First things first; this book is disgusting and was a horrible reading experience. I hated every last page of it (other than a clever Dante reference or two). When it wasn’t a graphic scene of a violent murder that frequently made me feel physically sick it was passages of racism, homophobia or misogyny and womanising, and when it wasn’t that it was repetitive scenes of Bateman at restaurants with his jerky Wall Street friends or many women he had seduced, listing off what he was wearing and eating, or they were wearing and eating, and referencing the brand of everything which is infuriating in itself. 

I have to admit I didn’t know for a good while whether Easton Ellis is a genius for his ability to write such a hatable perspective from the first instance you hear his voice, or just an author with a disgusting perspective of people and the world around him. Thankfully I have learnt it is the former and the book is entirely satire which is the only basis for it gaining .25 on ‘Naked Lunch’. 

‘American Psycho’ is clever, it casts a light on the shallowness of the capitalist Wall Street world where everyone is so self-consumed they fail to notice serial killings occurring around them, while these killings by Bateman are a plead for attention in a world where he keeps being mistaken for jerks of equal caliber around him. It depicts 90’s New York as an individualist hells cape and as much as I can appreciate this perspective and outlook the awful nature of this reading experience means in this case the message comes nowhere near salvaging the novel for me. On top of all this it was frustrating, the incompetence of the police here is frankly laughable as Bateman is not a subtle serial killer by any means, does a terrible job clearing up his crimes and often outwardly confesses. Also the mentions of Donald Trump as his idol not only are so sour in todays politics, but jarring when you come to terms with the truth that this is the society he comes from and hearing the orange man-toddler being discussed in such a light in a book published 30 years ago really catches you out. 

After sitting through this, how some young men idolise Bateman and his lifestyle is beyond me. They are the exact people that Easton Ellis is making a satire out of in writing this and they are too thick to even see through it when it is served on a plate with a side of fucking cannibalism for them.