Imperial Bedrooms (Vintage Contemporaries)

Any longer and this book may have become tedious. I liked the noir feel, the terse, at times luminous prose. A very captivating book overall. It felt like The Big Sleep to me--I didn't really know what was going on and couldn't keep track of all the characters but that doesn't matter. It has great atmospherics and a doom to it. It worked for me. But I like BEE. He's a risker taker and a talent. It's fun to watch him work. Period.

I had great expectations for Imperial Bedrooms because Less Than Zero meant so much to me 20 years ago when I was in high school. In addition I really enjoyed American Psycho and would read antying Mr. Ellis wrote for that reason alone. However I felt that given as much time between Less than Zero and Imperial Bedrooms this was going to be a fantastic read and that the book would be surpass his previous efforts. I was wrong, Imperial Bedrooms felt rushed, the character development was not very strong and it was difficult to follow at times. I was very disappointed by Imperial Bedrooms I hope the next book is more cohesive.

The nihilistic tone is back with a vengeance, except now Clay, who was the observer of such depravity, is an active participant. That for me was the thing that separated the two books: From being along for the ride in "Less Than Zero", and to feeling trapped in the car without door handles in this one. Having read the two books back to back I can say his style is completely the same, but any charm or remote attraction Clay might have had is gone. Ellis seems to tack a big period on the lives of many of the characters, and although I read this in nearly one sitting, I couldn't put it down fast enough to take a shower.

Twenty-five years ago, they were Less Than Zero hipsters who thought they owned Los Angeles. Time has been cruel to those who survived the Hollywood scene of the mid 1980s.

Clay the screenwriter returns from New York to California where he does what he does best, party-hopping while seeking to sell a script he wrote. In his mind nothing has changed in two and half decades; perhaps that is because he parties in a purple haze of alcohol. As he makes the rounds, he runs into some of his hip playmates. His former wife Blair is married to Trent the producer. Julian owns and manages an escort service while Rip the dealer is more plastic than flesh. However except for a deal, Clay ignores the old crowd as his attention is on wannabe actress Rain Turner, who is 200 proof looks and zero talent. Julian warns him to be careful with Rain as she may seem like his submissive, but that might prove an alcoholic allusion as Clay begins to investigate deadly text messages and lurking cars.

With a nod to Elvis Costello, this is an interesting character driven thriller that though the story line is somewhat limited to the party-hopping it hooks readers with a need to know whether Clay as the narrator is a hallucinating paranoid from too much alcohol and drugs or a stalked victim. The support cast, as seen through Clay's hazy lenses, enhances understanding of the lead protagonist. Although the plot deliberately turns cerebral interpretively slow, fans, especially those of Less Than Zero, will appreciate Clay's return as he hops the Imperial bedrooms of Los Angeles.

Harriet Klausner

This is a novel tracing Clay's penachant for masochistic, self-loathing behavior amid his own futile desires for self-improvement, genuine affection & love. This is not a novel that most will fully understand with one reading; it took me twice before I finally understood the gravity of Clay's seemingly unimprovable quandaries. This is a surprisingly cryptic novel. It is a story about Clay's quest for morality and his raging struggle for an illusive peace that trumps his own unceasing narcissism.

Ellis has done something significant here.

When you think of the word "sequel", it can bring up nasty feelings. Most of our favorite movies were made worse by subsequent sequels, and therefore, I for one am not above panning so-called "sequels" to novels. The idea is just preposterous, unless there's a series.

That being said, I can't call Imperial Bedrooms a "sequel", because it's not. The feeling I get at the end of the novel (without spoilers) is that Ellis has come full circle in the life and times of Clay. To be honest, past this, we really need not know Clay to figure out where he's going, and that's why the book is successful in that sense.

On the other hand, some may be slightly dismayed to see Ellis went only halfway on the stylized vignette prose of Less Than Zero here. There were some passages that felt just like we were back in 85' at various cocaine Hills parties, but that's an exception to the rule. Essentially, Ellis creates more of a Lunar Park-esque storyline, rather than follow the nowhere lead of Less Than Zero.

The shock value is still there, however. If anything, Ellis has gotten stronger for it. Also, another great accomplishment here is that Imperial Bedrooms is more-or-less a standalone book, had one not be so inclined to know the character's history and connections to one another. You get the same effect either way, one is just much more deeply involved.

At the end of the day, Imperial Bedrooms gives us a good story (if you can separate Less Than Zero from it and not compare). It ties up loose ends, and pounds into the ground the point of what we've always known. The best advice I can give, since it IS a short book, is to sit down next to a cold air-conditioner, and "disappear here".

For those who've followed the author's career and liked his debut, this purchase in principle should be a no-brainer. Even his controversial "American Psycho" seemed to have something meaty for those of us who don't mind a little gross-out with our meal; however this sequel to the author's era-defining debut does not hold up.

I found it a lazy attempt to try and cash in on characters that once captured the imaginations of his fans. I am certainly in the minority as many found this novel to be a welcome return to themes that he touched upon in previous novels. I rarely give up on a book before finishing it, but this one was easy to put down and not pick up again. I really wanted to like it but it's a no go from this fan.

Bret Easton Ellis seems to want to have his rotting cake (cashing in yet again on his first novel) and eat it too (thumbing his nose at Hollywood for ruining Less Than Zero). I always admire his style and that's what keeps me reading -- but what a waste of such memorable characters (Clay, Blair, Julian, Rip). Imperial Bedrooms is an unbearably negative and humorless read, and even at a mere 169 pages the nihilism just gets boring. If you've never read anything by Ellis, start with Less Than Zero and American Psycho.

I enjoyed reading Imperial Bedrooms, and finished it in just about 24 hours. It was a fascinating story with interesting characters, but something just did not click. While all of the characters floated through their lives, I felt the same reading the book. I read the pages, got a story, but didn't pick up much.

Although it's Raymond Chandler whose name keeps coming up, I find that in its bleakness, this book recalls the novels of Horace McCoy. In particular, "They Shoot Horses, Don't They?" As well as "I Should Have Stayed Home." McCoy never went this far, however. This novel is devestating. I appreciated Ellis' return to brevity. This book is like a single drop of poison suspended from a hypodermic needle. I loved it.

This effort feels like an after thought, and in the literary sense, re-visitations are rarely satisfying. There is dread, paranoia, and anxiety, but it leads to a bleak bukkake-like jerk of snuff, whimper, and "didn't you see my hand in all this?" chicanery that doesn't satisfy at all.

Neither female characters, Blair or Rain, serve any purpose. They are Flies.

The nonsensical sexual violence seems misplaced and borrowed from his previous, and totally unrelated works. And Clay, the main character, is a polished weasel certainly capable of pushing you out of a moving car while you are sleeping, but in no way does he deliver any believable physical or sexual dread.

Lunar Park was luminous, inventive, mature, surreal and fascinating.......Read it.
Imperial Bedrooms is light, vapid, mildly entertaining and Ellis-ordinary.

Your choice.

Bret Easton Ellis decided to take characters that were an exaggeration of people that might live in LA and completely distort them. This book is a clash between Less Than Zero and American Psycho and I feel cheated. The first two thirds of the book kept me going, if only to figure out the mystery (which is kind of lame). In the end, Ellis decided to destroy the characters he created in Less Than Zero with some of the most ridiculous plot twists (and no, it's not worth reading to find out what they are). This book is trash. And like American Psycho, Ellis has shown that he has an affinity for torture porn. It's as if he writes the most twisted scenarios he can create for his own pleasure, or perhaps shock value, but regardless it's weak story telling, pointless and crude. I am sorry I wasted my time on this piece of trash. That's how I felt at the end of the book. Do yourself a favor and avoid this crap.

Bret must've been sitting around his apartment one night watching `Batman Begins' eating PinkBerry with his collar popped and focusing on Christian Bale's line about `sycophantic suck-ups' and thinking ... hey ... he's using my Patrick Bateman character in a completely different way ... maybe I should do something similar. Thus we have Imperial Bedrooms. This 168 pages feels like a forced half-measure for somebody's contractual obligation more than a novel, or rather a novella. Maybe Bret will come out and say differently, he is on tour after all and will probably relish some level of buffoonery about the unwritten back-story or the several `much longer versions' that he thought inappropriate. Please, Ellis, spare us.

Everybody has already delved deep about these subcutaneous references and what they mean from the title to the last page in the multitudinous reviews across both print and on-line mediums, but I'll spare us all any of that tomfoolery. We get it. We're over it. Get to the meat or art of the matter, and don't play cheap and nice either. Worn-out, direct referencing without subtlety is `sooo yesterday', as one of his characters might assert.

First, I really wanted to puke every time I stumbled over `another' pop-culture reference that Ellis had dropped in, which not just felt random and out-of-place, but highly contrived. Someone got `out-of-control' with the Global Find & Replace feature in Word, methinks. He does these things on purpose and that's his style - yes, I get it. The real problem is that it just doesn't work anymore and trying to emulate yourself for a struggle of a sequel that reads like something he wrote over a long weekend on meth comes across as wankery, for a use of a better term and one that won't get picked up by the censors.

Ellis tells you close to the end that the whole thing will not tie up in the third act and boy is that an understatement. A lot of the devices employed come across like Chinese mix-mix left-over soup; ideas hobbled together from other books that he's done, which to no surprise are the real masterpieces. This thing just feels like an injustice to the whole collection, like he's micturating on his entire body of work out of apathy, languid curiosity or jaded depravity.

I would be surprised to see this become a movie, in fact I highly doubt that it would. There's just not enough here to warrant an engaging story. However, films are sometimes more visual and Ellis draws heavily upon some stereotypes that most people are overdosing on to move his tale along and make you wonder how much of this is social commentary. Unfortunately, it lacks a message so whatever commentary there is, comes across hollow.

Tom Waits once said in a lyric, that `all the girls had names like jelly donuts', here all of Ellis's characters, who are supposed to evoke some sense of nouveau-riche, detached upper-elite or people above `our station' (like something regurgitated from a Whit Stillman scenario) all read like nothing more than soft-core Swedish Tennis players gone horribly wrong.

I'm reminded of another Christian Bale performance from `The Prestige' where he speaks about an ageing magician he works under:

"He's complacent, he's predictable, he's boring. I mean, he's got success, whatever that means, and now he's scared -- he won't take any risks at all. I mean, he's squandering the goodwill of the audience with these tired, second-rate tricks ..."

If this was a book written by anyone else but Ellis, this would have never have made it into print and thus it adds to the detritus and argument about the state of modern publishing. Honestly, this should've never left his laptop. Publishing material on your name alone for a cheap money grab is bad business. Maybe he needs to keep his pool-heated? Maybe he's in heavy debt? Maybe Bernie Madoff -- made off with his fortune? I don't know. I don't care in all honestly. This book is a cheap imitation of what it's fronting to be and it does nothing for the vast amount of readers that will be turned away and wondering why they wasted both their time and money on this. Is this the new thing, Alienating your audience for less than zero reason? We live in a very competitive time right now for the reader's attention. Either bring your `A game', or stay home.

Note to Bret Easton Ellis: Try a bloody bullet catch, mate.

...

Having enjoyed Ellis' work during my angsty teen years in the late 90s, I thought I'd give this one a try. At first I was hooked and annoyed at once. Which I expected. I ended up simply annoyed. Everyone is incredibly shallow with no development. The story is weak and immature, like the narrator. None of the characters grew since Less Than Zero. It just didn't go where I wanted. Very immature and misogynistic. I only finished it because it was short.

With Imperial Bedrooms, a novel which revisits many of the characters from Bret Easton Ellis' earlier work, Less Than Zero, he probes the modern day film industry of Los Angeles. This is a siren of a novel, describing in brutal detail the longing we have to find compassion but how impossible it seems when we live in a world where no one tells the truth. Ellis, like always, writes with such assurance and depth that his work is constantly frightening, disturbing, honest, touching and deeply, deeply effecting. His observation on the world we live in is spot on. Imperial Bedrooms, his 7th novel, is just as good as anything else he has written. While it does lack the wit and satire present in The Rules of Attraction or Lunar Park or American Psycho, it still gives a grim, honest view on the human race. I feel the emotions of distrust and longing for genuine relationships these characters feel. (Granted, Clay and co. act out their dismay in horrible ways, but their feelings, I believe are universal).

If you are a fan of Ellis, you will not want to miss this. I hesitate to call this a "sequel" to Less Than Zero because all his characters hop around into his different novels but it does work as a part 2 as well as a standalone.

As always, Bret Easton Ellis has his fingers on the pulse of america.

I was severely disappointed by "Imperial Bedrooms." I liked both "Less Than Zero" and "Lunar Park," but "Imperial Bedrooms" manages to include the elements you expect from Ellis -- a brooding sense of despair and incipient violence poorly masked by outward glamor -- and have them go nowhere. Apparently going nowhere is the point, as we see Clay's descent into absolute amorality and soullessness. It's possible to write a great novel centered on a unlikeable-to-despicable first-person narrator ("Lolita" comes to mind), but this novel doesn't work. The characters are presented so thinly it's hard to care about them at all, so what happens to them doesn't seem to matter much. Everything is so flat that any investment I might have felt in the book disappeared, and all I felt was distaste.

If you're interested in the kinds of themes Ellis explores and like his style of writing, I'd strongly recommend "Lunar Park" over "Imperial Bedrooms." It deals with the issue of writing fiction heavily based on fact in a more interesting way, and the characters feel much more substantial. And while it's dark, it doesn't feel gratuitously nasty, as "Imperial Bedrooms" does. It isn't that the book endorses what Clay and his circle do, but that it's all presented so flatly that even the horror gets numbed down.

I'm hoping Ellis' next book is better. He's a good writer, but this is not a good book.

I enthusiastically selected this book from the Vine program solely because Bret Easton Ellis wrote it. Glamorama is one of my favorite books to reread but sadly Imperial Bedrooms doesn't live up to any of Bret's previous works. While I was reading the book I kept thinking to myself, "Maybe I just don't get it." but once I finished the book I read other reviews and realized that it wasn't just me. For a story that picks up 25 years later I was hoping for more closure from the characters. Instead the book is just a sad, predictable snooze fest. I wouldn't recommend this one even as a library read.

This novel does not benefit from being a sequel. It tries so hard to outdo and outshock the original that it becomes a caricature. Its a mystery, maybe, about people that are written in such a way as to make the reader not care a bit about what may happen to them. The noir-ish tone at times doesn't really go anywhere and acts mainly to shoehorn some shock sequences into the story. The plot moves far more slowly than it should for the brief length of the book and never really develops into anything interesting. Overall, its a disappointment from an author who has written far better.

I've read his entire set of narrative fiction. Love him, his writing, his dark side and his light. Imperial Bedrooms is such a disappointment. I figure B.E.E. must actually be happy and content in his life for once, because the "edge" is forced, the setups are too familiar. I don't wish bad things on anyone, but I if that's what it takes for another great B.E.E. novel, I hope it happens.

A great sequel to an otherwise outstanding novel. While the first book was sort of an account of a trip back home, this story is set more as a tense thriller. I enjoyed the story. A very quick read like the first book. 4.5/5

`Poorly received' `vacuous soul-sucked kids' `on the surface' `missing even a scintilla of compassion' `outshock the original' `its a disappointment' `graphically disturbing passages' `succinct, coldly clinical style' `it sucks' `Flawed sequel' `Clay's disaffected nonchalance' `that hope is destroyed'`despicable characters' - The Easton Author is back! I love the first page... signed The Handsome Dunce of Camden College Fame

Awful people doing awful things and here's the important part, I never once cared. This is a jumbled mishmash of violence and sex and depressing alcoholism with nothing to care about. The only good thing I can say is that it only took me a few hours to get through.

Ellis' "Imperial Bedrooms" is fast story about the mirrored funhouse that is Los Angeles. Liked the idea of reading a sequel set a generation and a half after the fact. Liked the brooding dark cars circling the writer's psyche. What happens when you become a pastiche of your own work.

I love some BEE, but 'Imperial Bedrooms' was not very good. In a funny way, the novella itself (clocking in at just over 4 hours on audible), is an amalgamation of what Hollywood has become. If BEE was a focus group, this is the result. The need to do more of the same has die-hard fans bored to tears, especially when we only get a book every 5 years. The book is a Betty Crocker cookie recipe of equal parts deadpan observation, textbook narcissism, CSI-like violence, and the mentioning of the building 'Doheny Plaza' crow barred in about 200 times.. In early books, the nihilism and deviance seemed to be perhaps a statement on Hollywood's ravenous mentality or youth's fear of death and growing old. This one really seems like a half-hearted attempt to cash in on a franchise. I thought, as a whole, Lunar Park was surprisingly solid, even with it's sentimentality. He was exploring new territory. Now, pushing 50, his abuse and sexual fetishes read more like some closet Max Hardcore, a creepy pedophile who he "lampooned" in earlier works. I am a fairly seasoned reader who can pick up on sarcasm and satire, but I'm angry at the laziness of this novella. I really don't think I'm alone on this one. Sorry, Bret.. That said, the early chapter of Clay discovering someone had been in his apartment was pitch perfect. Just never capitalized on the suspense you were trying to build. Like the Cubs, I have to say, "Maybe next time... "

I loved Less Than Zero. I loved the characters, the writing, all ofit. To me, Clay was an apathetic, spoiled brat, BUT not a crazy, psychotic lunatic as he now is. He pulls so far from the original character that I could not believe this was a sequel. So sad...kind of like the movie was...off track and just wrong.

Wow was this a terrible read. I had the misfortune of finding this in the seat pocket on my 5-hour plane flight. At first, I blamed a crappy airport margarita for my somewhat bewildered response to the first 75 pages. But by the end, I was sober enough to realize how painfully bad this book was. Just. Bad. Period. I'd do a summary of the plot but others have done a better job. Needless to say, if you like to roll your eyes and chuckle at 9th grade English lit-level metaphors, go right ahead and take a read.

What was exciting, cutting-edge and hip in the 80's is now tired and cliched. Ellis once again gives us violence, sex scenes, and plenty of name dropping. Ellis needs to find something new to write about because this is a very tired rehash of Less Than Zero.

Bret Easton Ellis is my favorite writer. I've always read every single one of his books in a 1-2 day span, only being able to put it down when having to do unimportant things like work, sleep, shower, blah blah...you know. I literally had a countdown going until the book came out and couldn't wait to see what the continuation of less than zero was going to be. Maybe I hyped it up to much? I guess I was expecting something else. I am so utterly disappointed and annoyed by what I read. Horrible. It was like the worst parts of American Psycho and Lunar Park combined. It was like a mix of a lackluster suspense with cheesy US weekly, gossip column, "blind item" stories. The characters in the book might has well of been random new ones selected not any of the ones we came to know and love/ loathe in Less than. I'm going to 1/2 price books to trade this in asap. Booo. Lame.

Bret Easton Ellis takes his time with his Novels, and you can tell.

Imperial Bedrooms like Less Than Zero gives you a first class tour of the underbelly of LA.

Classic Bret Easton Ellis Witty dialogue galore. Drugs, violence and drama, every BEE fan should relish in this incredible piece of work

I read Less Than Zero when I graduated from college. It was very relevant. This was a really lazy attempt to keep his fans. The whole brand name dropping with constant referances to BMW' etc.. is so 1990's. Your readers have evolved Bret, get over yourself and write something worth our time.

I was severely disappointed by "Imperial Bedrooms." I liked both "Less Than Zero" and "Lunar Park," but "Imperial Bedrooms" manages to include the elements you expect from Ellis -- a brooding sense of despair and incipient violence poorly masked by outward glamor -- and have them go nowhere. Apparently going nowhere is the point, as we see Clay's descent into absolute amorality and soullessness. It's possible to write a great novel centered on a unlikeable-to-despicable first-person narrator ("Lolita" comes to mind), but this novel doesn't work. The characters are presented so thinly it's hard to care about them at all, so what happens to them doesn't seem to matter much. Everything is so flat that any investment I might have felt in the book disappeared, and all I felt was distaste.

If you're interested in the kinds of themes Ellis explores and like his style of writing, I'd strongly recommend "Lunar Park" over "Imperial Bedrooms." It deals with the issue of writing fiction heavily based on fact in a more interesting way, and the characters feel much more substantial. And while it's dark, it doesn't feel gratuitously nasty, as "Imperial Bedrooms" does. It isn't that the book endorses what Clay and his circle do, but that it's all presented so flatly that even the horror gets numbed down.

I'm hoping Ellis' next book is better. He's a good writer, but this is not a good book.

I rarely review books. I have reviewed Infinite Jest, which is the greatest book ever written, and now I am choosing to review this POS, because I hate it. If you have read Less Than Zero, and get the whole "nihilistic, everything is meaningless" thing, then i see no reason to waste your money on this completely unrewarding, pornographic extravaganza of crap.