Rating: 
Summary: Rich, Bored and Stoned Is No way To Live!
Review: There's no book that sums up the debauched youth of society better, or is more aptly named than this fascinating Bret Easton Ellis effort. Then again the same can be said for ALL of his books, witness the more recent "American Psycho." .............. I read this book years before seeing the eye popping celluloid version, and naturally, the book goes deeper into the characters within this disturbing story. Clay, our anti-hero, tries to save his pal Julian, and on/off girlfriend Blair from their increasing involvement with cocaine.Unfortunately, Clay finds himself in a changed and unwelcoming world when he returns from school to find that Julian and Blair have taken up more than doing drugs together.Will Clay be able to redeem these relationships, and strike a niche in these peoples lives as friend and counselor, or will he be witness to impending depravity? You MUST read this book and find out for yourself. ............ "Less..." is more, in this book. Easton-Ellis spins a tale that fascinates, nauseates, repulses, and keeps you turning page after page. A popular theme, the drug culture has been the subject of countess books written before and since this. I've personally read other fictional, as well as non-fiction accounts of drug abuse such as "Christiane F." and "Go Ask Alice" among others. These selections are stunningly real, and more shocking because they happened, but they have no atmosphere for your mind to feel as you read. Ellis creates a work of fiction which I find believable. (Sure, this stuff DOES go on somewhere)! He also gives you a mental visual that makes the reading three dimensional. One of my favorite things about reading is PICTURING all the characters, and the settings. The finer the writing, the better a mental picture I will get. Say what you will about Bret Easton Ellis, but I have always found his work to be among my favorites out of the hundreds of books I've read. That's because his books are full of characters and places that are fun to visit, even though I wouldn't personally want to "go there". ............ I recommend this book to anyone who enjoys a page turner with people and places that will hook you from beginning to end, or you enjoy the works of Bret Easton Ellis, as I do. For you as a reader, unlike the characters within, you can just say "NO" to "Less Than Zero", but in my opinion, it is only be AFTER you finish this book, that you'll find you've had MORE than enough.
Rating: 
Summary: A Waste of Time
Review: Bret Easton Ellis belongs to a mediocre breed that includes Dennis Cooper, AM Homes, and Jay McInerney who writes in order to shock, perhaps to hide his stylistic limitations. Less Than Zero, for example, is just two hundred pages of ramblings by a preppy druggie, interspersed with the usual snuff film encounters and gay sex. Fans of Ellis can counter by praising the "realistic" writing, but pick any homeless man on the street and he could write better. This book has no soul, and pity those people who compare the protagonist to Holden Caulfield. They might as well be spitting in Salinger's face.
Rating:
Summary: a halcion masquerade
Review: ellis writes with an aesthetic in mind that lot of people can't understand - the violence in books like american psycho was little for me to dwell on, while others can't get past the depravity and demeaned state his characters live in to see what i think is mostly a stunning portrayal of a modern world in a style than is both cool in the james dean sense of the word and modestly elegant in way of the heroin chic and the recent post-digital art trend - resulting in Less than Zero in a complete and subtle picture that is perhaps ellis' finest novel
Rating: 
Summary: Drugs and Orgies, but Meaning?
Review: As with Mr. Ellis' American Psycho I am once again forced to stretch my mind for a meaning for this book.The main character, Clay, is the expected disenchanted, disconnected youth. From there the book spirals down into the darkness and depravity which can only be contained in L.A. Almost every character in this book (even some children) uses mountains of drugs. I'm sure this is all presented as an example of "Teenage Angst," but I couldn't relate to it. This may be because I'm from the Midwest and haven't been exposed to the situations this book deals with. Others may relate to it far better than I. The book is written very well and the storyline is intriguing. It was fun to read and I enjoyed it, but its no Catcher in the Rye.
Rating:
Summary: Powerful Delight
Review: This is a great and surprisingly well atmosphered book(the atmosphere is a depressing one). Bret Easen Ellis is a great author who tells it like it is. If you like his work, deffinateley check this one out. I really liked American Psycho(also a 5-star book), and Less Than Zero had many of the same elements that made A.P. great(minus the over-the-top violence).
Rating:
Summary: Slow but by no means bad...
Review: Ellis writes with a style, that in my opinion is far too descriptive. To me, this bogged down an otherwise good read. It's a disturbing portrait of wealthy teens who cant seem to feel or care about anything. Despite being somtimes slow this novel made me identify with it's protagonist, even when i didn't want too. As the novel progressed i felt truly disturbed...and hey when a book can make you feel half as much as this one does it's at least worth picking up, right?
Rating: 
Summary: The Edge of the World
Review: People always want to bash Ellis because his characters aren't idealistic good-guys who make us want to be good people, just like them. Every bad review I have ever read about Ellis assert his supposed terpitude, followed by childish comments about how he is a horrible person who merely tries to shock customers into buying his books. It isn't true. Much like Kakfa was willing to have horrible things happen to good or at least not bad people in order to make his audience think, Ellis does the same. In Less Than Zero we have a character (Clay) who snorts coke, sleeps with men and women indifferently, drinks, cheats, and generally walks around in a haze even when he isn't drunk or stoned. All of his friends do the same. The difference between Clay and the rest, however, is that Clay questions these actions. He doesn't just accept them. And even though he isn't able to be the knight-in-shining-armor, saving the innocents of the world from drugs and violence and such, he is able to make moral judgment calls. His morality comes out in his search for Julian, whom he mostly remembers from when they played soccer together as children. This search for Julian is a way to recapture that feeling of innocence, before all of the drugs and cruelty and, even worse, apathy. The apathy, the emptiness, is symbolized by a ridiculously extended vacation that he and his family took when he was a child. There they were in the desert resort for days and days after everyone else had left. So Clay attempts to conquer this apathy, also shown in the line, "Julian gives good head and is dead," which Clay finds on a bathroom stall, by finding and saving Julian. But can there be any salvation when a person doesn't want to be saved? Life is meaningless, truly, for those people who want nothing out of it--but Clay does want something and, even though we have Ellis' using an almost Hemingway-esque style in Less Than Zero, as you read, more and more, it becomes apparent that Clay does care and wants out of this depraved world--Los Angeles. The last section of the book, which is one of the best endings I have ever read, sums up Clay's feelings toward his background. The song "Los Angeles" calls up horrible pictures in his mind, when it doesn't for anyone else because no one else can see, or bothers to see, what Clay already knows. What does Clay know? That you can't save people who aim not to be saved.
Rating:
Summary: I need water and a pain killer..
Review: If you ever wondered what it was like to be out of control at 19, when your parents weren't around or couldn't care less and have a gold credit card in your pocket in that summer when your high school ties are still strong and your college life hasn't taken over. We catch Clay and his friends at the tail end of the excitement, in fact we catch it at its very bottom. Julian is in the pit, coke addled, debt to his dealer, he has gone as low as you can and he is so messed up, he brings his friend along. Clay's other friends in that apartment has taken debauchery, nastiness, and just plain evil to another plane, and the girl are on drugs and clueless. So just meet me at the beach, the caf?and the bar for some drinks and we go to the club tonight. But the book is more like the hangover. In fact, it is the hangover, the whole 100 and something pages of it. We get dragged all over LA in a fit of depression. It's all stupid, it's all boring, and I don't want to be there anymore but if you are interested it's how it is. It's the after-low of the after party. Although the events are riveting at moments, for the most part, I felt like, I turned up and everybody was going home. But read it anyway, if you are curious, about the downside of a cokeup 80s Beverly hills high culture. the dark cousin of "Clueless" or "90210" just don't expect to have a good time. You will be shocked and repulsed. (If you want a party, go read "Trainspotting?It's low but they were still enjoying it all in their own strange way). Don'y take it to the beach. It's not a summer book. Read it in bed while drinking water on a Sunday when you over did it the night before. The characters will be good company to you.
Rating:
Summary: I need water and a pain killer..
Review: If you ever wondered what it was like to be out of control at 19, when your parents weren’t around or couldn’t care less and have a gold credit card in your pocket in that summer when your high school ties are still strong and your college life hasn’t taken over. We catch Clay and his friends at the tail end of the excitement, in fact we catch it at its very bottom. Julian is in the pit, ... addled, debt to his dealer, he has gone as low as you can and he is so messed up, he brings his friend along. Clay’s other friends in that apartment has taken debauchery, nastiness, and just plain evil to another plane, and the girl are on drugs and clueless. So just meet me at the beach, the caf?and the bar for some drinks and we go to the club tonight. But the book is more like the hangover. In fact, it is the hangover, the whole 100 and something pages of it. We get dragged all over LA in a fit of depression. It’s all stupid, it’s all boring, and I don’t want to be there anymore but if you are interested it’s how it is. It’s the after-low of the after party. Although the events are riveting at moments, for the most part, I felt like, I turned up and everybody was going home. But read it anyway, if you are curious, about the downside of a ... 80s Beverly hills high culture. the dark cousin of "Clueless" or "90210" just don’t expect to have a good time. You will be shocked and repulsed. (If you want a party, go read “Trainspotting?It’s low but they were still enjoying it all in their own strange way). Don'y take it to the beach. It’s not a summer book. Read it in bed while drinking water on a Sunday when you over did it the night before. The characters will be good company to you.
Rating:
Summary: Another Pitiful Attempt
Review: Once again, this is simply a depressing and actually quite annoying novel, if you have the morals of a street bum and allow yourself to call it that.This book wasn't a waste of time, today's world demands sensless, mind-numbing, idiotic scribblings of the pen like these.To compare this to "Catcher in the Rye" is the greatest insult to "Catcher" that I can personally think of.Nor is it satirical, as some have said.By the third chapter, I was hoping that Clay would get in a car wreck while driving drunk, or possibly the book could just end and the rest of the pages could be blank.For God's sake, it doesn't even have one sober main character!Food poisoning is a greater joy than reading this shrill, insufferable, insolent, and downright intolerable book. It is, in short, quite possibly the worst book I have ever read.
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