American Psycho: Bret Easton Ellis

SUPER DISTURBING A coworker wanted me to read this book so we could talk about it...because he loved it. OMG, I had to keep skipping parts because the book made me nauseous, but felt the need to finish it because I was wondering what sort of psychopath my coworker was and if I needed to be afraid. The book starts out with the protagonist Patrick Bateman in a cab with a friend going to a girlfriend's party. They ramble on and on about clothes and designers. The people come across as outrageously shallow, but no one to be afraid of. Throughout the story Patrick is described as being a wallflower and is often teased about being a Grinch and the boy next door, not a threat. He constantly rambles on about music, or clothing, or stereos, and everything is a competition for him. Patrick sees himself as a success, yet others fail to notice him or remember his name which makes him an unreliable narrator. Slowly Patrick starts having a breakdown and he realizes this in himself. He pokes out a homeless man's eyes and beats up some prostitutes. The homeless man's abuse is described in detail, the prostitutes simply leave with a limp and bruised, but you know there was a coat hanger involved. Patrick's snapping point seems to be when a coworker, Paul Allen gets the account he wanted. After a few extremely graphic murders of a child, Paul Allen, and several woman with sex ending in torture and murder, we meet Patrick's mom, who is in a sanatorium. She is characterized very similarly to Patrick, who we already know has lost it. At one point the story switches to 3rd person where Patrick sees himself as the star of a movie or the nightly news resisting arrest from the police, yet a little while later we learn there have been no reports of missing people or murders. The murders seem to all be fabrication in his head. His lawyer mentions something about a message Patrick left on his machine admitting to the murders, but the lawyer claims to have just seen one of the victims a few days before in London. He also describes Patrick as a "brown- nosing goody goody", so we as readers too start to believe Patrick couldn't do these horrible things. He has dinner with Evelyn and breaks up with her then has her eat a urinal cake. In the beginning Patrick admitted he didn't listen to Evelyn ramble on and day dreamed. We begin to believe he is so far gone he can't distinguish his daydreams (murders, feeding Evelyn urinal cakes) with reality, eating dinner while Evelyn chats on. Patrick becomes obsessed with being a somebody and fabricates that he is acting out on his monstrous imaginations. He is then disappointed that he hasn't gain notoriety and no one believes him, he is stuck in this boring life with no meaning.