90/111 - Less Than Zero by Bret Easton Ellis

I bought this book really recently because I signed up to a book club who are going to be discussing it in July, only I'm not sure I'll be going. I hated this book. This book left me feeling empty inside, which I understand it the point, but it's not clever or meaningful to write about a bunch of over-privileged cunts who don't care about anything and are dead inside.

The narrator, Clay, is back for Christmas in L.A. and everyone around him is so cool and detached and removed from everything. Always on shitloads of drugs. Never feeling anything but there is always some sort of anguish bubbling below the surface. Nothing means anything, nothing is out of bounds or beyond reproach.

I really can't stand this sort of writing (at least Charles Bukowski is funny sometimes). Rich, white kids suffering from rich, white-people problems. So so fucking dull and uninteresting.

I read American Psycho a few years ago and I also found that incredibly dull (makes a much better film), however at least there was some satire in there, too. This book seemed to be about proving that you can have nothing in your life and witness incredibly bleak and terrible events without them affecting you. And what does that prove, or show? Is such a level of detachment really something that's worth aspiring towards?

Nothing wrong with the writing, that was fine. But if I wanted to read about a load of self-involved, self-indulgent fuckwits then I don't have to look much further than beyond my own doorstep. I can do without reading about them on top of it all. And I know what people will say - that I didn't 'get' it, that it's supposed to be about boredom and nothingness and the abyss. Steaming load of crap. Ugh.

Not sure what to read next, but it won't be hard to find something more enjoyable. I can say with certainty that this will be my last Bret Easton Ellis book.