be almost 500 pages long, for a book of this genre it really should have been shorter, if only for the sole purpose of simpllification, something it desperately needs.

Beneath the *Endless* lists of celebrties - lists to long and obscure that it makes you wonder how the writer spends his days - there is a diamond of a story, a story that's very well written.

If you finished it, give yourself a pat on the back.

Gary

'We'll slide down the surface of things'
Glamorama is cult author Bret Easton Ellis' fourth novel (The Informers being a collection of short stories). It tells the story of a terrorist unit that uses the fashion industry as a front, casting fictitious 'It' boy, Victor Ward - a jaw-droppingly clueless yet unintentionally hilarious model-slash-actor - as the protagonist drawn deeper and deeper into a world of casual sex, mass-murder, dual identities and Xanax.

I found this book compulsive but also confusing - hardly surprising, perhaps, as Victor himself spends much of it in a state of bewilderment. When he's not drunk, stoned, or even, occasionally, "scared sh*tless", he appears only vaguely aware of his predicament. That he manages to navigate his way through the plot's myriad twists and emerge at the end alive is, well... nothing short of miraculous.

Contributing further to the confusion - both the reader's and Victor's - are the numerous passages of `mirrored reality' the author splices into Ward's narrative, as well as the inclusion of a large cast of shadowy, under-developed characters. Too many questions remain unanswered. Who is Palakon? And what's with the constant references to Christian Bale?

Despite this being a rather sprawling, over-long and - yes, I'll say it again - confusing opus, I would still recommend it on the grounds that it is simply a masterpiece of written dialogue. Ellis' interpretation of the nineties' "glam-speak" is a marvel, revealing almost everything you need to know about the book's characters while advancing the plot at a rate of knots and displaying a staggering grasp of the vacuity of fashion world minutiae. And while it may not quite be to the nineties what American Psycho was to the eighties, it certainly works as a sharply observed satire of the decade's obsession with the shamefully superficial pursuits of celebrity and fame.

Matt Pucci