Jess Sharples's Reviews > The Shards

God, this was boring as sh*t. As with American Psycho, half the narration was a mix of random street names (why do I care, I’m not from LA, these mean nothing to me), description of what each character is wearing (always including the designer, which they just seem to know at a glance), and random odes to various musicians whenever there’s a situation where a song is playing. There’s very little plot beyond just “i do not trust this stranger and i have a lot of unfounded suspicions because they are alleged to have mental health issues. I will take drugs and have sex about it.”

The healthy dose of misogyny Ellis is known for but doesn’t seem to believe he expresses is omnipresent; the girls have 0 personality beyond being attractive and desired by the men around them. You could make an absolutely devastating drinking game out of taking a sip every time he mentions quaaludes, refers to his home as “the empty house on mulholland” (just say home? Or my house?? Who talks like this), talks about how beautifully numb his friend Susan is, or names the exact type of car each of his peers drive.

I’m not sure why he felt so desperately the need to write this book. It doesn’t say anything his other books doesn’t say. There’s massive buildup, in this case for no payoff whatsoever. There’s a lot of filler when he could’ve just made the book a good 150 pages shorter. The serial killer isn’t particularly compelling, and the fact our narrator believes they know who the killer is the entire time means there’s very little suspense (he’s clearly wrong, but as we only have access to his POV no other suspects are explored). Even the people in the book don’t care about their literal classmates being killed off — granted, i haven’t met any rich private school kids, but i feel like even they aren’t THAT indifferent to the death of their peers.

Basically, it was repetitive to the point of insanity, vain, shallow, and overwhelmingly… dull.