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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A SUPERBLY PENNED VIEW OF THE DARK SIDE,
This review is from: The Informers (Paperback)
When a cast of vacuous, narcissistic, bronzed Californians indulges in whatever brings them pleasure, Bret Easton Ellis is at his sardonic, cynical best. Culled from sketches begun in 1983 and eventually filling several notebooks, "The Informers" is more a tale of a group's flawed response to its culture than it is a picture of individuals.Impossibly empty, the characters are predominantly male students who spend little time at their studies. Flouting their parents' checkbooks, they drive expensive cars, wear extravagantly priced clothes, dine at the trendiest spots, and indulge in most forms of chemical escapism. Punctuated with dark metaphors, the author's text is hauntingly spare, offering no explanation for the characters' lives but simply presenting them. This leaves the readers to judge, gnash their teeth or gape in shocked surprise. There is room for shock. As in Ellis' "American Psycho," some very unpleasant descriptions of mayhem and murder are included. In an interview Mr. Ellis commented, "What I've always been interested in as a writer is this idea of a group of people who seem to have everything going for them on the outside. Because of that, they have a lot of freedom. The theme of my fiction is the abuse of that freedom." With his superior intellect and total mastery of his craft, Mr. Ellis presents his theme well. - Gail Cooke
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Well written, exhausting to read,
By Alexander Zalben (Long Island City, NY United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Informers (Paperback)
Mr. Ellis' strength is in his realistic dialogue and characters, which is well on display here in this collection of character sketches.I say character sketches, and not short stories, because that's really what they are. A series of interconnected portraits of the different, intermingling layers of society in LA. And it is pretty impressive at that. Each of the characters in the book are going through very similar feelings, have very similar problems (spiraling depression, enstrangement from their parents, etc.). Luckily, Mr. Ellis is able to differentiate their characters and situations. As happens with books of this type, the ending seems to rush together more quickly, and feel more connected than the beginning. And frankly, as much respect as I have for Mr. Ellis' writing, it was exhausting to read story after story. The book is an interesting portrait of a city constantly on the edge of destruction, but there's only so much nihilistic fiction a guy can read before you curl up into a ball in the corner. As always, Ellis is a writer worth reading. But be prepared: it is a short book, but a long haul.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Much pseudo-ado about nothing,
By
This review is from: The Informers (Movie Tie-in Edition) (Vintage Contemporaries) (Paperback)
NOTE: The edition I read was not the same as this one (it was much older), and I include my review as I believe that they should be largely the same barring the different cover.My only previous experience with Ellis' work was the harrowing 'American Psycho,' which still disturbs me with some of its imagery. Thus, I was quite intrigued to see what some of Ellis' next works might have been like, and if any of them continued in the vein that he had established with man being inhumane to other men. What I got was largely stories which were the snippet equivalent of what *I* considered to be the worst parts of 'American Psycho' - the inane, often disjointed, conversations that rich white folks had with other rich white folks in the early to late 1980's. With characters barely communicating with each other over issues that barely registered on my personal Give-a-Crapometer, I found the stories to be about as vacuous as the characters with them, and took very little away from them. There was one high point in the collection, and that one was the "vampire story." It certainly wasn't fantastic, but it was different enough that I at least vaguely remember the specifics of the story, if not the title.
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