Since bursting into the literary scene in 1985, author Bret Easton Ellis has remained a divisive and controversial figure in popular culture. His debut novel Less Than Zero (1985) was described by revered critic Michiko Kakutani in The New York Times as “one of the most disturbing novels I have read in long time” and, most famously, his magnum opus American Psycho caused such intense public outcry that it was temporarily withdrawn from publication and later banned in some countries. The reason for all the dispute and infamy surrounding Easton Ellis – which has only solidified his subsequent reputation as a literary enfant terrible – is primarily due to the graphic depictions of sexual violence which feature throughout his work. Women are brutally tortured and murdered in the most extreme and nauseating fashion in American Psycho – and Less Than Zero infamously ends with a twelve-year-old being drugged and viciously gang-raped by a group of coked-up rich kids.  While the content of these scenes alone is enough to shock and offend the average reader, it is the cool and dissociative tone of Ellis’s narration that imbues these scenes with a lasting and disturbing significance, elevating the violence beyond the realm of snuff into something much more darkly existential. Indeed, at the core of Ellis’s success as a writer is his unique ability to evoke a haunting and all-pervading sense of dread and ennui, which he then uses as means to provoke, unsettle and, perhaps most importantly, horrify his readership. The Shards, Ellis’ latest novel after a thirteen-year absence, is a timely remainder of this.  Read more