Bret Easton Ellis - Lunar Park

I guess everyone is familiar with the novel American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis. The main character of that novel: Patrick Bateman seems to appear in Ellis' latest Lunar Park.

Lunar Park is in fact Bret Easton Ellis copying Stephen King. If you're a King reader you know he's written several stories about writers being attacked by fans (Misery) or characters from their novels.

The main character in Lunar Park is a writer named Brett Ellis, after being very successfull with his early work, being high on dope and liqour and going from party to party, from woman to man Ellis finds him self in a nervous breakdown. He drastically changes his lifestyle, strays away from drugs, gets back together with an old girlfriend (an actress) and moves in with her, their son and a stephdaugther.

Everything seems to be going nice till Ellis once again starts taking drugs, sees Patrick Bateman walking around, the house starts rambling and Ellis' dead farther plays ghost.

The first part of the novel is kind of a real life report on Ellis, how he dealt with his fame, the partying and boozing. Than the atmosphere changes and Lunar Park goes into the Stephen King direction. There are two things though that set Lunar Park apart from other Kingesque novels. For one I actually wanted the main character to get hurt because he's such a dickhead, secondly where most King novels don't scare or horryfy me Lunar Park does. There's a passage in the end regarding the dog that I found truly gruesome, then again that could also be because it's happening to the dog and not to the dickhead.

Lunar Park isn't as great as Less than Zero or American Psycho. Still it's a decent read and a must for those into Ellis.