Product Description

A man in what is recognizably New York is drawn into a shadowy looking-glass of that society and then finds himself trapped on the other side, in a much darker place where fame and terrorism, and family and politics, are inextricably linked and sometimes indistinguishable.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #38774 in Books
• Published on: 1999-12-10
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 496 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Glamorama is a satirical mass-murder opus more ambitious than Ellis's 1990 American Psycho. It starts as a spritz-of-consciousness romp about kid-club entrepreneur Victor Ward, "the It boy of the moment," an actor/model up for Flatliners II. Ellis has perfect pitch for glam-speak, and he gives nightlife the fizz, pace, and shimmer it lacks in drab reality. Anyone could cite the right celeb names and tunes; but like a rock-polishing machine, his prose gives literary sheen to fame-chasing air-kissers. He's coldly funny: when Victor's girl tries to argue him out of a break up, she angrily snorts six bumps of coke, stops, mutters, "Wrong vial," snorts four corrective doses from whatever she has in her other fist, then objects to a rival at the party wearing the same dress she's wearing.

You had to be there; Ellis makes you feel you are. But such satire is a very smart bomb targeting a very large barn. Models' status anxiety doesn't merit Ellis's Tom Wolfe-esque expertise. Glamorama gets better when Victor gets drafted into a mysterious group of model/terrorists who bomb 747s and the Ritz in Paris, wearing Kevlar-lined Armani suits. Oh, they still behave like shallow snobs, pronouncing "cool" as if it had 12 "o"s, but now when somebody swills Cristal, it's apt to be poisoned, to horrific effect, which Ellis expertly describes. His enfant-terrible debut Less Than Zero aped Joan Didion. Now Ellis has grown into a lesser Don DeLillo--and that's high praise. --Tim Appelo

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.

Marilyn Monroe Meets Charlie Manson
To declare a vested interest at the outset: I am a Brett Ellis fanatic, (albeit one frequently frustrated by the common misinterpretations of his work). This novel is his most ambitious so far, operating on more levels than the London Underground. It is not an easy read but it is a profoundly rewarding one. The characters are grown-up from the dazed dissipation of their student lives in “Less than Zero” and the protagonist this time around was an appropriately two-dimensional walk-on part back then. In much the same way that food and fashion were described in mantra-like detail throughout “American Psycho”, Ellis now has his characters conversing by recycling cheesy song lyrics (but in such a subtle way that you’ll usually only pick-up on about half of the references). Nobody has an opinion about anything except that it’s something someone else told them previously and this, I suppose, is as good a metaphor for Ellis’ view on modern life in general as anything else he’s used previously. He has become sufficiently confident now to actually bang up against the confines of his medium and you have characters admitting that certain things are plot devices or showing an awareness that they are in fact only characters in a narrative. The last third of the book collapses in on itself like postmodern origami and everything becomes particularly self-referential and knowing. In the end it begins to challenge the readers willing suspension of disbelief but what holds the structure together is that it is shot-through with an arch and artful use of dialogue for which Ellis is now perhaps become the exemplar in contemporary fiction. This really is solid-gold stuff and an absolute requisite for anyone with a passion in modern literature.

A knee slapping overlooked gem
B.E.E. sometimes missed the mark in his earlier works by overstating the case for the execution of the vapid American new upper-crust, but here he perfects everything that was ham-handed in the novel American Psycho.

The two are perfectly comparable in most respects: in one a hopelessly materialistic, vain, social climber succumbs to madness and starts cutting people up. In this one, a stupid, shallow, talentless model gets sucked (by his own weaknesses) into a murderous terrorist ring that is bent on destroying everything that he hates/supports him.

Be forewarned, this is two books in one, and it shifts course and tone immediately. The first half is gut-butsing black humor, then it swerves unexpectedly into surreal horror and ultraviolence. That is what it has in common with American Psycho, but don't think for a minute that American Psycho, the movie, would have been nearly as good if this book hadn't been written before the movie was made.

This is a challenging, hysterically funny, cutting social commentary. If you don't 'get it' then you probably don't know how accurate it is.