The Shards

A Novel

By: Bret Easton Ellis

Narrated by: Bret Easton Ellis

Length: 23 hrs and 4 mins

Publisher's summary

NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • A novel of sensational literary and psychological suspense from the best-selling author of Less Than Zero and American Psycho that tracks a group of privileged high school friends in a vibrantly fictionalized 1980s Los Angeles as a serial killer strikes across the city

“A thrilling page turner from Ellis, who revisits the world that made him a literary star with a stylish scary new story that doesn't disappoint.” –Town & Country

Bret Easton Ellis’s masterful new novel is a story about the end of innocence, and the perilous passage from adolescence into adulthood, set in a vibrantly fictionalized Los Angeles in 1981 as a serial killer begins targeting teenagers throughout the city.

Seventeen-year-old Bret is a senior at the exclusive Buckley prep school when a new student arrives with a mysterious past. Robert Mallory is bright, handsome, charismatic, and shielding a secret from Bret and his friends even as he becomes a part of their tightly knit circle. Bret’s obsession with Mallory is equaled only by his increasingly unsettling preoccupation with the Trawler, a serial killer on the loose who seems to be drawing ever closer to Bret and his friends, taunting them—and Bret in particular—with grotesque threats and horrific, sharply local acts of violence. The coincidences are uncanny, but they are also filtered through the imagination of a teenager whose gifts for constructing narrative from the filaments of his own life are about to make him one of the most explosive literary sensations of his generation. Can he trust his friends—or his own mind—to make sense of the danger they appear to be in? Thwarted by the world and by his own innate desires, buffeted by unhealthy fixations, he spirals into paranoia and isolation as the relationship between the Trawler and Robert Mallory hurtles inexorably toward a collision.

Set against the intensely vivid and nostalgic backdrop of pre-Less Than Zero L.A., The Shards is a mesmerizing fusing of fact and fiction, the real and the imagined, that brilliantly explores the emotional fabric of Bret’s life at seventeen—sex and jealousy, obsession and murderous rage. Gripping, sly, suspenseful, deeply haunting, and often darkly funny, The Shards is Ellis at his inimitable best.

©2023 Bret Easton Ellis (P)2023 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

“Ellis is a true literary craftsman, and the novel’s imagery is lush and gorgeous . . . there is an exciting new vulnerability in Ellis’s latest book, inviting the reader more profoundly into the emotional realm of the protagonist than he has with his previous characters.” —The New York Times Book Review

“It’s been a dozen years since Bret Easton Ellis published a novel. And his latest, The Shards . . . is worth the wait. Hermetic, paranoid, sleek, dark—and with brief explosions of the sex and violence that have characterized Ellis’ oeuvre—The Shards is a stark reminder that the American Psycho author is a genre unto himself.” —NPR

“Cleverly done . . . eerie . . . The Shards establishes a tricky two-step of sincerity and unreliability.” —The Wall Street Journal

A Suspenseful Terrific Read

First off it wasn't until I was halfway through the novel that I realized that the author was the narrator and was shocked as usually authors do not do justice dramatically to their work. In this case I don't think a professional book narrator could do any better than Mr. Ellis does here. Well, he is quite familiar with the work and does a great job of interpreting the material. As he based the book on his experiences growing up it was amazing to me how detailed his memories were of the social and physical environments of the era described in such microscopic detail. This really gives an authenticity to the goings on that make you ask yourself if this really happened or is just fiction.

A number of the reviewers here have complained about the graphic violence of the serial killer's crime scenes and maybe they should stick to Murder She Wrote as the details of the twisted crime scenes add to the authenticity that makes the story so unsettling and engrossing. Also, there were a number of complaints about the detailing of the homosexual sex acts the main character engages in and once again may I suggest you stick to The Hallmark Channel if you're looking for romantic heterosexual sex. I felt that his portrayal of a bisexual young man leaning toward accepting his homosexual self was one of the best depictions of what the sex lives of experimenting American teenagers go through to be brilliant. This is the kind of sexual growing up many of us do as a teen and the presentation here is brilliant in showing the kind of sexual experimentations male teens go through without moralizing and easy pat answers to one's ultimate position on the human sexuality scale. An adult and honest look at another man's reality that I suppose makes some people uncomfortable but that's what great literature is supposed to do. The author explores his emotions and feelings in such an authentic way it is truly notable and makes as a wonderful piece of literature and not a horror/mystery novel.

So I highly recommend this book as an engrossing read that, if you are old enough, will put you back into 80's as they were lived by the more than well to do children of the Hollywood elite. The emotions of the characters are universal and end up makes you think about your own past teenage interactions. A terrific grisly read I just couldn't put down.

Too much meat whistle for me

I thought he might be going somewhere but alas, it was more of an immature man’s handbook on how to mount other men.

Real good. Classic BEE.

I really enjoyed this book. Having read all of Bret’s work, I’m glad to see him return to his roots with this one. It felt like a solid combination of all his work, but despite the subject matter, had a more adult feel to it than his earlier work, which is to be expected.

Not quite what I thought, but fine nonetheless

Overall the book is very interesting, but not at all what I was expecting from the brief synopsis. The serial killer aspect is a much smaller aspect of the book than I was expecting. The murder scenes are depicted in detail, but they are few and far between.
There is a lot of the author's feelings of growing up in a prep school in California, which is very far from relatable. You do get a bit of the distant feel to the narrator's feelings much like Patrick Bateman.

Overall, I don't regret listening to the book or purchasing it. But it's a very hard sell for most people.

Worst BEE book

End def not worth wait, so skim the middle. Fine as a last resort read based only on his detached LA aesthetic

Great book

I’ve always read his books with narration coming from me. Now hearing him read it was different. It’s like I lost something, but found out a truth.

Another whiny prep school story

In the end this is just a memior of Easton's shitty high school experience going to a private school and being a rich kid with a hint of murder thrown in. There is some gore and visceral murders and the story moves along well enough to keep with it but these prep school brats are very hard to feel sorry for. Nothing like American Psycho if that's what you're hoping for. And sooo loooong.

Good. Once You Cut Through All the Name Dropping and Labels

Pretty good. I think the author’s narcissism can really be seen in this work. It was also very clear that he is all about name dropping and label dropping. If you can cut through all of this, it’s a very good story. Maybe that’s the character he is trying to convey. Put I think it distracts and takes away from allowing this to be a great story.

The villain inside of us

Bret was not afraid to show that the more we create a villain out of someone else, we create a villain inside of ourselves. And in that, I find the real tragedy. Bret (the main "character?" lol) is angry, prone to labeling, stigmatized mental illness, when; he himself is dealing with something that he will be stigmatized for then and for the rest of his life. This book is about the threat of beauty in our society. How it can drive the voyeur mad, and the subject even madder. How do we quell jealousy? And how do we level with ourselves? I think we have learned a lot about how to be kind to strangers, but this is, in all its glory and its tragedy, a cautionary tale. Do not subject oneself to hubris. Once you feel like you have someone figured out, you don't. And you probably have yourself less figured out in the process. As my teacher would say, from Othello, be wary of the "Green Eyed Monster of Jealousy."

Vivid gory descriptions of a serial killers work

Returning, though obviously he’s a great writer and a decent narrator I just can’t stomach his descriptions of what I genuinely hope for his sake is a fictional serial killer’s work.