The Rules of Attraction

Rules of Attraction is a first-person narrative that alternates between a few egocentric, hedonistic college students as they become intertwined in a love triangle. There isn't a dull moment in the book in large part due to the story and Ellis' provocative style of writing. The characters are quite shallow and far from morally inclined, to the point where some will readers get sick to their stomaches. This is Ellis' intention though as the underlying message of his writing is a critique of the moral state of modern culture. Unfortunately, his themes tend to split his critics often due to misunderstanding. The book is amazing and important. Read it!

Recently, I was speaking with two friends independently about The Rules of Attraction. One friend loved the book the other friend hated it. The friend that loved the book is the friend that recommended it to me in the first place. The friend that hated the book said that she could not get past the horrible people within the book. Girls gang-banging the entire football team, people treating abortions like they're having a mole removed, the rampant homophobia by some of the characters, the angry almost anti-woman ravings in some places, and the lack of concern by every character about anything or anyone other than themselves.

I went into reading The Rules of Attraction after having seen the film version. To sound nearly cliché, the book was certainly better than the film. For starters, the connection between the Bateman brothers makes more sense--as both books take place in the 1980s. Additionally, the attitude and the feel within the book of the carefree college days of the 1980s when sex, drugs, and rock 'n roll were not only unsafe, but when recklessness was encouraged. A big fan of various tapes and bottles of Beck's, I am still left feeling a bit unconnected a large number of the characters. Sean is kind of a putz and not nearly as cool as his homicidal brother. Lauren is, well, she's a word the folks here at the store probably won't let me use. Paul is still delusional--and yet probably the most normal of the principal characters--and Victor is still, well, Victor.

My favorite scene in the book is without question the scene that was not changed in the slightest when TROA made its film debut: when Richard "DICK!!" Jared, Paul, and their mothers sit down to dinner.

All in all, I can agree with both of my friends. One was right that this is a great book & completely worth the short time it took to read it, and the other was just as correct as the characters are very shallow and unlikable. However, to me that's one of this book's great successes. Ellis MEANT for his characters to be flawed, selfish, and reckless--like most exciting people I knew in college were... whether I liked them or not.

The author provides great insight into the fundamental inability of the young to understand each other. All the characters live in a fantasy world, based on misreading the signals they receive from each other. It rang very true apart from the lack of intense conversations late into the night - perhaps the drugs were too prevalent. That said I dont think the book has much to offer to anybody who can actually remember the 80s.

more of the Ellis genre where everyone is rich but broke, everyone is bisexual and everyone is miserable and lost finding themselves relating, often intimately (sex), in kakfa-esque ways- i was suprised here to see that ellis returns back to the same characters tying all his novels to the same central world - clay from Less than Zero is back at camden college and simply referred to as the kid from California, playing a minor role. sean, patrick bateman's little brother, is here, playing more of a major role, as well as characters like lauren hyde, jamie fields and victor johnson who all turn up later in Glamorama.

Hard-hitting, incredibly nasty exploration of the deranged private lives of privileged kids at an elite New England university. Here's the sex and the drugs - both in vast, intimidating quantities. But also, here's an insightful look at the horrific family lives, the desperate need for acceptance, and, ultimately the nihilistic, self-destructive behaviour that results from the characters' sheltered abandonment by the rest of the world. The movie actually does a great job of capturing the book's frantic, panicked tone, but Ellis' writing still takes the cake.

The characters in "The Rules of Attraction" all use alcohol and drugs without a second thought, sleep with the most convenient person available and have no idea what they want to do with their lives. Not only are the main characters of Sean, Lauren and Paul aimless and careless of searching for a purpose in love and life, but the entire school of Camden seems to be exactly the same way. While Ellis may go a bit overboard with his portrayal of existential ennui at American colleges, there is more than a grain of truth in what he shows us about this country's young people. I would recommend this book for any kid about to go off to college so they know how *not* to be like while they are there, and for any adult who has bittersweet memories of their own college experiences.

We all know the masterpiece of that author, viz. American Psycho (please watch the uncut unrated video version: the extra five minutes make a real difference), and I was curious to see what he had become with time and age. This novel is situated in the same period as the one that made his fame, the mid 80s, under Ronald Reagan, the time of the emergence of financial capitalism, or shouldn't I say the emergence of speculative stock exchange financial greedy deregulated adventure. We are dealing here with the children of the first generation of these speculators who were inventing that golden boy and yippy/yuppy age that was just being born under our eyes. The children are all in college doing anything you may think of from drama to poetry, from art to just nothing. They do not plan on getting any real competence or skill in the social field of productivity and the economy. They are just expressing, satisfying and even trying to satiate their unfathomable hunger and thirst for anything that is not advised by moral and ethical authorities in the American world or what's more that is heavily not recommended and harshly rejected, i.e. drugs from cocaine to mushroom and all kinds of other grass, substance or concoction that could get you high or just wasted; then alcohol for the very purpose of being drunk as long as possible, forever if possible (And there they are creative like champagne on the rocks or rum diet coke, and some other barbaric mixtures); and of course sex, sex and sex. The book is in fact detailed only at that level and explores all kinds of possible orientations from plain gay to plain straight and all the variations, nuances, hues and other shades in-between for both girls and boys. In fact the book is becoming obsessive about male homosexuality with a few characters. Paul who is all gay but has some non-gay adventures on the side. Sean who starts very, very, very gay and turns straight later on and anti-gay at the same time. And you have those here and there who condescend to have a gay episode provided it is not made public, and at times even take a second helping of that liquor. There even is a pregnancy that is terminated in a clinic of some kind, a revealed, accepted, celebrated, resented, rejected, hated and finally gotten rid of pregnancy. All that is pathetic if not even miserable. The future leaders and profiteers of this society of ours in the 1980s were just corrugated and totally spaced-out and learning nothing because they did not need anything, except poker and bridge: their daddies and their mummies were able to provide them with the means and the positions they needed to make money, and the only objective was to make money in society, and to sexually milk the cow in college and of course not beyond graduation, if ever reached. It is well written, and maybe even funny, though it is essentially sad and dramatic, essentially when we know it is these people who were the central actors and engineers of the 2008-2009 crisis. They live in a bubble, their mind is a bubble, and they managed what they were supposed to manage in our society as if it had to be a bubble. Bubble after bubble we have a comic book that is not comical or funny at all. Gadoosh! And our dear traders are starting again, and will always start again because for them life is a party when they get high and drunk, then a hangover, then another party when they get high and drunk, then another hangover, and so on till the end of time, till some kind of God tells them: "That will do!" and throws the Tables of the Law to the ground and breaks the covenant to give it back anyway just one fit of anger later.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne, University Paris 8 Vincennes Saint Denis, University Paris 12 Val de Marne Créteil, CEGID Boulogne Billancourt

I have read some reviews regarding how empty this novel seems. I must disagree. Ellis shows true style in his use of perspective as he tells, and retells, the novel's events through the different characters. He shows how the 80s generation prolonged the high school extremes, love or death, into their college years -- as the people simply exist to take drugs, fail classes, find new bodies to lay down with, and attempt suicide to get attention. I found the novel to be highly amusing, and his technique of ending the novel in mid-sentence suggests that the condition may only continue.

The Rules of Attraction, set at a fictional New England college very similar to the author's alma mater Bennington, chronicles a few months in the lives of two young men and a young woman as they search for some meaning or purpose in their lives. Sean is a narcissist whose hobbies include having sex with freshman girls, going to parties, and dealing cocaine. Paul is a shy bisexual whose naivete is matched only by his desire to land an attractive mate. Lauren is fixated on purity and sexuality and in love with a boy that has no memory of her. These three characters form a love triangle, centered around Sean, that is rocked by drugs, drinking, and partying.

Ellis's style in this novel is very mainstream considering his other work; The Rules of Attraction is a product of many of his literary influences with a sprinkling of his own creation. It is told by several narrators, not only the three main characters but also several secondary characters and there are even a few passages where the narrator is unidentified. This smells heavily of Faulkner, but Ellis makes it unique by including interesting and often symbolic details and having inconsistent narrations (i.e. one character will describe an event differently from another character).

There is no real plot in The Rules of Attraction; it is a series of narrated episodes that have a cumulative effect. We see relationships grow and ebb, death, and young people groping for meaning or even anything tangible in their lives. Most of the characters are filled with a sense of hopelessness. It's not that they don't care; they don't know how to care. The characters live in a moral vacuum where everything in ambiguous.

By the end of the novel, you may feel sick to your stomach with this emptiness. But that's the point. Ellis wants us to realize that people cannot live happy lives by emulating the students of Camden College. Sean, Paul and Lauren are the result when you lose touch with reality.

Yet again, Ellis is writing about the lives of the young, rich, over-indulged and ennui-filled. He is to the prep school set what Jane Austen was to the country gentry. Here we have another cast of characters who don't seem to care about all that much but have to find someway to fill up the time. Since they are all wealthy, bright and in a position where they can't really fail no matter how hard they try, of course they are as self-destructive as they can get away with.

It's impossible to keep up with who is dating who, who is on what drug and what party they are at. There isn't an actual plot per se and it doesn't have an ending at all, really. None of the major characters learn anything, really. At times, it is a hard read because there's no sense of redemption for anyone.

However, Ellis is a very good writer (whether one likes him or not is beside the point) and is adept enough at characterization to make these people compelling if not likable. The characters are whiny and melodramatic, which was pretty much par for the course for college students if I remember correctly (and it wasn't that long ago that I was a whiny and melodramatic college student). They are, for all their unattractive traits, instantly recognizable and Ellis does not sympathize with or demonize any of them. By telling the story through so many different first person narratives, he doesn't give any of the characters dominance. If he made any of the characters sympathetic, the story would have failed. It's an excellent depiction of a very flat world with people who have enough time on their hands to realize how flat it is but no energy or imagination to do much about it.

I remember reading this book when it first came out and finding it fascinating. Well, now that quite a number of years have gone by..and I've read many books since...and I consider myself a much more worldly reader, I have to say I still find this an extraordinary book. It's very carefully crafted. The shifting points of view from chapter to chapter, character to character, beautifully describes the mixed signals, confusing desires, and baffling misconceptions of college years. Although the book is a series of monologues, Ellis skill is so great, that you get a very VISUAL picture of each of the characters. It's someone you knew, someone you remember. That he was so young when he wrote this is even more astonishing. Actually it is his best work and it still has a strong impact today.

Where "Less than Zero" lacked in direction and "American Psycho" lacked in consistancy, "The Rules of Attraction" picks up to pieces to form Bret Easton Ellis' most intriguing and important novel to date. Unlike his other novels, I never once felt the need to question the direction of the plot, I was instead lost in the unique and profound story told by the different views of these college students who attended a liberal arts school in New England. Sure like all Ellis' novels, there's drugs, sex, and a lost sense of identity. But unlike his other novels, "The Rules of Attractions" keeps fresh chapter after chapter. I think it had alot to do with how the book was written, with different commentaries by all the characters in the novel. Sometimes the diiferent perspectives of the characters contridicted the other and miscommunications with the conversations were to say the least, really humorous. This is really a touching, sad, funny, and remarkable novel. I guess there are some people who probably can't stomach Ellis' style of heavy drug use and sex. All I can really say if you are that type of reader is: Deal with it. Rock'n'Roll.

After seeing the film adaption of The Rules of Attraction by Bret Easton Ellis, it was apparent that his novel had to be read to match the fascination that invoked me in the first place with the initial viewing of the film. And to my absolute joy, for lack of better words, the novel was just as great the film. The novel by Ellis, opens just as the flim does, making it more than clear that director and writer Roger Avary did a spot on job when it came to staying true to the text. I, myself, find the humor in that people are complaining about how "pages are missing". Um, yeah. There are no pages missing, that is simply how Ellis decided to commence the novel. I bet that same person complained that some ridiculous character "Betrand" had a whole chapter in French. The characters are eccentric and humorous, completely candid, and asbolutely absurd, all of which adds to momentum of wanting to know them more. All in all, the novel by Ellis is a great piece of work, completely appropriate for the time it was written (1987) and couldn't be anymore accurate to the typical scene of a small liberal arts college in New England(trust me, I would know having attended a small liberal arts college in New England myself). Certainly worth the buy, and if anything it is worth picking up to see the "missing pages" in the beginning and the "typo" in the end. Did I just spoil that for you? Sorry. Go and give it a read already.

Ellis usually writes about horrific things from out of nowhere to facilitate his reputation as a splattercore writer charading as one of the contemporary greats. But here Ellis captures a darkness that is indeed real and for this he must be given merit. His characters all have the same voice just as in any of his other novels. There is nothing to be learned from this novel although some may take it as a warning. Orwell warned of a Totalitarian future in 1984 and Ellis warns upper Middle class parents about sending their kids away to college.

Stop it, you people who are analyzing this book for plot. Quit trying to nail down the elusive symbolism, you whiners. This book is not about any of that. This book is a photo album of when we were yicky and MTV was still young. I went to college the first time back in the 80s and I have read no book that captures the feeling of that time as this book does. Yes, we were yuppies, but we were also the first of the slackers, too. This is by far Ellis' best work. It does not get the press of his other books, but long after they have been forgotten, this one will be hailed as a classic.

Ellis' work continues to stand out in large part because of the absolute discipline he shows in maintaining moral distance from his characters, allowing them to speak for themselves and formulate the environment they populate in their own terms. The true testament to this is that baby boomers and college students alike both embrace Ellis as elucidating their own moral responses to the environment he creates.

Structurally, the book may come off as sophomoric because of its use of multiple points of view, but Ellis's devices of radical subjectivity do all arguably add to the pluralistic ideological protagonism Ellis manages to achieve. The plot follows the romantistic relations of a few of the disaffected students of the elite liberal-arts Camden College in New Hampshire through episodes of linguistic and sexual confusion, social awkwardness and drug use, treading the territory significantly better and holding up better with age than his work "Less than Zero". All Ellis' work is ultimately salient if only in his capture of the dearth and excess of emotional energy his characters variously and exquisitely possess.

Readers can understandably slam the characters in this book for never apparently opening a book, not caring that they're failing their classes, constantly changing majors, etc. But, honestly, is this the stuff we really remember about college? From my own experience, I remember far more vividly the parties, the friendships, the bars, etc. The characters in this book may be completely messed up academically, but we see the most interesting parts of their lives, the social ones. This makes for a much more interesting book than it would've been if it had focused on such mundane topics as term papers, chemistry labs, lecture halls, and so forth.
On another note, Ellis shows some great writing in the short section narrated by Paul's mother. It might be interesting some time for Ellis to write a book narrated by a character like that, instead of admittedly self-obsessed people like Lauren, Sean, Paul, and Victor (who's equally clueless and self-obsessed in "Glamorama").

There is no higher meaning to the lifestyles that BEE writes about here, just wonderfully delicious pith.... I cannot get enough.
I go back to this book again and again when I want to recall exactly what it was like to be 19, buzzed and perpetually under the state of a passionately dispassionate crush. I love to reread this book, especially in a single sitting.
While I agree that American Psycho is, in fact, BEE's masterpiece, "Rules" is my emotional favorite.
Buy it.
Re-live it.
Get a crush on it.

Somewhere toward the end of the novel, one of the characters, Paul, gives a nice summation of the plot of the novel: "He (Paul) likes him (Sean). He (Sean) likes her (Lauren). I think she likes someone else, probably me. That's all. No logic."
When love isn't equally requited, it doesn't work out, and we stumble through three complex relationships dealing with this disparity. There is a difference between what we experience and what we percieve from that experience.
Told through the viewpoint of the three main characters (and several minor ones) in monologues, Ellis examines the difference between experience and perception, sometimes going through the same event twice told from different points of view. What we say and what we mean are often different, and these characters bare this.
If the endless drugs and one night stands of Sean and Lauren bother you, watch Paul's story. His thread is the most rewarding, and when he is absent, the novel feels colder. Sean and Lauren stumble through their relationships purposely detached. They don't know what they want from their lives or themselves. Paul is equally confused about his future, but somehow we leave the novel feeling less worry for him.

In "Rules of Attraction" Ellis has written a masterpiece. A sublime blend of anthropology and emotion. The book is brilliant. It is so right-on and so mysterious at the same time. What really happened is a moot point. Sean, Lauren and Paul are alive. Somehow Ellis has managed to create real breathing, THINKING human beings. Even Ellis does not know what really happened. Sean, Paul and Lauren do not always tell us everything but they definatley tell us something. I feel as if I know them well. As if we have been friends for a long time. As if I was a student at Camden and watched these three with intense scrutiny. All of it happened and none of it did. Those who bash this book are those who feel threatened by it. Either because they had banal college experiences or because the words American Express make them feel inadequate or because they feel that all things must follow one set format. Well, they don't. Long before "American Beauty" there was "Rules," which celebrates and mourns at the difficulty of living when the only thing left is time and thought. The book shows us the sad fact that we all are running from. The fact that no one will EVER KNOW us. And that we will never know anyone. But is also illustrates that none of us are alone. That we are all thinking the same things. Well, maybe not all of us. But a special few. Don't go near this book if you don't appreciate people. If you don't relish in the details. If you don't understand the sudden highs and sudden lows. Don't keep reading if you don't smile at, "and this is a story that will bore you." The only things Lauren, Paul and Sean have is their thoughts. Maybe that is all that is left. It does not bore me. Not one word. Please write more about these three Mr. Ellis. I have lost contact with them through the years. And She...

Book is entertaining and reveals that money doesn't make everyone happy. It is primarily a social criticism of the rich, private school he attended. Bret Easton Ellis enraged many of the people he went to school with because he drew from his own experiences to create this scathing criticism of what a private school in the Northeast of the United States was like. It kept me entertained as I saw many of the same things occuring during college in the 90's!

Bret Easton Ellis has basically written the same book about four or five times, but this is the weakest one, I think. It would be American Psycho where he would take the flat, affect-less ramblings of decadent young characters and run with it most convincingly.

About a group of decadent, drugged, boozed, rather dim college students and their various sexual, drug, booze, and other escapades. Told from several points of view, all of the characters are like the appalling background characters of Less Than Zero brought up front. It begins to wear down after a while, especially with the shifting povs.

If you like Ellis, definitely recommended. It would take a few more years for some kind of massive depression to set in to write American Psycho, or whatever he was going through, because it gets dark. Rules certainly sold a few more copies with a film version recently--but honestly, of all the good books out there...they option this?

I recommend Ellis's "Less Than Zero" over this one, hands-down. In my mind, they covered very similar subjects (college kids who drink and drug and sex too much), but LTZ was more convincingly-written.
I did like "The Rules of Attraction"'s narrator-swapping (see: TRAINSPOTTING) and the fact that because you saw the same events from several points-of-view, you never exactly knew what was really going on.... but even that lost my interest after a while.
In short: If you're interested in Ellis's books, you're probably going to read this anyway; if you're looking for a place to start, pick up "Less Than Zero" before you get this one.

After reading "Less Than Zero" I was excited to give another Bret Easton Ellis novel a try, and this turned out to be one of those books I never wanted to end. Every page was full of something interesting and thought provoking and what at times seemed shocking also seemed like the harsh, honest truth. And this has become one of my favorite novels that I know I'll read over and over again.

The events are intriguing, the use of different narrators is great and very effective, and the writing style is perfect. Ellis really knew his characters well and had me believing these were real people.

And as always in the three Ellis novels I've read (Less Than Zero, The Rules of Attraction, Glamorama), I felt some disgust towards the characters' actions yet admired them at the same time and part of me wanted to live their wild and eccentric lives.

Like many of Brett Easton Ellis' books, I found myself wondering how I could become so disconnected from the world, like most of his characters. I daresay that I related to any of them, since many of them were spoiled, drugged, egotistical, or inconsiderate; perhaps I related to them too much in that I used to have friends like them in college. Though this was not my favorite Ellis book (Glamorama takes that prize), his story-telling style was very good nonetheless, in the way multiple storylines were presented through parallel chapters and narrators.

Although the people and places he writes about seem like a different world to me (seeing as I'm an eighteen-year-old English boy!), I don't think I have ever read a more compelling writer then Bret Easton Ellis. In this novel, the third of his I have read, he portrays an almost nightmare vision of the 'American Dream' gone horribly wrong. The casualness with which the characters lead their nihilistic lives is at times disturbing, at other times hilarious. The endless spiral of drugs, sex, suicide and parties still holds frightening relevance today, but what sets this out from other Bret Easton Ellis novels is the caring heart it has: despite the flaws of these spoilt-rich-kids, they all have one noble quest in their lives; the pursuit of love. Where the novel excels is how it poignantly describes the hopelessness of this eternal search, and how it shows the desperation the human spirit can sink to in it's pursuit of this unobtainable goal.

Again, nihilism reigns on in this all too true book. The characters are never who they appear to be and they never do what it is they really desire. Everyone seems so vapid and devoid of anything resembling true love, and yet, the anonymous note writer, a sort of foil to their superficiality, appears to us as silly and outdated.
As I myself have attended a private college, many of the chracters and situations were like all the familiar gossip I might hear in passing. Very revealing book.

Ellis' most maligned novel, but for me his greatest, an intricate, deeply personal account of lives ebbing away into nothingness. The characters, as usual, are often chauvinsitic, prejudice, even misanthropic creatures, but Ellis manages to get the reader on their side. We follow several voices, all ultimately revealing their inner vulnerability and their true selves in a confusion of hard drugs, hard sex and hard emotions. We begin with nothing, end with nothing, and nothing much happens in between, but surely this is the point; these lives, this generation, like the novel itself, seems to be in a rush to get where they are going. The only thing is, none of them know where that is.

A dark, claustrophobic comedy. The reader's amusement can only be tinged with sadness at the waste of these lives with no meaning or purpose. The novel begins and ends in mid-sentence, emphasising that there is no closure here, only a sense of drift. This device also puts the reader in a position of overhearing what is going on, though still feeling a sense of involvement with the desperate lives before us. A useful preparation,too, for the same author's later novel American Psycho, which is even more savage as a satire and more shocking in its subject matter. As a 'Brit' I learned a lot from both books about the shadow side of gilded American youth and the price paid for the American dream. Recommended.

When I went to college, it seemed like nothing but hard work. Didn't connect with anyone and was jealous of all the stories about how fun college could be. BEE's book makes me appreciate my dull college experience. His characters show the shallowness of using college to party all the time. 4 years of studying and learning something beats a 4 year hang-over that these college students experienced in ROA.

i must have read this book thirteen times, the best moments being early in the morning with my only cigarette of the day. I know so well all the characters and the multiple allusions to events and people in other books of BEE that i get a strange feeling of being "at home" with this book.
I think this is the best book by BEE by far, because there is truly a 80's legend feel to it.
There is real communion of the author with the characters, something we could call understanding love, and which i find somewhat missing, except in brief flashes, in other BEE books.

Many people dislike this book and deride its lack of cohesion and unsympathetic characters. However, like most of Ellis' work, The Rules of Attraction uses snippets of characters' lives to tell the story of a community, or at least of a group. This book does not have the obsessiveness of American Psycho, and it is somewhat subtler, but it again uses the shallow desires and thoughts of it's characters to paint a picture of a group of college kids at a small liberal arts school, and it allows the reader a glimpse into parts of the mind not usually devoted to in novels. If you are a fan of Ellis, you will like this book.

This book is good, for an undergrad. You can plainly see when you read Ellis' later work the progress that he made. It does have traces of feeling, but it's a bit strained. Why would any care about these people? They're all self-centered and shallow. There are also portions of the book that are too pretensious for its' own good (the blank page comes to mind) and some of the dialogue is too cute for its' own good as well. That being said, it's still better than other young adult novels. The humor and structure are great. You could do far worse.

Another great Ellis novel. I gave it 4 stars because nothing other than "American Psycho" can get 5 stars. The book conjured up situations I lived through in college, it was like stepping back in time, although I only graduated 4 years ago. "Attraction" was funny, hip, cool and well written. Ellis' writing is so unique and his characters (Paul, Sean (Patrick's bro) and Lauren - who we see in "Glamorama") so real, I knew of of each in my college. Excellent book!!! I suggenst it to anyone who ever lived the best years of their life - COLLEGE!!!!!

After reading American Psycho and Lunar Park I was keen to read this particular novel. I found it repetitive and meaningless - a series of anecdotes and empty characters. I guess that was what it meant to portray - the bankrupt youth living on alcohol and drugs. But what does it all mean ? Nothing.

Having read both American Psycho and Less Than Zero, I picked up Rules of Attraction and began reading it with great enthusiasm. It has the same feel as Less Than Zero, but with an "east coast" twist. The beaches are replaced with endless dorm parties, and small town hot spots. The book clearly illustrates how the children of the eighties lived in a world devoid of true emotion and love. Their obsessions are nothing more than material desires which occupy their time. Their self centered view points blinds them to what is going on in their lover's minds. This book is a testament to the death of romance, which has been replaced with lust and obsession

The book is so amazing. Ellis really understands human interaction. The book starts mid sentence and ends mid-sentence, this is not a defect in your copy. The book provides a lot more context then the movie and holds 100 times more meaning and truth. If you enjoyed the movie you will LOVE the book. If you haven't seen the movie, read the book first.

Bret Easton Ellis takes us once again into a vivd world easily recalled through countless pop culture references, this time taking us back to the 1980s Regan era. Rules of Attraction captures the lives of college students in a rural liberal arts school and their provocative, if humorous lifestyles. Also of great interest is how many characters appear in this book, only to be drawn upon for Ellis's future novels. All in all a quick and VERY enjoyable read.

Bret Easton Ellis is a master writer. I think that this book is his strongest yet. The 80's ushered in a new time for all the world. Sex, peace and free love no longer dominate, but AIDS, money and the all powerful Abortion dominate. This book illustrates the death of romance perfectly. There is no more "sex," it is hardcore "f**king." To really understand your world, you must learn that vaulues are dead. The since the Romanticism dominated the world in the 20th century. Cynicism is the new mind set.

If you like Brett Easton Ellis or Jay McInerny-this is a perfect book for you. Starts off in NYC like many BEE and JM books, then takes the reader to upstate New York where there are so many twists and turns, it's hard to keep up. Lots of fun to read and hopefull for the story to continue in another book in a year or two. One of those books, that's hard to put down. If you like these types of books, I also recommend anything by Jason Starr. Aloha. SM

This is probably my favourite of all the Ellis books...Faster paced than "Less Than Zero" and less gory or redundant than "American Psycho" or the "Glamorama". Rules of Attraction is just right! Nevertheless a plotless novel, following each character from their own perspectives offers an interesting and comical cross-pollinating point of view for the reader. ... Cheap thrills galore~...Give me more please.

According to a few sources (including the one who turned me on to this book) all the situations are true. This book is the most amazing piece of literature I have ever read, and that's saying a lot. The way he writes makes you FEEL the characters and the situations, and it made me feel some of it so much that I questioned everything concerning my life, and I do believe it made me a more open, better person.

While not a classic like his first novel, Less Than Zero, this book gives an introduction to a number of the recurring characters that appear in later Ellis novels. Still a solid story, not as attention grabbing.

Sex, Drugs and Exploration sum up The Rules of Attraction. Camden is a place that is the poster college for terrible things to happen in this book. As readers, we follow these cocaine addicted students into a whirwind of trials and tribulations, such as sexually transmitted diseases, fears of abortion, excessive drug use, bisexuality, and debts.

I never hated fictional characters as much as the ones that populate this novel. Every single character is vapid and superficial to a nauseating degree. That wouldn't be so bad in itself, if I found it entertaining, but I really didn't and I don't know how I managed to finish it.

On the other hand, Ellis is an excellent writer, I can't deny that.

This books actually got me back into reading for fun. After years of Literature classes I was burned out on reading, but Ellis' collection of relatable characters in a New Hampshire Liberal Arts college puts the reader in the mind of all the characters. Different Style, but a terrific way of presenting the story.

We all know the masterpiece of that author, viz. American Psycho (please watch the uncut unrated video version: the extra five minutes make a real difference), and I was curious to see what he had become with time and age. This novel is situated in the same period as the one that made his fame, the mid 80s, under Ronald Reagan, the time of the emergence of financial capitalism, or shouldn't I say the emergence of speculative stock exchange financial greedy deregulated adventure. We are dealing here with the children of the first generation of these speculators who were inventing that golden boy and yippy/yuppy age that was just being born under our eyes. The children are all in college doing anything you may think of from drama to poetry, from art to just nothing. They do not plan on getting any real competence or skill in the social field of productivity and the economy. They are just expressing, satisfying and even trying to satiate their unfathomable hunger and thirst for anything that is not advised by moral and ethical authorities in the American world or what's more that is heavily not recommended and harshly rejected, i.e. drugs from cocaine to mushroom and all kinds of other grass, substance or concoction that could get you high or just wasted; then alcohol for the very purpose of being drunk as long as possible, forever if possible (And there they are creative like champagne on the rocks or rum diet coke, and some other barbaric mixtures); and of course sex, sex and sex. The book is in fact detailed only at that level and explores all kinds of possible orientations from plain gay to plain straight and all the variations, nuances, hues and other shades in-between for both girls and boys. In fact the book is becoming obsessive about male homosexuality with a few characters. Paul who is all gay but has some non-gay adventures on the side. Sean who starts very, very, very gay and turns straight later on and anti-gay at the same time. And you have those here and there who condescend to have a gay episode provided it is not made public, and at times even take a second helping of that liquor. There even is a pregnancy that is terminated in a clinic of some kind, a revealed, accepted, celebrated, resented, rejected, hated and finally gotten rid of pregnancy. All that is pathetic if not even miserable. The future leaders and profiteers of this society of ours in the 1980s were just corrugated and totally spaced-out and learning nothing because they did not need anything, except poker and bridge: their daddies and their mummies were able to provide them with the means and the positions they needed to make money, and the only objective was to make money in society, and to sexually milk the cow in college and of course not beyond graduation, if ever reached. It is well written, and maybe even funny, though it is essentially sad and dramatic, essentially when we know it is these people who were the central actors and engineers of the 2008-2009 crisis. They live in a bubble, their mind is a bubble, and they managed what they were supposed to manage in our society as if it had to be a bubble. Bubble after bubble we have a comic book that is not comical or funny at all. Gadoosh! And our dear traders are starting again, and will always start again because for them life is a party when they get high and drunk, then a hangover, then another party when they get high and drunk, then another hangover, and so on till the end of time, till some kind of God tells them: "That will do!" and throws the Tables of the Law to the ground and breaks the covenant to give it back anyway just one fit of anger later.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne, University Paris 8 Vincennes Saint Denis, University Paris 12 Val de Marne Créteil, CEGID Boulogne Billancourt

i read the book Rules of Attraction after seeing the movie, which i enjoyed very much. Once reading the novel I found that the characters sometimes had different names but had similar personalities.

the story revolves around a love triangle and is narrated by multiple characters, not all involved in the triangle. It is mostly about college life. Symbolism about finding yourself is shown through drug use, changing majors, trips to Europe, and questioning sexuality. The book can often be confusing because the character's descriptions of seemingly same scenes are in fact very different, and we have to wonder if the characters are embellishing or making up a lot of what they say.

It is more confusing than the movie because links aren't obviously shown and events aren't explained as true or imaginary. The way it is written and the characters, however, is much more developed and enjoyable.

This is a book that i am sure to read over and over again, and find something new every time.

A plotless "stream of consciousness" series of inner conversations allegedly generated by the vapid minds of over-indulged college students in the 80's. They are a bunch of drugged, foul-mouthed boors/bores intent only on satisfying their lust. Even their sex is boring.

So bad the author stopped writing in mid-word, and that was the end. I'll be using my copy to start fires with come winter.

After reading American Psycho, I was extremely excited about reading more of Ellis' work. I bought a copy of The Rules of Attraction and it was honestly no better than a teeny-bob issue of "Tiger Beat"

I believe that the human race, in general is good not angelic but good. However, this trash should not be created or read by anyone. This is why our values in society have declined. I am an 18 year old liberal colledge student.