The Rules of Attraction
by Bret Easton EllisSign in to Goodreads to see your friends' reviews of this book.
discuss this book
friend reviews (0)
To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up.
lists with this book
other reviews (showing 1-20 of 3739)
Read in June, 2007
recommends it for:
someone looking for a little dark comedy
Although I've always intended to read Ellis' American Psycho, I read this book today in an entirely unintended way (my Little's fiance brought two books with him to Ohio State University's graduation ceremony and he let me borrow the one he wasn't reading). It's definitely a very interesting book, from its purpose to the way it's executed.
The Rules of Attraction mainly follows three members of a love triangle - Lauren, Paul, and Sean - while fleshing out the story with some interjections fro...more
The Rules of Attraction mainly follows three members of a love triangle - Lauren, Paul, and Sean - while fleshing out the story with some interjections fro...more
Like this review?
yes
(4 people liked it)
add a comment
I started reading this book expecting it to be melodramatic but fun romp through college life, centering on one cynical but intelligent character that would eventually lead, through the decadent trials and tribulations of young life, to some optimistic or at least acceptance of the future. In other words, I forgot I read Less Than Zero and misplaced Douglas Coupland with Bret Easton Ellis in my head.
This book centers on a group of characters that are basically indistinguishable from each oth...more
This book centers on a group of characters that are basically indistinguishable from each oth...more
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
Read in July, 2008
This is the most depressing, nasty book I've read in a long time. I read it all in one go last night, since I have a hard time not finishing books once I start them, but I couldn't stand the thought of having to come back to it. There may be some literary merit to the book that I can't appreciate it because I'm so repulsed by the characters, but I rather doubt it. The book certainly captures the complete lack of affect and total self-absorption of the characters, as well as the compulsive, en...more
Like this review?
yes
(1 person liked it)
add a comment
Read in December, 2006
recommends it for:
People who loved and miss the 80s
I loved the Roger Avary film version of this book, so I felt like I owed it to myself to read it. That said, the two are very, very different, and as much as it pains the book snob in me to say it, the movie was far superior. Maybe it's because the setting of the book (the mid-80s) feels so obviously dated, or because the characters seem so schizophrenic, but I just felt like the movie was a little more...real.
Honestly, it probably hurt to have gone into the book having seen the film many, ...more
Honestly, it probably hurt to have gone into the book having seen the film many, ...more
Like this review?
yes
(1 person liked it)
1 comments
Read in April, 2007
Saw the movie in 2003 in London, it made me miss Bowdoin as it reminded me of it... Rules of Attraction is far crazier a scene of course. But maybe Bennington in the 1980s lived up to it. I live about 45 minutes from there now, in Saratoga Springs, took a drive there about a month before I read this, resisted buying the book then, but I'd read Donna Tartt's The Secret History, classmate of Ellis's, "that weird Classics group (and they're probably roaming the countryside sacrificing farmers ...more
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
Read in March, 2008
recommends it for:
Gen X and Ellis fans
Hmmm. I'm not sure what I expected from the book, except that I had seen the movie a few years back and that the intertwining of the characters was very interesting. However, the movie veers very far from the book.
The Rules of Attraction is more or less an homage to the 80s. It is set at a small liberal arts college (Camden) in New England and centers around three main characters, Lauren, Sean, and Paul, with occasional side character POV used to flesh out the story. The characters ar...more
The Rules of Attraction is more or less an homage to the 80s. It is set at a small liberal arts college (Camden) in New England and centers around three main characters, Lauren, Sean, and Paul, with occasional side character POV used to flesh out the story. The characters ar...more
Like this review?
yes
6 comments
Read in January, 2007
I admit it. I first saw the movie version of Rules of Attraction because I had a thing for Ian Somerhalder. I know, I know. But now that I've seen it, and consequently read it immediately after viewing, I love it for its true literary qualities! I'm one of you now =]
Anyway, I still love and read this book constantly. The characters inspire such mixed feelings of disgust, annoyance, and pity. They're not perfect (far from it) but whenever you think that Sean can't get any more shallow ...more
Anyway, I still love and read this book constantly. The characters inspire such mixed feelings of disgust, annoyance, and pity. They're not perfect (far from it) but whenever you think that Sean can't get any more shallow ...more
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
Read in June, 2007
I think I'm getting sick of Bret. This time he's trying to shock us with rich college kids having sex and doing drugs. I was most shocked by the fact that they smoked cigarettes everywhere - hey early 80s, what's going on.
This book is told by three main characters: Lauren, "who changes boyfriends as often as she changes majors;"* Paul, who claims to be bisexual but sure could fool me; and Sean, Patrick Bateman's little brother. But every so often other characters get a page in ...more
This book is told by three main characters: Lauren, "who changes boyfriends as often as she changes majors;"* Paul, who claims to be bisexual but sure could fool me; and Sean, Patrick Bateman's little brother. But every so often other characters get a page in ...more
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
Read in December, 2007
This book to me is a classic example of modern literature. I know that sounds a bit like an oxymoron, but it's written in this witty, pessimistic, and cool vernacular that our generation is good at. Which is funny when considering that Brett Ellis is significantly older than me.
The story is about a group of rich, pampered college kids attending "Camden," a fictional college university. The chapters are broken up in a rather unique way, with each one being told from one of the charact...more
The story is about a group of rich, pampered college kids attending "Camden," a fictional college university. The chapters are broken up in a rather unique way, with each one being told from one of the charact...more
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
Another reader mentions that this book has no center, I'd say he's on target and that it may have been intentional. I enjoyed it. I reads like 20 somethings who are trying hard to be everything they aren't as they try on different attitudes, life philosophies, designer drugs, sexualities. High school and college years tend to spin by too quickly and are remembered in spurts like the friendships made, the crushes that came and went, the crisis of the moment that pales in comparison to anything...more
Like this review?
yes
(3 people liked it)
add a comment
recommends it for:
college students
This was my introduction into the world of Bret Easton Ellis, and I fell hopelessly in love.
I couldn't believe that someone could put together a written work, which not only emanates the characters hyper-sexed-over-zealous-self-conscious-unaware-searching-for-love-not-knowing sadness, but uses language to reinforce its themes. It would seem confusing, but at my first read, it was what I was feeling at that moment (minus the drugs, those came later). Rules of Attraction, at its base, i...more
I couldn't believe that someone could put together a written work, which not only emanates the characters hyper-sexed-over-zealous-self-conscious-unaware-searching-for-love-not-knowing sadness, but uses language to reinforce its themes. It would seem confusing, but at my first read, it was what I was feeling at that moment (minus the drugs, those came later). Rules of Attraction, at its base, i...more
Like this review?
yes
(2 people liked it)
add a comment
When I read this back in high school after being touched deeply by Less Than Zero (although, I am happy to report, not as deeply as I was by The Catcher in the Rye), I really hated it. However, the subsequent movie adaptations have changed everything. "Less Than Zero," while it gave us the fabulous Bangles cover of "Hazy Shade of Winter" (hands down better than the original), was actually laughably horrible - and really, the studio meddling can't be blamed (did we actually ...more
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
recommends it for:
Ellis fans, fans of satire, fans of good writing
The Rules of Attraction is one of my favorite Ellis novels. He reuses some of his characters from Less Than Zero seamlessly while setting up a sort of community hub for the characters of his future novels in Camden University. The story itself is somewhat unimportant on the surface. It serves more as a web that ties together all of the rich characters who attend this school (not necessarily classes) and experience growing up in a very bizarre manner. Ellis approaches issues of sexuality, drugs, ...more
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
Read in July, 2006
Fassbinder and other pretentious references... casual bi-sexual sex... gratuitous drug use... The Rules of Attraction will make you feel like your life is utterly boring and happy. You will feel (for somewhere between 15-3 days after reading) that you start to do drugs, have much more sex and become nauseatingly pretentious. Set in a small New England college campus in the 1980's, this story more captures the feeling of a generation of college students- both smart and utterly depressed and alo...more
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
I wasn't offended or scandalized by this novel but it didn't work for me. It's the only Ellis I've ever read and I doubt I'll get around to reading his others because one of my most monstrous literary pet peeves is the incorporating of "real" products or places into a fictional world. Ellis's love of brand and band names, even though he presumably uses them for satire, sends me out of the story, off of the page and into an episode of Extra! or Inside Edition. (I feel the same way, thou...more
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
At face value, this book is a really well written and amusing look at a bunch of college students in the 80's. Sex and drugs permeate their every day (and conspicuously class-less) lives. This takes place in the same 'world' as all of Ellis's other novels, so if you read carefully you'll catch some interesting apperances (a not-so subtle one being that Sean Bateman is the younger brother of Patrick Bateman, the protagonist of American Psycho). In addition to all the hilarity of sophomoric pseudo...more
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
Read in January, 2007
recommends it for:
high school kids
This book wasn't that great. All it's about is everyone trying to screw each other. It's another depressing one. It's about a bunch of random college kids that all tie in to each other b/c they want to screw this one or that one. None of these characters have much in the way of morals, and the kids that actually end up sleeping together don't even want to sleep with one another. A friend of mine said he liked it b/c he could relate to this in high school. Maybe b/c he's a guy and in high sch...more
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
Again, Ellis gets me. Just when I find myself getting a little bored with the constant babblings of self-centered, over-sexed, drugged-out college kids, I suddenly become a part of the story. I find that my brain starts functioning in Ellis narration and then I find it difficult to stop reading about how Sean fucked Paul and is now in love with Lauren and they all need ecstacy.... Many of these characters are also in Ellis' book, "Glamorama," so it's cool to see where they started o...more
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
Read in December, 2007
I liked this book a lot and it's a really fast read. It's not for everyone, though, there's a lot of drug use and sex and nihilism (but that's what Bret Easton Ellis is known for). It's different than the movie, but unlike The Prestige (which I just read) it's not that radically different and it made me want to watch the movie again. There were a couple of times where I understood the movie a little better because of reading the book. There's also a totally different part to the book that wasn't...more
Like this review?
yes
2 comments
Read in July, 2007
recommends it for:
anyone who read Less Than Zero or people who can appriciate Bretts style of writing.
After reading Ellis's first book, I was used to his writing style. I recommend you do not read this one first. All of Ellis's books interlock. Not by storyline, but the characters. So at one point in this book you will find yourself wondering who one of the characters are and what they have to do with anything. But if you read Less Than Zero first, you won't have a problem understanding at all. There was only one or two chapters in this book i found dull. If I didn't see the movie first I would ...more
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
book data (includes all editions)
avg rating (all editions): 3.61 (3075 ratings) avg rating (this edition): 3.59 (2690 ratings) number of reviews: 209
popular shelves
other editions
