The marketing blurbs for Bret Easton Ellis's new novel, Imperial Bedrooms, would have it be a sequel to Less than Zero, the 1985 novel that made him famous. It is, after a fashion: all of Ellis's books are sequels, prequels, spinoffs and derivatives of each other. They share a universe, or perhaps a multiverse, of interconnected fictional lives and storylines, all of which bear, or are supposed to bear, or are trying to convince you they're supposed to bear, some resemblance to Ellis's actual life experiences, family members, enemies and friends. But if a sequel is a continuation of a previous storyline, or a recapitulation or recontextualisation of one, then Imperial Bedrooms doesn't quite fit the description. It shares a narrator with Less than Zero, along with several other characters, a distinctive and highly self-conscious prose style, a time of year, and a milieu of urban self-abuse and disaffection. But there is nothing straightforward about the relationship between the books.

LRB 24 June 2010 | PDF Download