Imperial Bedrooms

Starred review from March 29, 2010
Ellis explores what disillusioned youth looks like 25 years later in this brutal sequel to Less Than Zero
. Clay, now a screenwriter, returns at Christmas to an L.A. that looks and operates much as it did 25 years ago. Trent is now a producer and married to Clay's ex, Blair, while Julian runs an escort service and Rip, Clay's old dealer, has had so much plastic surgery he's unrecognizable. While casting a script he's written, Clay falls for a young, untalented actress named Rain Turner, and his obsession and affair with her powers him through an alcoholic haze that swirls with images of death, mysterious text messages, and cars lurking outside his apartment. The story takes on a creepy noirish bent—with Clay as the frightened detective who doesn't really want to know anything—as it barrels toward a conclusion that reveals the horror that lies at the center of a tortured soul. Ellis fans will delight in the characters and Ellis's easy hand in manipulating their fates, and though the novel's synchronicity with Zero
is sublime, this also works as a stellar stand-alone.

March 15, 2010
A sequel toLess Than Zero (1985).

Twenty-five years ago, Ellis made his popular debut with a slim novel that took its title from an Elvis Costello song. It concerned drug-addled young hipsters in Los Angeles and was widely perceived as the West Coast equivalent of Bright Lights, Big City, Jay McInerney's novel about drug-addled young professionals in Manhattan. Ellis's sequel takes its name from a later Elvis Costello album, and the young hipsters have gotten older. Some of them continue to lust after young flesh, though that flesh—like drugs and talent—is just another commodity in Hollywood, which may seem like a seller's market to those peddling their wares but may be more of a buyer's market, where supply (particularly for attractive young flesh) exceeds demand. Narrator Clay has become a bicoastal screenwriter, recently returned to Los Angeles from New York. He is either paranoid or the target of a great conspiracy. Or maybe he's part of that great conspiracy. In any event, the narrative meanders from party to party, where Clay encounters seemingly random characters, some of whom he knew in the first novel, until the randomness starts to tighten into a web. A young actress seems attracted to him, or what passes for attraction between a supplicant and someone who might do her career some good. But who holds the power here? And just what kind of guy is our narrator, anyway?"This isn't a script," warns his boyhood friend, Julian, who is also somehow connected with the actress."It's not going to add up. Not everything's going to come together in the third act." This warning might be better directed toward the reader, who must determine whether another character's insight that"everything's an illusion" is profundity or clich. The novel is short, elliptical and sketchy—even jumpy—but it feels like it takes forever to end.

Don't hold your breath for act three.

(COPYRIGHT (2010) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

June 15, 2010

So what did happen to the disaffected L.A. teens of Ellis's premier novel, Less Than Zero? When we left them, they were adrift in drugs, sex, and aloof nihilism, unable to merge, as the clumsy metaphor goes, on the freeway. Now, 20-odd years later, Ellis returns to the Hollywood landscape with a new novel, focusing on the current predicament of these characters, who look like "old teenagers" and act just as frustratingly distant as in the previous work. There's no shortage of texting, strategic sex, and obsession, and the tone evokes the noir ghosts of Los Angeles past, with a cold wash of pale paranoia throughout. Ellis remains a singular voice--floating in the ether between critique and romanticism--and he does justice to his Raymond Chandler and Elvis Costello epigraphs. Whether readers can stomach the contemporary horror show that follows is another question entirely.

Verdict Libraries already providing their patrons with Ellis's fiction will, of course, want to add this title to their collection. Those who have sidestepped his undeniable talent might want to rethink and fill in the gaps. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 2/15/10.]--Travis Fristoe, Alachua Cty. Lib. Dist., FL

Copyright 2010 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 1, 2010
Ellis fame rests on such controversial novels as Less Than Zero (1985) and American Psycho (1991). His new novel is a sequel to Less Than Zero, which was a notorious insider account of young men and women up to their drug-hazed eyes in the hedonistic entertainment industry in Los Angeles. Ellis returns to those less-than-admirable folks to see what they are up to a quarter-century later, now that they have hit middle age. They havent gained in moral stature, certainly; they are still narcissistic egomaniacs obsessively concerned with looks, who is sleeping with whom, and achieving fame and fortune with minimal work. One is a screenwriter, another is an actor, and another a talent manager, and so onevery Hollywood type is represented. These are empty lives, and, unfortunately, this is an empty novel. These characters issues seem trivial and far removed from regular peoples lives, and it is Ellis fault that the reader cannot summon any sympathy. His exploration of these individuals is as superficial as the way they treat each other. Sleazy sex and even torture and murder are stitched together into a somewhat compelling plot. Expect demand based on the sensationalism of the authors previous books.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)