Imperial Bedroom, aka Less Than Zero 2, will likely have two stand out moments for most readers: The first ten pages and the last ten.
In the first ten, The whole narrative of Bret Easton Ellis' universe is given a clever metatextual shake up which acknowledges the veracity and fiction of both Less Than Zero the novel and Less Than Zero the movie and then creates a third (Or fourth, depending on how many fictional Bret Easton Ellis' you think are out there.) 'real' universe in which Imperial Bedrooms takes place. It's a bit of a stroke of genius where he is able to create both a stand alone novel and a sequel to a book and a movie based on a book that deviated from the plot and main themes of the novel it's based on, wildly.
In the final ten pages there is a sudden return to the kind of sadism and violence that Ellis is well known for and which had been otherwise absent from the rest of the novel. It's jarring and horrible and proof that, as far as I'm concerned, Bret Easton Ellis should be considered one of the world's leading writers of horror, not just contemporary fiction.
In between these bookends is a nasty little tale of societal paranoia that made me feel like like I was reading a posthumous J.G. Ballard novel. Clay returns to L.A. to cast a movie he's written and almost immediately strange things start happening: Anonymous texts, threatening cars following his every move, someone breaking into his condo and the sudden appearance of a mysterious would-be actress who really wants a part in his movie. As Clay tries to hold it together, all the while descending deeper and deeper into alcoholism, cracks start to appear that hint at a much darker past that he has let on
Imperial Bedrooms doesn't quite skewer society as his past novels have done but it follows Lunar Park's lead in telling a nasty little tale of psychological horror while drawing attention to the darkest recesses of Hollywood, the backbone of our culture and what kind of people inhabit it.
Click here for a taste of the mood of the book and assess how much of the devil lives in you. (I'm 100% evil and already dead inside, according to it. But then, I didn't need a website to tell me that!)
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