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nickyvakarian 's review for:
The Shards
by Bret Easton Ellis
dark
mysterious
slow-paced
Listen, this book could have been a great coming-of-age murder mystery where the main character is a gay teenage boy in a world where that isn't accepted yet. Instead, this ended up being very badly written gay erotica that existed for no reason whatsoever. I really have nothing against smut in a book (I grew up with fanfiction, alright?) but this was ridiculously unnecessary. I get that teenagers are horny, but this was off the charts. Bit of a spoiler, but Bret (the protagonist) looks at a picture of his dead friend but then thinks about how horny their naked body makes him???
I'm an English major, and we recently talked about Ellis as an author, so I get that his books are supposed to be a bit provoking and morally confusing, but this was just weird and uncomfortable and ruined most of the book for me. Especially because some passages were definitely enjoyable and intriguing; you never knew what was going on because Bret became gradually more unstable and was a compulsive liar, even to his friends. But it was just way too long. I've read Sanderson's Rhythm of War recently, which had 1400 pages, so it's not like I can't deal with long books. But The Shards could have been heavily edited down (maybe cut the p*rn next time).
Also, as immersive as the descriptions made the book, even those just felt like pure nostalgia, which is uninteresting for a reader who wasn't even born at that time. It just made me skip over a lot of it.
Oh, and the characters? Didn't like any of them. Robert was kinda interesting, and I liked Thom well enough, but even they're pretty forgettable. Book-Bret was an arrogant, annoying rich kid who lied to his friends and cheated on his girlfriend with several guys. The fact that this was supposed to be autobiographically inspired just makes me even more uncomfortable. Obviously, the real Ellis might not have done these things, but it also wasn't something I've ever wanted to wonder about.
Last but not least, the ending's ambiguity (which I understand is also an Ellis thing) just pissed me off. After going through all that you don't even get a solid answer to anything.
I'm an English major, and we recently talked about Ellis as an author, so I get that his books are supposed to be a bit provoking and morally confusing, but this was just weird and uncomfortable and ruined most of the book for me. Especially because some passages were definitely enjoyable and intriguing; you never knew what was going on because Bret became gradually more unstable and was a compulsive liar, even to his friends. But it was just way too long. I've read Sanderson's Rhythm of War recently, which had 1400 pages, so it's not like I can't deal with long books. But The Shards could have been heavily edited down (maybe cut the p*rn next time).
Also, as immersive as the descriptions made the book, even those just felt like pure nostalgia, which is uninteresting for a reader who wasn't even born at that time. It just made me skip over a lot of it.
Oh, and the characters? Didn't like any of them. Robert was kinda interesting, and I liked Thom well enough, but even they're pretty forgettable. Book-Bret was an arrogant, annoying rich kid who lied to his friends and cheated on his girlfriend with several guys. The fact that this was supposed to be autobiographically inspired just makes me even more uncomfortable. Obviously, the real Ellis might not have done these things, but it also wasn't something I've ever wanted to wonder about.
Last but not least, the ending's ambiguity (which I understand is also an Ellis thing) just pissed me off. After going through all that you don't even get a solid answer to anything.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Death, Drug use, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Alcohol
Moderate: Alcoholism