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Book Summary and Reviews of Lunar Park by Bret Easton Ellis

Lunar Park by Bret Easton Ellis

Lunar Park

by Bret Easton Ellis

  • Published:
  • Aug 2005, 320 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

Imagine becoming a best-selling novelist, and almost immediately famous and wealthy, while still in college, and before long seeing your insufferable father reduced to a bag of ashes in a safety-deposit box, while after American Psycho your celebrity drowns in a sea of vilification, booze, and drugs. Then imagine having a second chance ten years later, as the Bret Easton Ellis of this remarkable novel is given, with a wife, children, and suburban sobriety—only to watch this new life shatter beyond recognition in a matter of days. At a fateful Halloween party he glimpses a disturbing (fictional) character driving a car identical to his late father's, his stepdaughter's doll violently "malfunctions," and their house undergoes bizarre transformations both within and without. Connecting these aberrations to graver events — a series of grotesque murders that no longer seem random and the epidemic disappearance of boys his son's age — Ellis struggles to defend his family against this escalating menace even as his wife, their therapists, and the police insist that his apprehensions are rooted instead in substance abuse and egomania.

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Reviews

Media Reviews

'As a novel by anyone else, Lunar Park would be hokum, but in context, it is a fascinating look at a once controversial celebrity as a middle-aged man.' - PW
'The sense of creeping dread is excellent, and the beasts confronted by the Ellis character are genuinely frightening, but they don't lend any meaningful urgency to his psychological journey. It's as if he used an ax to kill off his ax murderer.' - Booklist.
'Even his harshest critics may now have to acknowledge that this versatile, resourceful writer has formidable skills.' - Kirkus Reviews.

This information about Lunar Park was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

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