Bret Easton Ellis on The Shards: Lost Youth in Los Angeles

Bret Easton Ellis – one time enfant terrible of American literature, a precociously talented writer who published his first novel when he was barely into his twenties, and author of the classic piece of provocation and perversion American Psycho – is now, at the age of 58, looking back on the era in which he came of age.

Set in 1981, his new novel The Shards is a bravura work of auto-fiction steeped in the milieu of Ellis’ seminal early novels, and features many of the hallmarks that first made him famous, notorious and wildly successful: obscenely privileged youth; indulgence and excess; drugs; sex; pop music; and a touch of the old ultra-violence.

It is written largely in the same inimitable style (“numbness as feeling”) as those earlier works – including Less Than Zero, which we see the ‘Bret’ of the novel himself trying to perfect.

Bret spoke to us about what it was like to revisit this formative period of his youth; the irresistible pull of the music and fashions and sense of freedom he remembers from 1981; blending more traditional “auto-fiction” with the genre trappings of a horror story; his indifference to reviews; and whether he cares about being called “controversial”.

California cadres Bret & Ryan also spoke about their respective experiences growing up in the San Fernando Valley while Matt – whose hometown has hitherto not been memorialised in fiction – nodded in silent unrecognition.

The Shards was published on January 17 and is available from our three branches in Piccadilly, St. Pancras and Cheltenham, as well as at Hatchards.co.uk.