Have you ever wanted to live in Los Angeles in 1981? Have you wanted to pick up your morning newspaper and read about serial killers and their victims and feel a chill go down your spine? Have you wanted to feel the all consuming lust of an adolescent 17 year old boy and how overwhelming it can be?Have you wanted to sit at the table with the cool kids in a private school you can only dream of attending or paying for? You can do all of these things by picking up the shards by Bret Easton Ellis .Bret succeeds in recreating both the 80s and LA in the 80s whilst also throwing in generous doses of sex , violence and a maybe a few things that might shock ,disturb and scar the casual reader.
The book kept me hooked because Bret is such a fantastic writer. His writing captures the protagonist’s(also called Bret) descent into paranoia in a manner that let’s the reader know what is probably going to happen , but also builds the mystery and anticipation of how exactly it is going to happen.
His writing also captures the dynamic between Bret (the protagonist of the novel is also called Bret , because it part autobiography) and his friends(are they his friends though?).It excellently captures the pressures of putting up appearances and having to seem normal , wanting to fit in , considering the enormity of the secrets that many of the characters are hiding.
The Shards is majorly a character study of the lead and the several facets of his personality , his need to put up appearances , his paranoia , his naivete, his opinionatedness ,and how all of these traits affect his friends and even the city of LA . All of these traits, all of these shards of his personality , are not relegated to just teenagers or the youth , they are present in every one of us to a varying extent. They are all shards of our personality as well , affecting those who interact with us as well.
