Author: Bret Easton Ellis
Genres: Adult, Crime Fiction, Literary, Satire, Fiction, Lawyers & Criminals, Self-Help, Psychology, Humor & Comedy, Horror, Dark Humor, Urban Life, Vintage Contemporaries
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Summary:
Bateman describes his daily life through a present-tense stream-of-consciousness narrative, ranging from his loveless engagement to fellow yuppie Evelyn and his contentious relationship with his brother, to a series of Friday nights spent at nightclubs with his colleagues—where they snort cocaine, critique fellow club-goers' clothing, trade fashion advice, and question one another on proper etiquette—to his loveless engagement to fellow yuppie Evelyn Bateman's stream of consciousness is periodically interrupted by chapters in which he addresses the reader directly in order to criticize 1980s pop music musicians' work.
Through misidentification and inconsistencies, the story maintains a high level of ambiguity, implying that Bateman is an untrustworthy narrator. Persons debate over the identity of individuals they meet in restaurants or at parties and characters are frequently introduced as people who are not themselves. Bateman, who is very conscious of his physical appearance, goes into great detail about his daily aesthetics routine.
After killing one of his coworkers, Paul Owen, Bateman takes over his apartment and uses it to host and murder other people. Bateman's ability to control his aggressive impulses deteriorates. His killings get more cruel and sophisticated, going from basic stabbings to long sequences of rape, torture, mutilation, cannibalism, and necrophilia, and his sanity begins to deteriorate.
He casually brings up serial killer stories
and freely admits his homicidal actions to his colleagues, who never take him
seriously, don't hear what he says, or utterly misunderstand him—for example,
misinterpreting "murders and executions" as "mergers and
acquisitions." These events culminate in a shooting spree in which he
murders multiple people in the street, prompting a helicopter dispatch of a
SWAT squad.
The first-person perspective shifts to third-person in this narrative episode, and the ensuing events are recounted in terms of cinematic depiction for the first time in the novel, albeit not for the first time in the novel. Bateman runs on foot and hides in his office, where he calls his lawyer, Harold Carnes, and confesses all of his misdeeds over the phone but to an answering machine.
Bateman later returns to Paul Owen's flat, where he had previously killed and tortured two prostitutes, wearing a medical mask in preparation for the decaying remains he expects to find. He enters the spotless, renovated flat, however, which is brimming with strong-smelling flowers, possibly to mask a stench. When the real estate agent notices his surgical mask, he convinces him that he was at the apartment showing because he "saw an ad in the Times" (when in fact there was no such advertisement). She tells him to go and never come back.
Bateman's mental condition continues to deteriorate, and he begins to have strange hallucinations like witnessing a Cheerio on a talk show, being pursued by an anthropomorphic park bench, and discovering a bone in his Dove Bar. Bateman approaches Carnes about the message he left on his computer at the end of the narrative, but the attorney is delighted by what he deems a clever prank.
Carnes says that the Patrick Bateman he knows is too much of a coward to have done such crimes because he mistook him for another coworker. Carnes stands up to a defiant Bateman in the climactic scene and informs him that his allegation of having murdered Owen is preposterous because he had dined with him twice just a few days before.
Bateman and his coworkers are in a new club on a Friday night, engaging in dull talk, when the novel closes. "This is not an exit," reads the notice at the book's conclusion.
Recommended: 100/100 Yes.
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