The Informers [Paperback]

Bret Easton Ellis (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 1, 1995

In this seductive and chillingly nihilistic novel, Bret Easton Ellis, the author of American Psycho, returns to Los Angeles, the city whose moral badlands he portrayed unforgettably in Less Than Zero. This time is the early eighties. The characters go to the same schools and eat at the same restaurants. Their voices enfold us as seamlessly as those of DJs heard over a car radio. They have sex with the same boys and girls and buy from the same dealers. In short, they are connected in the only way people can be in that city.

 

Dirk sees his best friend killed in a desert car wreck, then rifles through his pockets for a last joint before the ambulance comes. Cheryl, a wannabe newscaster, chides her future stepdaughter, “You're tan but you don't look happy.” Jamie is a clubland carnivore with a taste for human blood. As rendered by Ellis, their interactions compose a chilling, fascinating, and outrageous descent into the abyss beneath L.A.'s gorgeous surfaces.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This tedious successor to American Psycho , a patchwork of interrelated vignettes about a set of filthy rich L.A. families in the early 1980s, weds Ellis's over-the-top if one-dimensional satirical style to the sensational hedonism characteristic of Danielle Steel and the spiritual malaise of Douglas Coupland. Mobilizing his trademark first-person narrative voice, Ellis charts an amoral hyper-elitist social landscape from the interchangeable perspectives of debased Hollywood players, pseudo-celebrities and industry brats. There is Cheryl, an aging newscaster who shacks up with a narcissistic surfer and stops showing up for work; Bryan Metro, a vacuous American pop star who tours Japan leaving a wake of battered groupies and pharmaceutical bottles; Jamie, a vampire who lures teenagers home from trendy clubs and murders them in sadistic scenes reminiscent of American Psycho . Ellis's often racist characters crisscross an L.A. littered with the trendy iconography of the early 1980s (Wayfarer sunglasses, Duran Duran, designer drugs), their affectless, inarticulate sentences registering a jaded disdain for other people's lives. Ellis does not break new ground here but returns, perhaps nostalgically, to the cultural context of his celebrated first novel, Less Than Zero . Ultimately, this book is so inconsequential that it should neither vex Ellis's critics nor gratify his fans. 50,000 first printing; QPB alternate.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Although billed as a novel, this work reads like a collection of 13 loosely related short stories. The characters in Chapter 1 reappear in the last chapter, and Jamie, whose death occurs in Chapter 2, may be the vampire named Jamie who later appears. None of this much matters, however, since the characters have no personality anyway. Every chapter is told by a different narrator, further preventing the reader from connecting to the characters. Set in Eighties L.A. like Ellis's debut, Less Than Zero, the book makes endless, almost obsessive references to obscure bands, upscale restaurants, and clothing of the time. For Ellis, this seems to have been a time when "people [were] becoming less human...everyone [was] operating on a very primitive level," but, unfortunately, the effect is of an era safely past. The Informers has fewer gruesome scenes than American Psycho, and its affectlessness renders them less powerful. Still, this is a disturbing book that will be requested by patrons familiar with Ellis's work.
Nora Rawlinson, formerly with "Library Journal"
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 225 pages
• Publisher: Vintage (August 1, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0679743243
• ISBN-13: 978-0679743248
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.2 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (91 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #183,025 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Bret Easton Ellis is the author of five novels and a collection of short stories; his work has been translated into twenty-seven languages. He lives in Los Angeles.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A SUPERBLY PENNED VIEW OF THE DARK SIDE, May 2, 2005

By 

Gail Cooke (TX, USA) - See all my reviews
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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, February 11, 2002

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, March 4, 2010

By 

Steven Warfield (Scotia, NY) - See all my reviews
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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.