Another horrible fiction book. This one is pretty famous too, I definitely don't see what the big deal is. This book has exactly two different kinds of chapters. 1) Chapters that are surprisingly long and intolerably boring, where the main character, Patrick Bateman, describes what everyone around him is wearing, where they are going to dinner, and then something about Les Miserable, all using exclusively run-on sentences. And 2) Chapters where Patrick Bateman murders prostitutes in the most grotesque, explicit, horrifying ways I've ever seen written down. Oh, I forgot, there are also two chapters where Bateman reviews the entire discographies of musicians he likes: Whitney Huston, and Huey Lewis & The News.
The book succeeds only in that I'm totally convinced that this dude is a 100% crazy sociopath, but it fails miserably as a compelling narrative. I only made it all the way to the end in the dim hope that it would redeem itself with some crazy twist. What a waste of time. Below is an excerpt that pretty much sums up the experience of reading this book. Try to make it all the way to the bottom without killing yourself. Seriously, I didn't make this up, this was just a fairly random quote. There are hundreds more just like it.
Plus there are four women at the table opposite ours, all great-looking, blond, big tits: one is wearing a chemise dress in double-faced wool by Calvin Klein, another is wearing a wool knit dress and jacket with silk faille bonding by Geoffrey Beene, another is wearing a symmetrical skirt of pleated tulle and an embroidered velvet bustier by, I think, Christian Lacroix plus high-heeled shoes by Sidonie Larizzi, and the last one is wearing a black strapless sequined gown under a wool crepe tailored jacket by Bill Blass. Now the Shirelles are coming out of the speakers, Dancing in the Street, and the sound system plus the acoustics, because of the restaurant's high ceiling, are so loud that we have to practically scream out our order to the hardbody waitress' who is wearing a bicolored suit of wool grain with passementerie trim by Myrone de Premonville and velvet ankle boots and who, I'm fairly sure, is flirting with me: laughs sexily when I order, as an appetizer, the monkfish and squid ceviche with golden caviar; gives me a stare so steamy, so penetrating when I order the gravlax potpie with green tomatillo sauce I have to look back at the pink Bellini in the tall champagne flute with a concerned, deadly serious expression so as not to let her think I'm too interested.