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Jul 23, 2008

Joe rated it:

This isn't a novel. It's a collection of looooooooooosely connected short stories. More recent editions of The Informers now admit to this. When I first read the novel in '94, not knowing this fact threw me off completely. I'm re-reading it now because I hear it's being turned into a movie. It will be interesting to see what comes of that. It's certianly not Ellis's best and not a place to start if you're new to his writing. A chronological reading of his work is my suggestion or if you only wan More...

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May 21, 2008

nick rated it:

the way these short stories intertwine with one another is purely brilliant. i know a lot of people tend to not enjoy ellis' style of writing, but i think that the joy in his writing is all within the way everything is so disconnected and connected, all at the same time.

no other author can write end on end about seemingly useless facts, and still have use for them.

i know this sounds extremely contradicting, but he does the same thing throughout his other writings.
More...

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Dec 26, 2010

Rachel rated it:

This was my first B.E.E. and I was surprisingly pleased. I love the manner in which Mr. Ellis writes giving his characters a certain disconnect from seemingly everything (including themselves). There's so much moral depravity going on to keep you somewhat uncomfortable throughout. The interesting thing about this book is that it's told through several short stories that are loosely connected in a brilliant way. I recommend reading the book and then viewing the movie shortly afterward. I don More...

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Oct 03, 2007

Marc rated it:

For the first one hundred pages I felt like it was just a not-quite-as-interesting rehash of what Ellis did in Less than Zero. However I found myself getting drawn into the strange ties between the stories, and the way the book continues to spiral into darkness. I find it hard to believe that it isn't classified as a collection of short stories, and as such I think number #12 was the stand out one to me. Worth picking up if you're an Ellis fan, but if you find his style at all tiresome I'd skip More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Mar 05, 2009

Deven rated it:

The Informers is a fiction novel by Bret Easton Ellis. The setting of the book is LA mostly. All of the charters are ether from LA or live there now and all the charters are very rich, most of them come from wealthy families. The book doesn’t have a story line it’s a series of short stories that are slightly intertwined with one another.
The Informers doesn’t have one set storyline the book is cut up by chapters. Every chapter starts a new story that doesn’t have much to do with each ot More...

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Apr 22, 2011

Melissa rated it:

growing up on a "secluded" island, you don't realise the literature you're literally missing out on until you move to the big city and people five years younger than you talk about the greats as if they're blasé - doesn't that generation just get tired of things too quickly?

i grew up in the noisy late 80s and watched the world on a string through vh1 as the 90s slid past. i'd heard of american psycho but never seen it. christian bale, who? i remember i watched the movie but i More...

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Jan 25, 2011

Winston rated it:

LA's vapid hedonisim is chronicled in thirteen narratives, separate yet melding into an indistinct voice that is languidly restless, unfocused, indifferent, and rambling in a drug-induced haze; friends, lovers, spouses merit the same mention, often less favourable, as Porches, Mercedes Benzes, Jaguars, and personal financial worth. Amidst the blase disregard of relationships for transient gratification, the desire for genuine connection is thinly veiled; the son who is affected enough to disappr More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Mar 16, 2010

stephen rated it:

did I miss something??

up through the last chapter of the book, I still had to adjust to the shift in character viewpoints (every chapter) and had to consciously look for any ties, which were rare and weak. I suppose it does make more sense as a collection of loosely connected short stories about people in an alternate reality of America (mostly California) in the 1980's, in a society that is genuinely fucked up (cough cough excuse me). I'll probably be offended when I reread this More...

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Jul 23, 2009

Katie rated it:

Sure, it looks entertaining. But, I promise you, by the time you get to the thirtieth page you'll start flipping through the pages, just to see if the 'might as well kill ourselves now' tone dies down a little as the book goes on. Surprise! It doesn't. An endless, painful, LONG look at the lives of some very spoiled, very addicted teenagers and their over medicated, surgically altered parents. It's LA at it's worst: and I'm having trouble believing that people this heartless even exist, but that More...

1 comment like (4 people liked it)

Jun 05, 2009

Elizabeth rated it:

Joe woke up and ordered a cheese omelet only to stare at it the entire time, confused about why he ordered it in the first place when he wasn't hungry, then he went to the movies but he didn't really pay attention to the first half of it, then this goth girl was looking at him funny and he really wanted to fuck her but doesn't, and he decided to visit a friend's house and so he drove there in his super expensive sports car and drank beer and afterward he went to a club and picked up a valley gir More...

3 comments like (3 people liked it)

Aug 09, 2009

Becky rated it:

It is my understanding that Ellis plans to follow Lunar Park with a follow up to Less Than Zero. However, I don't see how many more times he can visit these charaters since he references them in all other novels. Julian shows up in this one, if only in a conversation... letters addressed to Sean at Camden of Rules of Attraction fame. I used to think this was cool but after this novel, I actually think it is a little boring. The DISAPPEAR HERE billboard makes an appearance and there are chapters More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jul 08, 2010

Christina rated it:

#30

Well, this is it. The first book so bad and uninteresting that I actually put it down before I finished it. Oddly enough, I got almost 2/3 through it! But last night I was just DONE. Started skimming so much and then downright paging through to other chapters, then to the end, then said "enough!"

It start off THAT bad which is why I got so far in. But the supposedly connected series of short stories were just too damn confusing. I sent most of each chapter tr More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Aug 25, 2011

Adam rated it:

I'm completely split on this one. I hate to give anything less than four stars, generally (I suck at judging books), but I dunno. Some of the chapters/stories were excellent, particularly those toward the beginning of the book. Here, once again, Ellis expertly captures the malaise and attitudes of an era. Additionally, trying to determine who narrates each chapter as it begins, and figuring out the ways the characters are connected and the chronology of it all is engaging. However, once the More...

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Jan 03, 2012

Leah rated it:

I really, really love the way Bret Easton Ellis intertwines his characters, letting them appear in unexpected places and, crucially, entirely detatched storylines which creates the effect that their lives are fully rounded, with realitic, unrelated areas. Not only is this book, within itself, an example of that, but I actually decided to read it in the first place because Tim Price from American Psycho was in it, and I just love the idea of characters popping up in different tiers in completely More...

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Nov 01, 2009

Adam rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

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Sep 01, 2011

Austin rated it:

Boring. Very boring. Extremely boring. I know that's the point when Ellis is writing about rich people, but it pretty much felt like I was reading the parts of Less Than Zero that ended up on the cutting room floor. About 70% there was some action, but it didn't really seem to fit the rest of the story, and by then I was just trying to finish it so I could get on to the next book. If you want to read about boring spoiled rich people, read American Psycho. If you want to read about boring spoiled More...

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Dec 24, 2011

Jack rated it:

I thought it was a good follow up to "Less Than Zero." In short, the book is a collection of short stories (some what) told from a different person's First Person Perspective, which can be a little disorienting at first. Despite that disorientation though, it was kind of fun to figure out who the story was now following (as well as what gender they were) and how and if they were connected directly to the previous story, or any other of Bret Easton Ellis' previous books.

I re More...

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Apr 11, 2011

MaryG90 rated it:

Boh. Forse la peggiore parola per esordire, ma è esattamente quello che ho pensato finita la lettura di questa serie di racconti. Ellis ha la capacità di lasciarmi talmente perplessa che, ovviamente, mi spinge ad andare a fondo nell'analisi di ciò che scrive. Ormai, è una lotta personale tra me e i suoi romanzi, un vero rapporto di amore ed odio partito con "American Psycho".

Anche in questo caso, l'autore ci presenta piccoli scorci di "vita quotidiana" nella corro More...

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May 06, 2010

Sal rated it:

I love the way Bret Easton Ellis writes. I love how he never tells you his characters thoughts, but just from observing their dialogue and actions, the characters develop so naturally. His books bring out a masochistic side of me. I never feel good after reading anything he writes. But I can’t help coming back for more. His world of morally devoid, upper-class monsters has a strange allure that keeps me wondering about the characters after I put the book down. They are strangely hypnotizin More...

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Oct 06, 2009

Patrick rated it:

This is a great book about moral bankruptcy in the middle of glitzy LA. I like this book because his writing contains loose affiliations of the different characters in the book. The first 9 chapters were great but the last 4 were not great.

Each chapter has a different character narrating it and is loosely connected to the other chapter but at its heart each character is alone. The characters have to take drugs/alcohol just try to relate to each other shows you the depth of their iso More...

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Aug 01, 2011

dragynlady added it

I lived in LA in the late 80's and I guess I was traveling with a different crowd, though I think I was aware that a lot of people were doing a lot of drugs, and I just had a general distain for those types. He did really well with the vernacular and the fashion, and I cringe to think that people talked like that. The book overall was incredibly disturbing, and left me with a sense that humans can be a horror. I loved the metaphors of the monstrous behavior and the tumbleweeds, and the des More...

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Oct 09, 2010

Hal rated it:

I had high hopes for this book going in, but lost interest about half way through. It just kind of meanders without really ever going anywhere, and while it deals with the same themes as Ellis's other works (80's culture of excess, materialism,vacuous charaters living only on the surface, etc.) it lacks much of the satire and humor I've enjoyed in his other works.

I alternated, between the book and audiobook, and despite being one of his thinnest works, I also found it to be one of hi More...

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Dec 01, 2008

Tessa rated it:

I love B.E.E. because of his unerring talent for creating the best kind of repulsed fascination. (Or fascinating revulsion.) Also, he has the best moments. This one occurs early on in the collection, and was probably the place that hooked me:

"The door opens. It's a small bathroom and Raymond is siting on the toilet, the lid closed, beginning to cry again, his face and eyes red and wet. I am so surprised by Raymond's emotion that I lean against the door and just stare, watch More...

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Apr 02, 2010

Al rated it:

I love the way Brett Easton Ellis writes; I just don't like what he writes about.

He takes things too far.

I was fascinated by the world he created in The Informers — not so much a novel as a collection of overlapping stories, each vignette told in the first person by a different character — but a few of the later chapters conveyed more than I wanted to know about human nature.

The violence was too real, too depraved.

Worse, there was no hope. Not a sh More...

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Jan 07, 2012

Derek rated it:

This was a good quick read about a bunch of terrible people in Los Angeles in the 80's. When I purchased this book I thought it was a single story but it is actually a series of vignettes only really tied together by 80's LA decadence. Occasionally a character mentioned in one story will pop up in another but really each tale is basically a stand alone. Despite the unlikeability of almost all of the characters, Ellis still does a great job of capturing the authenticity of these people and their More...

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Jun 19, 2009

Rhonda rated it:

This story lacks subject. It doesn't have any kind of meaning. Vampires pop up and make racist jokes and have sex, then kill their sex partners. Guys and girls who are all uniformly rich, drug-addicted, bird-brained, big fans of sunglasses, blond, tanned, gorgeous shuffle around doing nothing, perhaps to portray the meaninglessness of life. The plot is horrible. To be honest, it doesn't seem to really have a plot. It's really more a series of horrible short stories connected only by the chracter More...

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Feb 14, 2011

Prsolans rated it:

I'm not sure what to think about this one... It started out promising, and having read Ellis before, I was getting into the story. But at some point, it seemed to me to unravel into an collection of disconnected tales of sex, drugs and sad shallow bored rich folks.

Now tales of sex, drugs and sad shallow bored rich folks are exactly what I expect from Ellis (note: I've only read Rules of Attraction), but I'd also like some semblance of a narrative and some plot or something... this boo More...

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May 04, 2009

Sharon rated it:

I've never been a huge Bret Easton Ellis fan, but I do really feel like he's at the top of his game here. These stories about vapid L.A. characters and their lifestyles are so over-the-top in their depictions of moral decay, unhinged wealth and privilege run rampant, and faint emotions drowned under medication, drink, and sex, that they just work somehow, to the point where the reader is not even surprised when the narrative tips over to possible vampirism. The way they weave in and out of each More...

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Dec 12, 2009

Brett rated it:

I'm a huge Bret Easton Ellis fan. This book is a collection of short stories, many of which contain the same characters or characters that appear in other Ellis works. That would have been great to know at the beginning, except the back cover said it was a novel, so I was always trying to connect chapters to each other that were really just slightly related short stories.

Regardless, like other Ellis works, this book focuses a lot on empty characters and places. Like in Less Than More...

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Jun 24, 2010

Deni rated it:

This is the book that made me stop reading Bret Ellis. I loved American Psycho and Glamarama... right? This book should be nothing if I loved those books.

The thing is, Patrick B and Victor Ward are so over the top as characters, so unbelievable and almost "caricatures" of the social-type that I can accept it as fiction.

With the informers it was as simple as reading a paragraph where the decision is made to kill the child, and then what follows being very real More...

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