“Many years ago I realized that a book, a novel, is a dream that asks itself to be written in the same way we fall in love with someone.” That’s the opening of “The Shards,” Bret Easton Ellis’s first novel in over a decade. And just as in dreams, one is never sure what is real and what’s imagined.
A generation ago, Ellis was the most controversial of the era’s “literary brat pack,” a wunderkind who published his first novel in 1985 at age 21 and whose gory “American Psycho” ended up being canceled by its original publisher. When the book did come out, it was greeted with moral offense. “The Shards” is also filled with gore and a lot of teenage sex as well — and is being universally hailed by both left- and right-wing outlets. It’s as if Ellis’s fiction has acquired immunity from criticism. Has society become benumbed, or do novels just not register on our collective consciousness in a time of smartphones, Netflix, and a billion other demands on our attention?
Either way, the near-universal acclaim presents a puzzle to a reader who loves L.A. noir but is continually left cold by Ellis’s fiction. “The Shards” returns to the hedonistic early ’80s Los Angeles milieu of his debut “Less Than Zero,” drugs, bisexuality, and anomie intact — plus a serial-killer mystery and many, many more pages.
Our protagonist “Bret” recognizes a girl on the street he hasn’t seen in 40 years, and from there, the story tumbles out, nearly 600 pages of it, encapsulating a fraught few weeks
