Less than Zero

Less than Zero
Set in Los Angeles in the early 1980's, this coolly mesmerizing novel is a raw, powerful portrait
of a lost generation who have experienced sex, drugs, and disaffection at too early an age, in a
world shaped by casual nihilism, passivity, and too much money a place devoid of feeling or
hope.

Clay comes home for Christmas vacation from his Eastern college and re-enters a landscape of
limitless privilege and absolute moral entropy, where everyone drives Porches, dines at Spago,
and snorts mountains of cocaine. He tries to renew feelings for his girlfriend, Blair, and for his
best friend from high school, Julian, who is careering into hustling and heroin. Clay's holiday
turns into a dizzying spiral of desperation that takes him through the relentless parties in glitzy
mansions, seedy bars, and underground rock clubs and also into the seamy world of L.A. after dark.

Customer Review: No Restraints, No Limits, Nothing at All
_Less Than Zero_ was a fun house ride of a read which I found amusing at first, then fascinating, then, ultimately disturbing. The narrator Clay, back home in Los Angeles for Christmas break during his freshman year at a New England college, and his post-high-school friends come from wealthy families. They have no financial obligations or limitations and can do as they please. What makes the novel, in which nothing seems to happen, so fascinating and so subtly frightening, is what they choose to do. The beautiful, well-dressed, teenagers wander from party to club scene, consume large amounts of cocktails and drugs, slip in and out of relationships and beds, barely keeping track of who they are dishing and feeling nothing more often than an ever-encroaching sense of boredom. They care for nothing but the next thrill. As the search for new kicks continues, more lines are crossed and more limitations are abandoned; not out of maliciousness, but from a vacuous, self-centered sense of amorality that horrifies you in its extent. What I found particularly horrifying about this lifestyle is its familiarity and attractiveness it once held. Having spent my junior high and high school years during the 80's, the cultural references struck a chord. I knew upper-class students in high school and envied their fancy new cars, their huge homes and their money to spend on alcohol and drugs. In college and beyond, my friends and I engaged in debauchery to a limited degree, and felt the pull to keep the wild, fun times going as long as possible. The book evokes those careless, hedonistic moments - chilling in retrospect - where the border between acceptable and immoral behavior blurs. With his characters' selfish inconsideration and Clay's apathetic unresponsiveness, Ellis shows us how easily we can approach and abandon our social mores. The alternating intense and soporific situations Clay finds himself in, and his reactions to them, can be either thought-provoking or stomach-churning, depending on the reader's interpretation. I believe very few people can read _Less Than Zero_ without some sort of strong reaction to it. This, as well as its time-capsule-like quality of US culture in the `80's, makes it worth-while reading.
Customer Review: Really Bad!!!
I loved the movie when it came out in the 80s....I usually think that books are better then movies but this was certainly not the case when reading Less Than Zero!!! This author writes in short bursts of thoughts and occurrences...No chapters, no fluid movement...Choppy at best! The Back cover of the book was the best part! Really made me want to dig in! Breezed though this book in about a day....Paging through, thinking "it has to get better", only to find that it doesn't....The names of most of the characters are totally stupid..How the movie and this book even shared the same title completely amazes me!! If you loved the movie...DO NOT READ THIS BOOK!! You will be asking yourself why you wasted your time on 200 pages of dribble! This books rating should be truly less than zero!!!