5 Frightening Novels to Keep You Up At Night: September Edition
By Teresa Lobos
American Psycho (1991)
Bret Easton Ellis
If you haven’t already read this, I suggest you put it on your reading list immediately. At once chilling and terrifying, humorous and bleak, Ellis’ satiric novel of 80s alienation will haunt you for days. Mary Harron’s 2000 film adaptation, while very good in its own right, doesn’t even come close to encompassing the depths of the book. Birthed from the netherworld of capitalism and the excess of consumer culture, Patrick Bateman is a true psychopath. In the same cold tone, he can wax poetic on Huey Lewis and the News and a variety of shower products in one breath, then torture and kill a prostitute in the next. Played against the backdrop of a crumbling society of the wealthy elite, Bateman’s slow degeneration into blood-soaked madness is still as disturbingly apt today as it was back then.
Next: An anthology of madness