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Lunar Park Review

The following is a review of Lunar Park by Tom Waters (reproduced here with permission).

Do Brat Packers Dream of Electric Birds?

"The cliche of suburbia would dampen whatever enthusiasm I had for my new life as a man trying to form himself into the responsible adult he would probably never become." - excerpt from Lunar Park

Bret Easton Ellis is being haunted by his dead father. Ashen footsteps keep reappearing in his stylish house in the suburbs. The paint on the outside is peeling away to reveal the color of his childhood home. He's receiving emails at the same time every day from the bank where his father's remains are stored. The furniture keeps rearranging itself to the pattern that he grew up in. And worst of all, his step daughter's toy bird Terby (a simple anagram on the author's name asking a question to all the madness; why, Bret?) is coming to life when no one is looking and murdering things. Make no mistake, Lunar Park is a ghost story. References to The Shining are made. Autobiographical outpourings are interspersed throughout the novel, hidden and nestled into the parrallel universe that Ellis has shared with us in his newest and bone chilling tour de force.





In the first chapter of the book, he sympathizes with his American Psycho detractors because he was just as afraid of Patrick Bateman while 'channeling' the character as some of his readers were. In numerous interviews, the author has stated that Bateman was patchwork of himself and his father. And Bret's father isn't the only unwelcome visitor at the lavish home on Elsinore Lane. There are more horrors to come.

Boys begin disappearing in the small eastern town. His father's Mercedes (with identical plates) is seen in the periphery. A detective Donald Kimball investigates a series of copycat murders sequentially following and perfectly mirroring the gruesome atrocities committed in American Psycho. Even the names of the victims are the same. Patrick Bateman attends the married couples' Halloween party. Less Than Zero's Clay shows up on the campus where Ellis teaches a writing class.

After accepting a marriage proposal from an old flame (supermodel/actress Jayne Dennis) on the condition that he be a father to their child Robby and a suitable step dad for her daughter Sarah, Ellis attempts to escape the glamorous life of a talented single author under the spotlight in the city. This is the meat and bone of the book. The horror of settling down. The sick pattern of fathers and sons and the cycles we are invariably doomed to carry out as our family trees continue to branch.

At best, a tenth of the novel is true, and it's written so brilliantly that it's difficult to tell the difference. The Bret Easton Ellis who wrote the book still lives alone in a spacious yet understated loft in New York City. The Bret Easton Ellis inside the pages marries and moves into the country, much to the disapproval of his friends and contemporaries. The Bret who wrote the book continues to shift effortlessly into new and more deceptive personas; the Bret within the book has given up all masks and facades. "You do a good impression of yourself" is the first line of the novel. It's all an act, and it's the best one yet.

Ellis' stylish flair for sensationalism, satire and celebrity come full circle and in the second half of his life as a writer he's applied his sharp gifts towards the least likely subject matter: himself. It's shaky ground to cover, but he's pulled it off seamlessly. As a cohesive story with a traditional arc (something he's new at, mind you), it succeeds with flying colors where Glamorama failed in it's lofty conspiracies. Haunting, revealing, comic, mediocre and tender in turns, it's a fitting memoir and a perfect ghost story all rolled into one.

At the heart of every ghost story lies a heavy sense of loss, isolation and dread. A weight of sadness that settles into the marrow. One gets the feeling that settling down and moving to the suburbs to start a family is just cause enough for all hell to break loose. The suburbs were a living hell for Ellis growing up, and returning to them offers the same reward. Throughout the book, he fits in a side theme on the terror of raising a child in this day and age; school shootings, abductions, a slate of prescriptions and the prominence of aggressive pop psychology on child rearing all add to the narrator's night chills. The core of Bret's haunting is himself, though, proving the theorem that a writer's mind is also his most powerful enemy when turned against him.

Structurally, though, the novel falls apart by the third act. After occasional references to Stephen King, he borrows liberally from King's writing style and the results are ill balanced at best. Employing subconscious thoughts bracketed by parentheses and noting horrible events in first person rapid succession, the marriage of convenience should end in divorce. Ellis has a distinctive writing style in the journalistic first person, and trying to blend it with horror is only occasionally successful. Certain passages are downright terrifying while others fall flat. While the murder scenes in American Psycho were grisly and disturbing for their lack of emotion and minute detail, the final third of Lunar Park leaves a lot to be desired. It's an ill-balanced novel, but one of Ellis' best accomplishments to date. Superbly written and occasionally off-center thematically, it's still well worth the read. It's a masterpiece as a whole with a few plot holes and inconsistencies. After a six year absence, I'm left craving more. And after exorcising all of his personal demons (heroin addiction, the death of his father, the stigma and fame surrounding American Psycho), one can only wait impatiently with baited breath for his next masterpiece to arrive.

Tom Waters

Tom Waters third book, First Person, Last Straw is due out this fall from Authorhouse. He is a frequent contributor to Night Life Magazine and ArtVoice, both publications based out of Buffalo, New York. He's currently finishing up a fifteen page bio piece along with an interview on Bret Easton Ellis.

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