A Brief Review of Lunar Park

It's almost impossible to talk about the new Bret Easton Ellis novel Lunar Park without discussing the life, impact, and reputation of Ellis himself. That said, I'll try, but with a disclaimer: Some knowledge of Ellis and his works (specifically American Psycho and Less Than Zero) is probably necessary to enjoy this book fully.

With that out of the way, what exactly is Lunar Park? That's a tough question, for a number of reasons. Is it a Celebrity Memoir? A satire of upper class suburbia? A Stephen King-inspired horror novel? Well, yes... on all counts. The book, which stars a fictional version of Ellis himself, details the author's struggles with his new found suburban family life, specifically his difficulty interacting with his young son Robby and his celebrity wife Jayne. As Ellis fights to leave his drug-addled and drunken past behind, he finds himself haunted by the ghost of his late father, and the creations of his earlier novels. In the meantime, local boys are disappearing at an alarming rate, a monstrous toy bird named Terby is peeling paint from the house's walls, and a cream-colored Mercedes which may or may not have belonged to Ellis' father methodically stalks the his family.

If that seems like a lot to take in - well, that's the not the half of it. While the book shifts tones frequently enough to leave the reader dizzy, it never truly loses focus. Lunar Park is a very funny book, and the stabs at suburban life, particularly the treatment of children in modern culture, are spot on. And when the scary stuff kicks in (about halfway through) it's very scary indeed. The more squeamish among us can take heart in the fact that this is certainly the least graphic (in terms of sex OR violence) book Ellis has ever written.

At its heart, this is a story about fathers and sons and, after all the blow-torch murders and fur-and-teeth monsters have come and gone, Ellis demonstrates a newly-discovered flair for the emotional in the closing pages: an achingly beautiful and deeply bittersweet ode to fatherhood - exactly the sort of thing I knew he could never write. In Lunar Park, Ellis has created something completely different from his normal fair, something exciting and alive. Out of the limelight and facing irrelevance, the former bad boy of American literature has done something truly remarkable. He's grown up.