Lunar Park by Brett Easton Ellis. Knopf, 309pgs. $24.95
I don't know. Maybe it's because I've never been a fan of Bret Easton Ellis, and that anything he writes that is even marginally better than his past efforts is enough to surprise me, but this novel just good enough to do just that. If that sounds as if I'm damning Ellis with faint praise, please understand that this is the best I can do.
Set in an obviously post-9/11 world, Ellis writes about a fictional Brett Easton Ellis who has escaped to the suburbs with a fictional family. The fictional Ellis is trying to live a safe, clean life away from illicit drugs and the everyday horrors of urban life. Unfortunately, he is addicted to prescription drugs (everyone in this book seems to be on something) and soon discovers that horror takes many forms, even in the suburbs. What happens next is something out of a Stephen King novel as things from Ellis' fiction begin manifesting themselves in his life. Are they real or drug-induced illusions? Who cares? The book is just entertaining enough to hold the reader's attention. Unfortunately, there is always the temptation to read more into Ellis' writing than is really there. I'm sure some among his fan base will find some profound statement about our chemical-hysteric, media-fed culture and the politics of fear. However, Ellis is too lazy a writer to pull that off. This novel is not terribly original. Other writers have tackled the autobiographical novel with better results. Meta fiction is not really Ellis' millieu as he demonstrates in the latter portion of the novel. And while there are touches of horror here, there isn't enough of it too distinguish it as a horror novel. Remember, American Psycho? Whatever his intentions for that novel might have been, all he ended up with was a lurid sex and gore fest that was fascinating in the same way car crashes are fascinating, but hardly was art. Likewise, Lunar Park is not art -- just a trippy, and sometimes entertaining little exercise in one writer's ego.
--Reviewed by JCE