American Psycho

By: Bret Easton Ellis

Narrated by: Pablo Schreiber

Length: 16 hrs and 29 mins

Publisher's summary

In American Psycho, Bret Easton Ellis imaginatively explores the incomprehensible depths of madness and captures the insanity of violence in our time or any other. Patrick Bateman moves among the young and trendy in 1980s Manhattan. Young, handsome, and well educated, Bateman earns his fortune on Wall Street by day while spending his nights in ways we cannot begin to fathom. Expressing his true self through torture and murder, Bateman prefigures an apocalyptic horror that no society could bear to confront.

As an added bonus, when you purchase our Audible Modern Vanguard production of Bret Easton Ellis' book, you'll also get an exclusive Jim Atlas interview that begins when the audiobook ends.

This production is part of our Audible Modern Vanguard line, a collection of important works from groundbreaking authors.

©1991 Bret Easton Ellis (P)2009 Audible, Inc.

Critic reviews

"Bret Easton Ellis is a very, very good writer [and] American Psycho is a beautifully controlled, careful, important novel....The novelist's function is to keep a running tag on the progress of the culture; and he's done it brilliantly....A seminal book." ( The Washington Post)

"The first novel to come along in years that takes on deep and Dostoyevskian themes....[Ellis] is showing older authors where the hands have come to on the clock....He has forced us to look at intolerable material, and so few novelists try for that anymore." ( Vanity Fair)

"A masterful satire and a ferocious, hilarious, ambitious, inspiring piece of writing, which has large elements of Jane Austen at her vitriolic best. An important book." (Katherine Dunn)

intense

it's not the killing its the vapid nature of the book. great audio and telling of the story! couldn't finish it....

Not too shabby.

I like the performance and the book overall was pretty gory, but still kinda funny.

Insane

Excellent book. A perfect reflection of todays narcissistic world. An interesting analysis of the mask that people wear to hide their dark side.

Comedy isn't brewed much blacker

Fantastic book. Well worth the read, especially if you're a big fan of the movie.

The amount of thematic depth to this work can't be succinctly wrapped up in a review, but the way Ellis parodies all that American culture holds as the highest achievements, the people who view as superior, and the world we've created from those assertions is incredible. The biting, cruel comedy of the horror that Pat Bateman represents - the knowledge that he, in all his evil and selfishness, is in no way exceptional. The knowledge that the horrific is mundane, and the mundane horrific in the capitalist landscape that has and continues to define America through decades of immiseration and generational hoarding of wealth.

Ellis' writing style is excellent. The way he swings back and forth between gruesome violence, soulless character interactions, and hilarious straight-from-the-magazines reviews that Bateman gives about all his valued possession made me openly laugh more than one. He also exploits my favorite "rich people narrative" trope where the main characters, despite always talking about money and accomplishment, are never shown working even a second at their fake jobs.

That said, this is a long book, and there are sequences which are purposefully meant to be boring and soul-sucking. While this is the intended effect, it's something you'll have to reckon with. You'll almost be wishing for Bateman to murder some of these vapid yuppies by the time they're through gabbing, if he didn't always torture them to death in ways I think nobody can really be said to deserve.

Great work. Hilarious. Insightful. Schreiber does a competent job, with some good inflections. Overall I'd say give it a read if you have a palate for this kind of dark parody. It's a masterful execution.

Twisted

this book really does explain how twisted normal people can really be. I really enjoyed the interview with the author at the end, help tie up some loose ends. can't tell if Bateman is the same guy in a crazy world or crazy guy in a normal world.

disappointing reader

Fascinating and disturbing . Sadly, someone should have thought the reader proper pronunciation of Hermès. the audible equivalent of a typo.

Excellent books and voice narration

The great distinction of voices for different characters
Good steady in pace allowed me to follow the story very well.

OMG, Did I just go there? Wow

I read the reviews but I didn't think it would be like this... That was some... uh... really twisted stuff. But like others have said, I couldn't stop listening. Very satirical to the point I was laughing out loud. And then I cringed. So graphic. So if you have a weak stomach, don't go for this book. But if you want to listen to a phenomenal performance, and really well written prose then, you need to listen to this.

Distasteful and ugly in exactly the right way.

The book definitely began to drag for me. There is not really any escalation. There are some peak points in the "Action" but over all it was just the same thing over and over past a certain point in the book. This helped the book for me. The way the violence became dull gave the story a PERFECT feel for me.

Incredibly difficult to listen to, great performance

Pablo kills it (pun!) with his performance of the emotionally detached Patrick Bateman.

Probably the best book by Ellis, it is whole and complete and interesting and funny and devastating, but includes many acts of violence from the second half that are near unbearable when listened to. I have a feeling reading instead may take some of the vitriol out of it. (I had to take a week off from the book after the first murder scene involving a homeless man, but that is probably due to my squeamish nature.)

Many passages near the very end verge on poetic, and of course the 25 minute long description of the discography of Huey Lewis and the News is wonderful.