It's the 1980s in Los Angeles, "Bret Easton Ellis" attends a private college along with other very wealthy young people. He's 17, gay, still in the closet and has a girlfriend as a cover.
Anyone who has followed Bret Easton Ellis from "American Psycho" or ever since 1985 when he debuted with "Less than Zero", "Zero to lose" in Swedish, will recognize themselves: It abounds with expensive car brands, drugs, violence, sex and rock'n'roll. All the addresses are in real life, "The Shining" hits theaters and the many songs mentioned take six hours to listen through.
But not everything is the same, this is the first time the main character bears the author's name and the two have a lot in common. For example, the novel's "Bret" is working on a novel that will be called "Less than Zero", but it is not an autobiography. In addition, the novel's "Bret" is too obsessed with anything resembling delusions.
A serial killer is walking around and young girls are found mutilated. He is called the trawler, just like the real murderer who was rampaging at this time. However, he attacked old women, and such a slight change in the background of reality should make us refrain from equating the writer Bret with the narrator "Bret".
Especially since the latter confesses that he "liked to take a trivial event that was barely worth telling and then embellish the story with details that made it really interesting."
That's the novel we're reading, and one of those trivial events occurs when a new boy comes to class and arouses both desire and concern in "Bret". Could the new one be the trawler?
"The Fragments" is a feverish story about a youth who does not care about politics but only strives to numb himself by any means necessary. Ellis is adept at portraying environments and filling them with details. He also nicely captures the sensitivity and vulnerability of adolescence, especially of the protagonist, who struggles with his shattered identity, hides some sides, fakes others, and finds it increasingly difficult to distinguish between fantasy and paranoia. It's very exciting, maybe not in all 600 pages but many enough.