Reviews with content warning for Xenophobia - American Psycho

Reviews tagging 'Xenophobia'

American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis

78 reviews

pantslint's review against another edition

dark funny tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.25

Having read Clark's Boy Parts first, I can appreciate this book for what it is based on when it was published (early 90s). Though, I'm definitely judging it based on today's standards around social climate, which is the main reason why my rating is fairly low.

The extreme violence against women in American Psycho is quite honestly unnecessary. Yes—Bateman is literally a murderer and actually the worst person ever, but it turned into senseless torture porn. There is an extreme amount of sexual violence disproportionate to the need for my understanding of his character. I can already infer that he's a raging, violent misogynist—without the detailed grisly scenes

of how he tortures sex workers and his other dates.

Even more, I think Ellis uses enough methods to display the unraveling psychological state of Bateman's character, without having to write such extreme scenes of torture.
For example:

senseless and increasingly violent murders of the poor
completely unreliable narration
stream of consciousness writing
chapters that are just random reviews of music albums
increasingly racist and homophobic descriptions of others, including frequent slurs
his ample knowledge of other serial killers and their lives
In Ch. 46, when narration switches to 3rd-person as he dissociates

There's so much more. But my main point is that Ellis already did all that and I'm making the argument that Ellis only ended up writing torture porn for the incels. Whatever!!!

This book made me fucking LAUGH. There are so many one-liners and ridiculous conversations to choose from:

Price says, "...for Christ sakes—you can get dyslexia from pussy—" when talking out of his ass about the AIDS epidemic (Ch. 1)
"You spin a dreidel, Preston... not a menorah. You spin a dreidel." (Ch. 3)
Bateman's tirade about the red snapper pizza (Ch. 4), because what a fucking freak
Van Patten replying, "They didn't look Spanish to me." when Price sarcastically remarks that the table of women would be hot if you speak Farsi (Ch. 5)
The f-bomb war in the bathroom (Ch. 5)
A CLUB LITERALLY CALLED "NEKENIEH" (Ch. 10)
"...the thing looks like a fucking Big Mac" (Ch. 14)
the phrase, "low, faggoty whisper" in Ch. 21 because what in the actual fuck does that mean
MAKING FUN OF THE OLD QUEER MAN'S LISP IN HIS NARRATION... "Akthent on thee latht thyllable" and "exathperated" was FOULLLLL (Ch. 22) The dithrethpect is crazy 😭
All of Chapter 41, "Another Night." Because what in the Mean Girls???
The chocolate dipped urinal cake in Ch 43....

Ellis is a great satire writer. Don't even get me started on how everyone calls each other the wrong name and how they all just go with it.

All in all, I enjoyed the book. I'm sorry, I skipped the album review chapters. And the branded descriptions of what everyone wears. If I didn't, I don't think I would have finished this book at all.

Content Warnings

shazzalovesnovels's review against another edition

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challenging dark funny sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

1.0

Content Warnings

crock_potiii's review against another edition

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challenging dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

Acid trip.

Was it real? Or some of it real? Or not at all?

But as a satirical story it does an incredibly good job and really tearing down toxic masculinity and just how depraved Patrick is mentally. It critiques so many things that, while prevalent at the time of the books publishing, is still prevalent or even more so than before.

However, I also think that the message it was trying to give sort of failed too. Many people want to be Patrick, they strive for his everything and THAT'S NOT THE POINT OF THE BOOK OR MOVIE.

But whatever. I made a pretty great slideshow presentation and analysis on this book in the 10th grade and accidentally read it during Holy Week so it made the stakes higher than ever lol.

Content Warnings

aliclare's review against another edition

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dark tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

Content Warnings

dupeskara's review against another edition

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This may be too pussy, but the movie is better. The book was too boring to read and it had so much information for me to remember. The clothes, restaurants... I got confused. This makes me sound like a child... But I think that the whole point of the book is to make you feel like the rich are just boring phychos who want to feel special. The visons that Patrick had were right, as someone who may have phycosis this is sometimes what goes thru my head whether I like it or not - gore and hate. Sorry Mr Ellis, but next time I will read it throughoutly.

Content Warnings

rarapickles's review

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challenging dark tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Content Warnings

zoemaeboonz's review

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challenging dark emotional funny reflective tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

This book was a hard one to get through; by page 80 I was already considering whether this would be too gory for me to finish reading. I am glad I got through this book though and whilst I would not recommend it to anyone or read it again I do think that it is a good work of fiction. The way in which Ellis portrays a character with such realistic psychopathic qualities and depersonalisation - a very manic sense of mind is really well written. I don’t think I will ever read a novel where such mental illness is portrayed with such unapologetic truth. It is clear that Ellis got his inspiration for most of the very graphic murders from psychopaths such as Ted Bundy or Jeffrey Dahmer. I found myself actually skimming through some parts or even having to put the book down at points because of how intense these scenes were (most notably the rat one because wtaf). Bateman is not being romanticised in this novel nor is he being portrayed as a likeable character by the author. The way it is written is through this very manic first point of view and in times when Bateman depersonalised from himself we saw the passages being written in third point of view. This book will probably sit with me for a bit and I find myself having to write about it because of this - most notably the amount of Xenophobia and slurs that were in this book was definitely hard to read and the fact that the term ‘yuppie’ was the least derogatory term put in the book says it all. The quote that probably sums up this book for the reader in a way that can make you understand the bigger picture in this novel is probably this: “…and though I can hide my cold gaze and you can shake my hand and feel flesh gripping yours and maybe you can even sense our lifestyles are probably comparable: I am simply not there.”. This is not an easy read because it is not meant to be an easy read; Bateman is a psychopath and a horrible person and all the things written affirm this about the character and who he is. Though I disagree with the back of my book saying it’s ‘one of the greatest novels of our time’ I can agree that it is a good work of literature that I will gracefully never lay eyes on again.

Content Warnings