Product Description

Set at a small, affluent liberal-arts college in New England at the height of the Reagan 80s, The Rules of Attraction is a startlingly funny, kaleidoscopic novel about three students with no plans for the future--or even the present--who become entangled in a curious romantic triangle. Bret Easton Ellis trains his incisive gaze on the kids at self-consciously bohemian Camden College and treats their sexual posturings and agonies with a mixture of acrid hilarity and compassion while exposing the moral vacuum at the center of their lives.

Lauren changes boyfriends every time she changes majors and still pines for Victor who split for Europe months ago and she might or might not be writing anonymous love letter to ambivalent, hard-drinking Sean, a hopeless romantic who only has eyes for Lauren, even if he ends up in bed with half the campus, and Paul, Lauren's ex, forthrightly bisexual and whose passion masks a shrewd pragmatism. They waste time getting wasted, race from Thirsty Thursday Happy Hours to Dressed To Get Screwed parties to drinks at The Edge of the World or The Graveyard. The Rules of Attraction is a poignant, hilarious take on the death of romance.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #14022 in Books
• Published on: 1998-06-30
• Released on: 1998-06-30
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780679781486
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

From Publishers Weekly
This tale of privileged college students at their self- absorbed and childish worst is the very book that countless students have dreamed of writing at their most self-absorbed and childish moments. With one bestseller to his credit, Less Than Zero author and recent Bennington College graduate Ellis has had the unique opportunity of seeing his dream become a realityand all those other once-and-future students can breathe a sigh of relief that it didn't happen to them. Through a series of brief first-person accounts, the novel chronicles one term at a fictional New England college, with particular emphasis on a decidedly contemporary love triangle (one woman and two men) in which all possible combinations have been explored, and each pines after the one who's pining after the other. Theirs is a world of physical, chemical and emotional excessan adolescent fantasy of sex, drugs and sturm und drangwherein characters are distinguished only by the respective means by which they squander their health, wealth and youth. Despite its contemporary feel and flashy structurethe book begins and ends midsentencethe narrative relies on the stalest staples of melodrama and manages to pack in a suicide, assorted suicide attempts, an abortion and the death of a parent without giving the impression that anything is happeningor that any of it matters. Major ad/promo.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Two years after his debut best seller, Less Than Zero ( LJ 6/1/85) , Ellis returns with a very different novel. Though still about college students (Ellis graduated only last year), this story is told through numerous student diaries, illustrating the "accidents" that often form the basis of modern relationships. Here, misunderstandings, differing perceptions, and often just bad hearing cause pairings to begin or end, proving Ellis's implied thesis that there are no "rules." Ellis has his pretensions (the book starts and finishes in the middle of a sentence, and one diary entry is in easy French), but he successfully fleshes out his characters and creates involving situations. This should be a hit like the last, especially with college students. For public and academic collections. Susan Avallone, "Library Journal"
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review
"Inspired. A wonderfully comic novel." --Gore Vidal

"Ellis is, first and last, a moralist. Under cover of his laconic voice, every word in his [novels] springs from grieving outrage at our spiritual condition." --Los Angeles Times Book Review

"Serves to establish Mr. Ellis's reputation further as one of the primary inside sources in upper-middle-class America's continuing investigation of what has happened to its children." --The New York Times Book Review

Customer Reviews

A Book Full of Dirty Purity
This is one of the most gorgeous books I have ever read. Ellis is a smart enough writer not to make it gorgeous in the conventional sense, one where swelling sentences and gushing adjectives are mistaken for beauty. Instead, Ellis uses sheer simplicity and straightforward dialogue to convey just how deeply jaded the characters in the novel are. Every character is longing for something more, but trying to go after it in a self-destructive and obsessive compulsive fashion. It is a dead on accurate portrayal of college life, of the religion of namedropping, gossip, misdirected desire, and the search of a place to belong. The characters are expertly drawn and given voices that have more emotion and chracter in them than those found in most films. It is funny and sad at the same time. When you finish the book, you realize it starts in the middle of a sentence and ends in the middle of a sentence, a subtle yet heartbreaking technique that suggests people have felt this way since the beginning of time and that they always will.

to date, this is Ellis' best work
After reading every other book in Bret Easton Ellis' backcatalog, I picked up "The Rules of Attraction" expecting more of his overused trademarks: cocaine, sex, vacuous characters. I was really surprised when, in the first few pages, this shaped up to be an incredibly involving novel with some semblance of humanity incorporated into the vacant lives of beautiful college kids searching for love. The story is told through POV segments of various characters, including Sean Bateman (good-looking, hard-drinking, narcissistic), Paul Denton (openly bisexual, provides the novel with genuine morality), and Lauren Hynde (fretting over her boyfriend, who's off in Europe). Their weekly activities of going to parties, getting drunk/high, and getting laid are chronicled in a hell-as-repetition way, with Ellis incorporating bits of stark, unexpected humor that catches the reader off guard. "The Rules of Attraction" flows with a fluid consistency, so that even events that seem to repeat aren't marred by their redundancy and instead seem fresh. What Ellis does--which doesn't happen in many of his novels--is make us sympathetic toward these characters, even though they can be relentlessly egotistical and plain down stupid, we are curious about what their futures hold. It's only in the last 30 or so pages that the novel begins to wear out, with inexplicable motivations and emotions that drift with the consistency of mood swings coming to surface. Despite this, "The Rules of Attraction" is still a damn good novel--one of the best I've read in a while--and it's doubtful Ellis will ever be able to top it.

I always knew it would be like this.
Where "Less than Zero" lacked in direction and "American Psycho" lacked in consistancy, "The Rules of Attraction" picks up to pieces to form Bret Easton Ellis' most intriguing and important novel to date. Unlike his other novels, I never once felt the need to question the direction of the plot, I was instead lost in the unique and profound story told by the different views of these college students who attended a liberal arts school in New England. Sure like all Ellis' novels, there's drugs, sex, and a lost sense of identity. But unlike his other novels, "The Rules of Attractions" keeps fresh chapter after chapter. I think it had alot to do with how the book was written, with different commentaries by all the characters in the novel. Sometimes the diiferent perspectives of the characters contridicted the other and miscommunications with the conversations were to say the least, really humorous. This is really a touching, sad, funny, and remarkable novel. I guess there are some people who probably can't stomach Ellis' style of heavy drug use and sex. All I can really say if you are that type of reader is: Deal with it. Rock'n'Roll.