Okay, this is a bit overdue because as I mentioned in my day log I actually finished this book a few days ago. But it took me a while to start this because every time I thought about it I just didn't know where to
start, there was so much, and even now I still don't know. But let me try LOL.
This book was fucking bananas. The narrator, who is Bret Easton Ellis himself, is just so damn interesting. I love his writing style, or perhaps that's just his personality, or maybe it's both, but reading it is so easy because of how fascinating he is. Every time I picked up this book I went into a trance. The writing is kind of cut-and-dry, not really emotional in the typical sense (I've heard this is pretty much Ellis' modus operandi), but somehow it still teemed with character because of how much we were inside Bret's head. It's very intimate, perhaps is the best way to describe it. Even though Bret is such an unreliable narrator it makes you feel like you know every detail of his thoughts.
A wave of lust crested hard in my chest and I suddenly ached for him—the sensation was so immediate and so tidal that I was shocked—and adding this new presence to the anticipation of watching that movie that was finally about to begin forced me to slow down my breathing. The boy aroused something primal in me that I had never felt before—I wanted him immediately, I needed to be his friend, I had to make contact, I had to see him naked, I had to own him.
It wasn't just the characterization though, it was also just the way the writing was on a sentence level. The vocabulary, the flow of the words, the way every sentence was formatted, it all felt so natural when it had to be natural and jarring and exciting when it had to be jarring and exciting. Again, it makes it so easy to read, you just fly through it because of how well it all flows. Maybe it's more of a personal taste thing? But I loved it. I'll even say that it kind of made me crazy jealous because I knew I would never be able to write like that no matter how hard I try.
Back to Bret though, he was a very frustrating and upsetting protagonist at times, but in other times he was also relatable. His vastly different identities—the tortured artist, the writer, versus the tangible participant—is pretty much what the story is about. His paranoia in relation to the killings and Robert Mallory and his paranoia in being discovered as gay are not separate things, they are linked, symbiotic even, and it's painful but also seriously fun to read how this paranoia takes over him and his life.
I didn't let it bother me—I might have fallen in love with him but there was no way for this to happen, to actualize itself in this particular time and place, in the atmosphere at Buckley, in high school, in 1981, so fuck it, go with the counter-narrative. Who cared anyway? It was all bullshit. It felt so cleansing to look at things from this angle. I wanted to be where Susan Reynolds was. And I wanted to write like this as well: numbness as a feeling, numbness as a motivation, numbness as the reason to exist, numbness as ecstasy.
And there is so much atmosphere in this book. Like sooo much it almost suffocates you. I thought I'd read atmospheric books before, it's nothing compared to this. Of course this is due in part to the book's tendency to name every single thing and constantly reference. Songs, artists, brands, street names, by God there are a lot of street names. And I definitely understand why people find this annoying, but at the same time I kind of enjoyed it. Especially as someone who a) is Gen-Z and b) has never been to America before, it was fun to see into this completely unfamiliar world with such intensity. I felt plunged into this book's setting.
Another part of the atmosphere-building were of course the characters and their relationships to each other. They are so terrible and interesting and I love them. Again people say this novel is too long but I don't agree, I think all the scenes, even the "useless" ones, just add more depth and more tension to this fucked-up friend group.
This novel is so good at making every conversation feel like I'm about to get murdered. The characters are almost never talking about what they're talking about; there's always some double-meaning, or something they're trying to say subliminally, skirting around the issue pretending everything is normal. And it rounds out the whole theme of the book, the pretense. The overwhelming fear that crushes Bret at all times makes every conversation feel high-stakes even when on the surface it's about nothing.
'Please, Susan,' I said softly. 'Don't worry. He's gone. Robert's gone. He can't hurt you anymore.'
Susan turned back to me, trembling violently now. I was gripping her hand so tightly she couldn't pull away.
'Is my secret safe with you?' I asked softly. 'Is my secret safe with you?' I whispered again.
I was squeezing her hand with such force that I could feel it begin to snap apart—I kept crushing it while telling her in a soothing voice, 'He's gone, Robert's gone, it's all going to be okay, you're safe,' until I heard something in her hand breaking.
And the horror bits are appropriately horrific. There were moments where I felt genuinely sick and moments where my jaw was just gaping, but at the same time, they're not so overwhelming as to feel gratuitous or unnecessary. (I know this is one of Ellis' least violent books.) I couldn't look away, it pulled me in, I just kept reading and reading and reading even when I was terribly grossed out. I think it adds so much to put you in Bret's head and experience the fear and dread he's experiencing.
The ending is not necessarily open, it's technically wrapped up, but the events of the story itself are so ambiguous. I'll admit, at first, it left me feeling a little empty. There was no one moment where it clicked and I had an epiphany about everything in the novel. If I wrote this post just an hour after finishing I might have rated it a bit lower because the ending didn't feel so neatly tied in a bow like I had expected it to be.
But the more I think about it, the more I love it. I love going back to certain scenes and thinking about how absolutely nuts Bret is being, how paranoid he is, how sometimes he seems so
correct but maybe his friends are right, maybe it's just his writerly instincts to embellish situations and see things that aren't there. He is such a well written unreliable narrator because he makes so much sense all the time and I believed him too, but he's also. Insufferable. My misgivings were all erased once I stopped thinking even subconsciously of this novel as a mystery, it's not a mystery, it's not even really about the killings. It's a character study and it's a really good one!
'I tried to help him he killed himself he was my friend I loved him I loved him I tried to save him he attacked two of my friends earlier he jumped he jumped.' I was being lifted up. 'He trapped me in the apartment I thought he was going to kill me.' Paramedics placed me on a stretcher, my face was wiped clean, and an oxygen mask covered my nose and mouth. I was wheeled through the apartment and then was carried down in the elevator. I saw the vaulted ceiling of the lobby as I kept ranting even though no one could hear me through the oxygen mask. 'He killed those girls he killed Debbie he attacked Susan he told me to come he needed me he attacked me he tried to kill me before he jumped I loved him I loved him.' I was pleading to anyone who was listening.
If there's one thing I could complain about in this novel, it's that I wish there had been more Susan. She is such a central character, and Bret is so enamored with her, and yet I felt like I didn't get my fill of her. I know that this is likely on purpose because Susan is the embodiment of the numbness that Bret strives for, she becomes increasingly colder and more distant as if she lives on an entirely different plane, but I really think I would've liked it if she had more scenes. In the present of the story yes, but I also would've liked to see moments between her and Bret pre-1981. You know, just sweet stuff of them together. I feel like it would've made the fate of their relationship in the end hit so much harder. As it is, their connection didn't feel as overwhelmingly present in the story as I would've liked.
That's pretty much my only nitpick. Other than that, I loved the Shards. It was a rollercoaster, it was nauseating, it was funny, it was relatable, it was sad and shocking and horny and weird and fun. Everything I want out of a book really! The themes of obsession, of homophobia and hiding who you are, the inherent performance of being a person. All to set the tableau of two mentally ill guys slashing the shit out of each other. Beautiful.
I hesitate to give books I just read a 10/10 right away; I'll wait until my next reading log to decide for sure what I think. But this is definitely as close as it gets!
...and I had seen so many instances even before Robert Mallory entered our lives: pulling a hand away, an unfinished kiss, the Icehouse song, the bikini in the supermarket—these had been clues emerging within a widening puzzle. The sadness I felt was tied to Thom's impending pain and it was something I didn't want to process: Thom didn't deserve this. But then, I thought, as the fear started overriding my sadness: who deserved anything? We get what we get.
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seraphikiss
