Bret Easton Ellis Lunar Park

Lunar Park

Bret Easton Ellis

Knopf, Aug 2005, $24.95

ISBN: 0375412913

Bret Easton Ellis knows he is an egotistical drug abuser, whose dysfunctional relationship with his now deceased abusive father still leaves him unable to hook up with his own son. His former lover, movie star Jayne Dennis offers him redemption through marriage and jointly raising their eleven years old son Robby, whom Bret barely knows. He agrees and the trio along with Jayne's daughter Sarah sired by another freak settle in the New York suburbs while he works on his next porno shocker, Teenage Pussy.

Bret cannot cope with the three people he shares a home with especially his distant non-communicative son. He returns to his drug and alcoholic past while chasing college student Aimee. That is until the weirdness begins starting with Terby the mechanical bird suddenly like Chucky coming alive ready to harm all. Neighbor boys vanish, e-mail from his dad's ashes arrive, and gruesome murders from out of his novel AMERICAN PSYCHO haunt the town as much as the spirit haunting Ellis's house demands he writes the sobering paranoid truth; hence this novel.

This novel is best for those readers who know Bret Easton Ellis's writing career and "brat pack" days of LESS THAN ZERO in which the author and his cronies symbolize the acceptable excesses of the Reagan Era. The story line lampoons the writer as he stars in an autobiographical fiction in which uses real people that he knew and events to tell his self parody that critiques and criticizes his celebrity status now that he no longer can claim the folly of youthful self indulgence. Terrific biographical fiction just not for everyone as the knowing the "Brat Pack" is a great part of the fun.

Harriet Klausner