Los Destrozos / The Shards
- 680 pages
- 24 hours of reading
Bret Easton Ellis is an American author whose work grapples with themes of morality and nihilism through his characters. His narratives often follow young, vacuous individuals who are aware of their depravity and choose to revel in it. Recurring characters and dystopian locales, frequently set in Los Angeles and New York, link his novels. Ellis's writing explores the darker aspects of human nature with a distinctive and provocative style.







Bret Easton Ellis's masterful new novel is a story about the end of innocence, and the perilous passage from adolescence into adulthood, set in a vibrantly fictionalized Los Angeles in 1981 as a serial killer begins targeting teenagers throughout the city. Seventeen-year-old Bret is a senior at the exclusive Buckley prep school when a new student arrives with a mysterious past. Robert Mallory is bright, handsome, charismatic, and shielding a secret from Bret and his friends even as he becomes a part of their tightly knit circle. Bret's obsession with Mallory is equaled only by his increasingly unsettling preoccupation with the Trawler, a serial killer on the loose who seems to be drawing ever closer to Bret and his friends, taunting them-and Bret in particular-with grotesque threats and horrific, sharply local acts of violence. The coincidences are uncanny, but they are also filtered through the imagination of a teenager whose gifts for constructing narrative from the filaments of his own life are about to make him one of the most explosive literary sensations of his generation. Can he trust his friends-or his own mind-to make sense of the danger they appear to be in? Thwarted by the world and by his own innate desires, buffeted by unhealthy fixations, he spirals into paranoia and isolation as the relationship between the Trawler and Robert Mallory hurtles inexorably toward a collision. Set against the intensely vivid and nostalgic backdrop of pre-Less Than Zero L.A., The Shards is a mesmerizing fusing of fact and fiction, the real and the imagined, that brilliantly explores the emotional fabric of Bret's life at seventeen-sex and jealousy, obsession and murderous rage. Gripping, sly, suspenseful, deeply haunting, and often darkly funny, The Shards is Ellis at his inimitable best.[Bokinfo]
Bret Easton Ellis is most famous for his era-defining novel American Psycho and its terrifying anti-hero, Patrick Bateman. With that book, and many times since, Ellis proved himself to be one of the world's most fearless and clear-sighted observers of society - the glittering surface and the darkness beneath. In White, his first work of non-fiction, Ellis offers a wide-ranging exploration of what the hell is going on right now. He tells personal stories from his own life. He writes with razor-sharp precision about the music, movies, books and TV he loves and hates. He examines the ways our culture, politics and relationships have changed over the last four decades. He talks about social media, Hollywood celebrities and Donald Trump. Ellis considers conflicting positions without flinching and adheres to no status quo. His forthright views are powered by a fervent belief in artistic freedom and freedom of speech. Candid, funny, entertaining and blisteringly honest, he offers opinions that are impossible to ignore and certain to provoke. What he values above all is the truth. 'The culture at large seemed to encourage discourse,' he writes, 'but what it really wanted to do was shut down the individual.' Bret Easton Ellis will not be shut down.
In 1985, Bret Easton Ellis shocked, stunned and disturbed with his debut novel, Less Than Zero. Published when he was just twenty-one, this extraordinary and instantly infamous work has done more than simply define a genre, it has become a rare thing: a cult classic and a timeless embodiment of the zeitgeist. Twenty-five years on, Less Than Zero continues to be a landmark in the lives of successive generations of readers across the globe.Filled with relentless drinking in seamy bars and glamorous nightclubs, wild, drug-fuelled parties, and dispassionate sexual encounters, Less Than Zero - narrated by Clay, an eighteen-year-old student returning home to Los Angeles for Christmas - is a fierce coming-of-age story, justifiably celebrated for its unflinching depiction of hedonistic youth, its brutal portrayal of the inexorable consequences of such moral depravity, and its author's refusal to condone or chastise such behaviour.
Clay, l’anti-héros du premier best-seller de Ellis, Moins que zéro, revient à Los Angeles. Il a vingt ans de plus, il est un peu plus vieux, un peu plus seul et désoeuvré. Il retrouve ceux qu’il a connus dans sa jeunesse, Blair, Trent, Julian, Rip... les représentants d’une génération dorée et perdue, abandonnés à la vacuité, la solitude et la vanité qui les détruisent. Producteur associé à l’adaptation cinématographique de son dernier scénario, Clay participe au casting du film, joue de son pouvoir, séduit Rain, une jeune actrice sublime et sans talent, lui fait de fausses promesses. Il est prêt à tout pour la posséder. Mais qui manipule qui ? Clay découvre vite qu’il est constamment observé et suivi...Jalousie, trahisons, meurtres, manipulations... ici, dans la Cité des Anges, chacun se heurte aux mêmes jeux d’emprise et aux mêmes démons, s’enivre de sexe, d’images, de drogues, de fêtes irréelles... et se révèle toujours plus amer et désespéré. Le vide et la fureur aspirent les personnages, et leur font perdre tout sens des limites. On est saisi par la virtuosité du style sobre et acéré, les chapitres courts donnent à la narration un rythme percutant. L’atmosphère est oppressante, la noirceur non dépourvue d’humour. L’angoisse et la tension croissantes annoncent une lente descente aux enfers. Le portrait de notre époque est aussi violent que subversif.
Clay, a successful screenwriter, has returned from New York to Los Angeles to help cast his new movie, and he's soon drifting through a long-familiar circle that will leave him no choice but to plumb the darkest recesses of his character and come to terms with his proclivity for betrayal.
This book offers a narrative that intertwines genders, generations, and identities, featuring characters in LA who share a profound connection through their collective experience of soul-crushing suffering.
Cheryl Lane's life is unraveling: her marriage to William is over, and she's living with a younger man. To cope, she drinks, shops, and takes pills. Avoiding a meeting with William, she wonders if facing him might provide the support she desperately needs.
From the author of "Less Than Zero" comes a work that confounds one expectation after another, passing through comedy and mounting psychological and supernatural horror toward an astonishing resolution. It's a novel about love and loss, fathers and sons, in what is surely the most original and moving novel of an extraordinary career.
Victor Ward deambula por una gelida vacuidad, entre lluvias de confeti de colores, rozando apenas relaciones personales; ajeno a que esta condenado a desvanecerse.'El autor de Menos que cero ha pasado por las drogas, las amenazas de muerte y el rechazo de la critica. Con su nueva novela, Glamourama, ha crecido y ha escrito su libro mas ambicioso hasta la fecha.' Rolling Stone.'Es una lastima que este tan de moda detestar a este escritor de 34 anos, en especial cuando la novela en cuestion es un libro de lo mas ocurrente y mordaz sobre la obsesion mas frivola de esta decada: las modelos.' Time Out New York.'Bret Easton Ellis no reconoceria una buena novela aunque la escribiera el mismo. Prueba de ello es que la ha escrito el mismo.' New York Magazine.'El libro parece volverse loco mientras lo estas leyendo, pero Ellis no teme la apariencia del caos. Inventa un infierno nuevo en cada pagina. De forma misteriosa, a traves de todo este tumulto, el estilo se mantiene elegante. Da lo mismo lo trivial u horrible que sea el tema, la prosa sigue arrullandote con una puntuacio9n minima y una cantidad maxima de monosilabos.' Time Out New York.