Lunar Park by Bret Easton Ellis Published by Picador USA, 2005

Lunar Park
by Bret Easton Ellis
Publisher by Picador USA, 2005


Bret Easton Ellis, author of modern classics such as "Less Than Zero" and "American Psycho" takes the reader into an uncategorized genre with this novel, "Lunar Park." What at first seems like a memoir listing the trials and tribulations of a young man that becomes a famous author while still in college ("Less Than Zero") and then becoming part of the Literary Brat pack and living the Rock and Roll lifestyle. Bret becomes an addict and loves the groupies the fame and the drugs. But this book takes an odd turn and the reader realizes this is no memoir. The book soon becomes a sort of a haunted house horror novel.

Basically what has happened in "Lunar Park" is that Bret has written himself in as a main character with a haunting past. The drugs, no ability to maintain a lasting/meaningful relationship and a verbally abusive father. The Bret Easton Ellis in the novel may not be too far from the real life Bret Easton Ellis, but keep in mind, it is a novel.

Bret Easton Ellis has lived the most extreme of celebrity lifestyles and even fathered a child with a model, Jayne Dennis. The only problem is that he denied he was the father (he claims that Keanu Reeves is the father). After years of continuously hitting bottom; there are tales of his publisher having to send a handler out with him on book tours to make sure he does not imbibe, but most of them quit, not able to handle the downfall.

Finally Bret's ex-girlfriend decides to take him in and maybe establish a family and help Bret get better. She has not only Bret's son, now 11, but also a 4 year old fathered by a record industry mogul. This already doomed family moves into a "McMansion" in suburbia in the northeast United States. They send their children to elite schools and keep the kids medicated on all the latest drugs, Ritalin, etc.

Bret decides to throw a Halloween party and this is where the horror begins. He soon becomes haunted by his father, who ignored him as a child but once Bret became rich and famous, tried to become part of his life. He is also strangely being haunted by the main character from his novel "American Psycho." All this while trying to become closer with his son and trying to form family bonds and dealing with the communities strange string of murders and missing children.

At the apex of this haunting story, the family is chased from their home by a carnivorous toy, and the home they are living in changing form into the home in which Bret was raised.

Very interesting story and some very good haunting, this horror story definitely would give Stephen King a run for his money.