More Than Zero

I've never been a Bret Easton Ellis fan. In fact, until Lunar Park, I'd never even read one of his books. I'd barely heard of him. Maybe that makes me a hopeless yokel, but so be it.

This is what audiobooks should be. While it isn't the quiet, beautiful sort of book I've been praising lately, this is one of the rare kind that makes me anxiously await my commute. Part memoir (but which parts?), part family drama, part mystery, part horror. It's impossible to define this book and refreshing because of that. It is an exciting, action-packed read but full of emotion, too. It is surreal - there's an attack by a hairball with one eye - but full of reality, too - the struggle of a drug addict to reconcile his old hard-partying life with his new role as suburban dad.

I'm no James Van Der Beek fan either - he was the narrator - but I loved him here. I've heard complaints that his reading was too flat and monotone, but it was exactly the right tone for the character. In the author interview at the end of the last CD, Ellis confirms that he chose Van Der Beek (who starred in the movie adaption of Ellis' The Rules of Attraction) and that ex-Dawson was on the mark.

I may just convert to a fan of both Ellis and Van Der Beek.