Words: Stacey Main

If you’ve ever despaired as to what in life is meaningless–it’s time you read Rules of Attraction.

“and it’s a story that might bore you but you don’t have to listen…”

The story starts here, halfway through a sentence. It ends halfway through another. It’s not a warning to be dismissed. Bret Easton Ellis has every intention of boring you. I’d be lying even to say that the plot unfolds, it more effectively spews it’s way across the 326 pages.

“Rock n’ Roll. Deal with it.” says Sean; one of many main characters.

And that’s just it. It is rock n’ roll. But probably rock n’ roll at it’s most hideously tedious. Take that as a compliment. I may paint an ugly picture, but the book is every bit as interesting for it. Rules of Attraction takes place in the Fall of 1985. If I could remember I would tell you what happens, but I don’t remember–in the same way I don’t remember the specifics of what happened everyday last semester. It is a ’snapshot of college life’ book. And, yes, it is equally as narcissistic as that comment suggests. The characters are unlikeable. They are vain, self-absorbed, petty, upperclass brats. The type of rich college kids who don’t have enough money for hygiene. No-one goes to class; every night is for drugs, alcohol, and sex; and every day is for hangovers, regrets, and recovery.

Everything happens, and nothing happens. The book is most interesting in it’s narration. The story shifts unceasingly between the voices of the students on campus (once even to a french roommate–entirely in french). Their stories run alongside each other, and at times overlap and intertwine. Here, the book captures the absurdity of human relationships. It meanders through what most books silence, the blandness of day-to-day interactions.

This is Bret Easton Ellis’s true success. The shift in voices brings us respite from what is not happening. It maintains our interest in order to carry the stories satirical purpose. Rules of Attraction exaggerates nothingness with great effect. Ellis does this flawlessly so that without offending, the story shows what we are often doing with our lives–nothing.

How very rock n’ roll.