I finished Less Than Zero a while ago and… Fuck, this book is so screwed up on so many levels.
I don’t know what I feel about Clay as a character. I don’t even know if he is a character at all. He doesn’t even engage with who he is. Is he us? Are we Clay? Or is Clay meant to represent just how alien these people are to us, a modern 21st century audience.
But even beyond that, Clay just doesn’t care. The blurb of the book says that he’s “bored” but I really think he’s above being bored. He’s nothing. He’s just an empty void of a person. And nothing fills that void, literally nothing.
So many scenes in this book somehow manage to break my heart without being that emotional. The scene where Kim starts to break down in front of Clay, asking him what he does, just hurts. Because by the end you can tell that she’s asking because she wants to know herself. She *needs* something in her life.
Or the scene with the therapist where Clay starts screaming and sobbing, asking “What about me!?” and the therapist just does not give a shit whatsoever.
This book is disturbing in that so many of the characters are just so… Dead inside. Even Julians sexual abuser (I forget his name) doesn’t even seem like an overly evil villain. Just like everyone else, he’s just nothing. He gains sexual gratification from hurting Julian and that’s it. His life is mostly empty.
Some of the most disturbing bits of the book are not the events themselves (yes, I will admit, a 12 year old girl being raped, tortured and killed on video is disturbing) but rather the books reaction to them. It feels like a world where you could shoot a pregnant woman and *nobody* would care.
I honestly believe this book is an absolute masterpiece IMO. It perfectly captures the hopeless emptiness of the 90s yuppie teenagers.
Sorry if this little review is a bit scrambled, I didn’t think clearly before I wrote lol.
For those who have read the book, what did you think?
by EmilyIsNotALesbian