The Chrome Suite, Sandra Birdsell

a sweetly crafted little book about the life of amy barber, a strange kid and now an (who isn't) unhappy adult. amy's childhood in small-town canada goes off the rails when her older sister Jill dies of something hideous involving swollen glands in unmentionable places. amy is 9 when her sister dies, and we never learn what jill suffered from. her family falls apart - mother finds religion, father starts collecting junk small and large, older brother becomes a promiscuous asshole. jump forward to amy as an adult, in a relationship with piotr, a younger man from poland. can't reveal more without revealing too much. this was a strange book to read - i responded strongly to the writing and the characters' emotions, but never actually felt sympathy for amy. i liked this one, though if there's a message in the title, i'm too dull today to figure it out.

American Psycho, Brent Easton Ellis

i've read american psycho before, and i rarely reread books, so this was unusual for me. or maybe not, i've been on a rereading kick lately. anyway, ellis's book is just as appalling now as it was when i first read it four years ago. the writing is amazing. pat bateman works on wall street, though family money means he doesn't really need to. he worries obsessively over his clothes (some of the most revolting parts of the book are the litanous descriptions of everyone's attire, which you come to understand are deathly serious issues for this place and time), hair and accessories. we see the world through pat's eyes, and the materialistic '80s never looked worse. pat's group of "friends" are equally as fried and fucked up; their conversations are characterized by non sequitors that make it clear no one is actually listening to anyone else, or often don't even know who they are talking to. bizarre takes a turn for horror when pat loses it one night and attacks a homeless man. we realize then that pat is a serial murderer, and the number of victims zooms upward - friends, girlfriends, prostitutes, a random child. pat is unmoved by his own brutality, making his descriptions of events entirely chilling. this is neither a book for the weak-hearted, nor is it simply a thriller. pat's random violence speaks for the attitudes of society as a whole, focusing your attention on the shallow venality of the day.