Rating: 
Summary: Despite, and because of, All: Read This.
Review: This book hasn't a plot, deep characters, or an accurate desciption of what it tries to accurately describe (Gen-X, the 80's LA scene, etc.): everything is overdone, HOWEVER, by the end of the book, the overly-done affected me with a poignancy few books have been able to provoke (and in so few pages). I read _Less Than Zero_ a few weeks ago and certain passages are still haunting me like bittersweet (an admittedly cliched, but accurate word) memories of those rare emotions that are of no consequence to one's physical surroundings yet surface inside the mind like revelations. I highly recommend this book; it's a masterpiece despite its faults (and as somebody said, any book that is so utterly hated or utterly loved is definitely worth reading).
Rating:
Summary: Good
Review: The book seems poorly written at first, but you need to get used to the way Ellis writes. Chapters can be a paragraph long and sentences may run on for half a page. Once you get used to it, the way it is written is actually very good. The book seems very realistic and even a bit disturbing. Teenagers frequently do drugs and sezual activity is both frequent and graphic. Everything that happens seems so real, that it reads more like a first person narrative non-fiction book. Highly recommended for fans of "American Psycho" and for people open to this sort of literature. Very good, though not completely flawless.
Rating: 
Summary: Could have been so much more
Review: This is a good book, but certainly not great. One of the main problems is it is caught between two styles; all at once it is very basally thin on development but with long explained sentences of physical surroundings which were analogous to the story. This is especially at the beginning. What this brings is a superficial glazing over the character's lives which doesnt seem to go anywhere meaningful or exceptional. It is good for the quick read that it is, however, but a little more depth would have made it much better.
Rating:
Summary: Very Disturbing
Review: The plot of the novel is extremely disturbing. Bret Easton Ellis presents a sickening view of humanity in 1980's Los Angeles. This is not a book that I will read again, nor is it a book I would reccomend, although it is very well written and much too realistic. I found it far too easy to imagine the scenarios in the novel. This book is not for readers who cannot stomach the concept of twelve-year old children watching pornography, doing cocaine, or being sexually abused by rich teenage cocaine addicts. I wish I had never read the novel, as it is very depressing. Surely humanity is not as horrible as this....
Rating: 
Summary: This is a bad movie
Review: Someone below compared Ellis to F. Scott Fitzgerald. Uh, no.Someone else below compared Ellis to Hemmingway. Yes, this book does resemble The Sun Also rises. Substitute Ellis's cocaine for Hemmingway's booze. But Zero is better only because he doesn't waste time on bull fighting and fishing. Instead it's watching pornography and scoring drugs. Here, Ellis wins. And (to whatever joker wrote this below) Jake as a sympathetic character, get real. The guy's a drunken loser with no real observations or feelings. Oh, wow, just like Clay.
Rating: 
Summary: Garbage
Review: Somehow I never noticed that the city I live in is populated entirely by blond-haired coke freaks. Thank you, Bret Easton Ellis. You've really opened my eyes. The absurdly caricatured portrayal of Los Angeles, which is of course passed off as gritty realism, is just one problem among many. This novel makes its point early on and then has nowhere to go, leaving the reader with vast patches of droning, mediocre prose to slog through. Ellis likes those run-on sentences; perhaps this makes sense considering the narrator's drug problems and general anomie, but to argue that certainly doesn't make the book any more interesting. Eventually the purveyors of "transgressive" literature and suchlike will figure out that nihilistic, emotionally benumbed characters are--almost by definition--pretty dull company, at least in fiction. It's certainly true here; and, no, making the narrator break down into a crying fit on occasion doesn't add much emotional texture to the novel. This book makes Jay McInerney's "Bright Lights, Big City" (which shares much in common with the present tome) seem like Dostoevsky.
Rating:
Summary: Fitzgerald of the 1980s
Review: Bret Easton Ellis is the modern version of F. Scott Fitzgerald; while the setting is the West Coast in the 1980s instead of the East Coast of the 1920s, Ellis manages to write a book that is perhaps as appealing to Generation X and beyond as "This Side of Paradise" was to Jazz Age readers. Clay, the novel's protaganist, while living a lifestyle foreign to most of the novel's readers, still manages to relate to the general population through his demonstration of the meaningless of an empty, vapid, materialistic lifestyle. References are constantly made to how "pale" he is, but while he may not be physically tan compared to his friends, he has more of a personality, and is at least attempting to escape the alluring LA environment he grew up in by going East for college. His friend Daniel gets sucked back into the LA lifestyle, but Clay resists rather successfully by the end of the novel, making him a compelling protaganist. The 1980s pop culture references make the novel enjoyable to cultural fans of that particular era, and the prose style, that of a neverending monologue with some flashbacks is immensely appealing. This is Ellis' first and best novel, and it is amazing that he wrote it as a college student. If only I, a current college student could write as well as him....
Rating:
Summary: Gratuitous Sex and Gore Which Holds No Relevence.
Review: This book is written on pure shock value. There is no plot. How was this book ever published? All this book does is disturb the reader. The subject matter of a lost generation is overdone and thus cliche'd. This book holds no relevancy as a moral work or for any genre of literature for that matter. The characters are like those of a Stephen King novel: vacant. I would give the author merit for turning a first person narrative into a third person narrative by showing the detachment of the characters, but when analyzed we can see that it is purely the fact that there is no character development. This book is not a zietgeist piece, its' not a moral piece, it's just well... pornography.
Rating:
Summary: Very interesting, very attention grabbing, VERY disturbing.
Review: Less Than Zero is a novel that is not for everyone. It does not contain any character for the reader to really care for as everyone has some sort of horrible secret or perversion or drug habit which stops you from truly liking the character, but after a while you realize how truly beneficial this is; Ellis didn't set out to make good and bad black and white characters the reader would automatically love or hate-he's created people who are real. Real people have sick perversions, and real people are addicted to cocaine, and real people aren't neccesarily as nice as they may seem to be on the outside, and their way of life may seem appealing or even glamorous. The main character of the novel, Clay, comes back to Los Angeles in the 80's after being away at school and immediately begins to be dragged back down into the circle, and has to decide whether this is something he wants to embrace once more or reject permanently, which goes hand in hand with his decision to go back to school or not. Clay has flaws, yes, and that makes him interesting, and the supporting cast of characters furthers this along. There are many scenes that shock and disturb, moreso because of the way Ellis can write these scenes, as seen in his other novels after such as American Psycho and Glamorama, as almost being appealing. Ellis is truly a unique writer, and Less Than Zero still stands up as the most original, intelligent and entertaining novel he has written to date.
Rating: 
Summary: Read Hemingway Instead
Review: I am disappointed to see that many of these reviews have called LTZ a book for a Lost Generation. Give me The Sun Also Rises any day - at least Jake Barnes had depth and feeling. I'd take Holden Caulfield, too.
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