Review 4/23/2026 9/10

The only thing keeping this book from being a 10 for me was the chapters talking about music. I'm sure they are top tier satire just like the rest of the novel but I can't lie I skimmed the last 2 very lightly. Everything else about this book I felt came across with how much Ellis despises the yuppie elitist wall street type. The obsession with what people are wearing, the racism, misogony, homophobia, etc were all so jarringly casual I loved that he didn't shy away from that facet of this type of person. Ellis was absolutely cutthroat with his satire. I highly recommend those parts of the read. The violence was incredibly graphic and Bateman's obsession with torture and inflicting pain was unsettling to say the least. There was a scene with a drill and teeth that made me set it down for a good 30 minutes. The hard cut from steamy sexual scene to graphic violence was emotionally jarring and when I say hard cut I mean one paragraph is in the throws of passion and the next is murder/torture. Very similar to The Haunting of Hill House Bateman slowly fell further into psychosis as the book progressed and it reached a point of disjointedness that I wasn't fully sure what was happening. I'm not counting that against Ellis at all that was a feature of this story. I don't want to spoil much about this novel but it makes the movie look like an episode of sesame street. I'll rarely recommend this book to anyone I think. It was a masterpiece but gods was it just a lot.