Reviews with content warning for Pedophilia - Míň než nula

I understand what BEE was going for here and feel like he almost got there, but not quite. This book is Play It As It Lays if it were written by a guy in college…literally. This is a male perspective with a younger cast and characters that are more shallowly written. At a point Clay mentions that he wants to see the worst of society, and I fear BEE didn’t do the best job to show that Clay himself, in his complacency, is the worst of society. He didn’t engage in the awful things his friends did, but didn’t do anything to stop them, and continued to be their friend after he knew they were the worst of society. His apathy at the end to the horrors of the world that he was complacent in should have been emphasized more. Clay was just as bad as his friends, if not worse, since he watched them do awful things, and awful things be done to them, and did nothing, and cared to do nothing about it. I understand why people hate this book. I didn’t hate it. I understand the vision. I just don’t think he totally got there with it and that his point was completely made. That seems to be a problem with other BEE writing as well. Honestly, I wouldn’t say don’t read this book, it’s short and moves quickly, but if you want to read a novel where the characters are in LA and completely unlikable…just read Play It As It Lays By Joan Didion instead. It was the OBVIOUS inspiration for this (some scenes were literally the ‘when someone asks to copy your homework and you say yeah just change it a little’ meme) but the writing is better and there are actual motives behind the bad behavior of the characters that are clear and understandable. Plus there isn’t a random act of sexual violence against a young girl at the end, which really could have been cut out.

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j_yarbrough's review against another edition

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challenging dark reflective sad tense medium-paced

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

4.5

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alex_nicolee's review against another edition

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dark emotional sad fast-paced

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

4.5

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beyondthevalley's review against another edition

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challenging dark fast-paced

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

4.0

"What's right? If you want something, you have the right to take it. If you want to do something, you have the right to do it."

Quickest I've read a book in a very long time... fast-paced and addictive. I really love Ellis's style and can't wait to dive into more. Truly upsetting by its tail end but guides you there in a way that is seriously master class. A condemnation of 80s excess and capitalistic greed, bled and bred by the parents into their children who want for nothing and therefore strive for nothing and, as Rip says, the only thing they don't have is something to lose.

So clearly an influence on Gregg Araki (who is one of my all time favorite directors) in the depictions of teenage ambivalence turned nihilism turned casual violence. Can't say I feel good after this but am still very glad to have read it, and for it to have moved so fluidly and quickly.

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retros_x's review against another edition

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challenging dark medium-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

What a bleak book. The protagonist is traumatized and depressed - without realizing it and observes passively the decay of a lost generation in the 1980s of LA. Only in the end when he experiences some TRULY HORRIFIC stuff we catch a glimps of moral integrity and reaction in his thoughts and actions, but it seems like a corpse that twitches one last time.

The prose is dry but rythmic and some really effective paragraphs shake up the intentional monotony of the main body of text. I can't say I enjoyed all of it, but it had an impact.

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barbaricyawp89's review against another edition

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challenging dark medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.75

i’m not sure what i was expecting from this book, but i was suprised by how bored i felt while reading it and i’m not really sure why. it did pick up towards the end with the more outrightly disturbing stuff, but otherwise i feel kinda “meh” about it. it wasn’t a bad book by any means, just somehow really boring despite the premise.

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adrireism's review against another edition

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dark relaxing sad tense medium-paced

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

2.75

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.

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astrono9's review against another edition

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dark emotional reflective tense medium-paced

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

4.0

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