Reviews

I had high expectations but the book is boring. The writing is sarcastic and captivating, hence the positive score, but the whole book is just a sequence of utterly boring events filled with hopelessness and personal decay that lead nowhere. Rich kids doing drugs and being awful to everyone around them. Every time you pick up the book you feel icky, but you can't stop reading because you feel a disaster is around the corner to break the stagnation. Turns out the book *is* the disaster.

Content Warnings

robbiericardo's review against another edition

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dark funny sad fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

claudia_da's review against another edition

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dark sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? N/A
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A

4.0

baar's review against another edition

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4.0

the stranger meets euphoria

justinereads's review against another edition

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3.0

Never before have I read a book that has made me wonder what my life would be like if I just got high every second of every day. Damn you Bret Easton Ellis. But also thank you because I am 100% sure I would never want that for myself.

dreamwritten's review against another edition

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*DNF.* I just can't with this book. I know that's not the most articulate review ever, and I actually do understand the USA Today's opinion that it's "the CATCHER IN THE RYE for the MTV Generation," but here's the difference for me: CATCHER IN THE RYE kept my attention and LESS THAN ZERO simply did not. I wanted to love this book because a former writer friend of mine, whose work I really admired, bought it for me and insisted I try it (to be fair, I did the same for him with THINGS FALL APART by Achebe, and knowing his taste in fiction, he probably hated that too. Wherever you are, Sam, we're even!). But I'm calling it quits around page 115.

The author's voice bores me and, as another reviewer aptly put it, I couldn't care any less than I do about the characters. What they're going through isn't something I personally connect with, as I'm not a Hollywood rich kid who snorts Scarface-worthy piles of coke, but I COULD connect with them if the author had given me any reason to care about their lives. Keep in mind, this is coming from someone who's all too familiar with depression and expected to be able to connect with Clay and his band of friends from page one. I understand that they're numb, I get the tactics the author is using with the dry, lacking prose, and I'd even argue it's effective in its own ways. Unfortunately, it's bored me to near tears.

Dropping books mid-way is something that makes me feel incredibly guilty, but I don't have enough time these days to invest in slogging my way through novels I don't enjoy. So I'm going to fold the corner of this page (another thing I don't typically do) in case I'm ever inspired to try this again, and retire LESS THAN ZERO to my shelf.

Sorry, Ellis. Not for me!

dsanch20's review against another edition

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dark sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.5

It was like binging a one season Tubi original show. You’re just kinda there

iplaruf's review against another edition

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3.5

I finished in one day and while I didn’t love it, I clearly enjoyed it enough to read the whole thing in one day. The detachment of the characters was similar to American Psycho with a lot less action.
The last 20 pages or so were weird, almost like he realized there wasn’t too much fucked uppedness in the story so he threw in a corpse and some gang rape. 🤷🏻‍♀️

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