I first heard of Bret Easton Ellis when the movie American Psycho came out. Yeah, I was that out of touch with pop culture in the eighties, what can I say?  I was too busy playing with G.I. Joe’s and Star Wars action figures I guess.  Anyway, after viewing the absolute straight-gazing horror in his first movie adaptation while in my college years, I became curious about the man whose beautifully twisted mind this story sprung from.  I soon delved into his work and discovered an author quite unlike any other.  Ellis, it turned out, had a unique ability to parody modern life in a realistic manner while still seeming to lurk suspiciously in the shadows, snickering at its absurdities.  It is this; along with masterful ability to craft the horrific (turned toward the supernatural here), which makes his latest work, Lunar Park, such an enjoyable read.

As a writer, one of my greatest joys is to find a novel which is able to take my mental ‘reality switch’ and turn it off while I’m pouring through the pages.  Lunar Park does that page for page.  Never once will you encounter a moment of sobering reality, an event or line which seems out of place to the point that it breaks the fragile spell of fiction he weaves about his readers.  The novel flows perfectly.

The story begins as though it is written in an autobiographical sense.  He narrates in the first person, and speaks about his life as we know it.  Having become a successful author in the eighties, having had a book adapted into a movie, and having led a wild life of drugged out partying and sexual experimentation, you feel right from page one as if you are reading the author speak about himself – rather than a character the author created speaking.  His story picks up in the high-brow hills of Connecticut, where he has reunited with an old actress fling, Jayne Dennis, who bore a child of his a few years ago, and is attempting to ease himself into the role of father and loving husband.

The deliciously evil Ellis streak soon rears its head though, as we come to realize there is major trouble in paradise, and the narrator is struck with a number of challenges, some internal – some external.  For me, the internal ones were the most fascinating, as his character struggles with heavily self-destructive drug tendencies. What makes it hit home is the drugs he struggles with are the type that we all have within arms reach.  Alcohol and Xanax become not only a crutch, but a debilitating filter through which the odd events that transpire are viewed.  And it is here, as the external conflicts begin to bubble, that Ellis’ true mastery of his craft shows.

Imagine if, while in a drugged out haze, you begin to notice subtle changes in your environment.  The paint on the outside of your house peeling as if something scraped

it away, the furniture inside seemingly moved on its own to new formations, ashy footprints unable to be cleaned materializing on your carpets.  All this and more as Ellis brings us happily down the path of losing your cool.  The narrator slowly but surely, as the forces haunting him increase in insistence, starts to lose it.  A stuffed toy bird named Terby (which spelled out backwards amusingly reads Y-Bret) is observed drooling and scratching its way down the upstairs hallway.  While sitting stoned in his neighbors yard during a dinner party, a shadow of a man is seen moving through his bedroom in his home. 

As if to spur him along toward the precipice of crazy, the external events – some connected and some not – also begin to manifest in his life.  A rash of children disappearing hits the snug, well off Connecticut valley.  His struggle to find balance as a father to children he never knew (one his, one from his actress wife's previous marriage) takes on a unique importance as he attempts to find common ground with kids suddenly thrust into jeopardy.  Along with this, his growing re-dependency on alcohol and prescription drugs takes its toll on his relationship with Jayne.  He is dragged to meaningless dinner parties where Ellis allows his satirical view of modern living among the rich gone out of control to shine through.  Parents worrying about which anti-stress drug to put their second grader on so she can handle the burdens of homework.  These scenarios are frighteningly real, and as disturbing as any supernatural events that haunt our narrator. 

And then, events begin to cross over; the internal and the external clash in a beautiful cacophony of literary chaos that only Ellis could weave together which such style.  A young attractive woman at the college where the narrator teaches becomes an obsession, just as he realizes she’s being wooed by someone who looks suspiciously like one of the characters in the movie adaptation of American Psycho.  Strange emails from his bank begin to appear in his inbox at the same time, every single night, over and over.  The new furniture arrangements (which continue to show, despite them moving the pieces back to their original position day after day) and the color revealed under the peeling house paint begin to resemble the house Ellis grew up in.  And as time wears on, we are exposed to the dark underbelly of our narrators psyche and the terrible truth about whom or what may be haunting him.

It is with this work that, for me, Bret Easton Ellis has moved from ‘admired’ to ‘revered’ status.  Lunar Parkis an incredible journey through modern madness.  The striking realism with which the dysfunctions of his family life are captured, the sprinklings of details, it all serves to convince you that this must be at least seventy-five percent autobiographical. Or...

is it?  Even Ellis seems to enjoy playing this dual life.  A visit to his promotional website for the novel reveals almost a gleeful display of split personality.  Promotional, to be sure… or maybe…

Having read the book a few months ago and let it sit festering in the back of my head, I still wonder how I could have taken such a journey?  How someone could have pulled from their mind such a tale that sticks with me on a personal level despite being so far removed from my own experiences?  Could it be because I admire his writing style?  Or, could it be that Ellis has simply done what it is he always did for me: reached into the nasty, selfish, and purely evil parts of the human condition and spread a bit of it out into his novel for all to view.  Poking and prodding at our morals, reminding us each of how flawed we really are and how fragile sanity really is.  In either event, Lunar Park was a damn good read.  I highly recommend, especially if you enjoy even slightly my own amateurish attempts at story telling, that you pick up this book - and read the true master of horrific suspense at work.