Less Than Zero

Literary Fiction

Less Than Zero

Paperback

First Person

Fiction

172

2018-06-26 16:05:32

Less Than Zero is Bret Easton Ellis’s debut novel, narrated in a detached first-person voice by Clay, an 18-year-old college freshman returning from New Hampshire to Los Angeles for Christmas break. Back in his affluent L.A. world of parties, MTV, designer cars, and absentee movie-industry parents, Clay drifts through a numbing routine of cocaine, Valium, casual sex, and hollow socializing. As he reconnects with friends and acquaintances, he witnesses escalating cruelty, exploitation, and self-destruction—drug addiction, male prostitution, and the casual dehumanization of people treated as disposable entertainment. Clay’s emotional distance and inability to intervene become part of the story’s bleak portrait of privilege, apathy, and moral collapse.

Simon & Schuster

9780140088946

1985-05-01

1985

1

English

~$24.98

2026-03-15

2018-06-26 16:05:32