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Bret Easton Ellis took 13 years to write The Shards. It’s a horror novel. Or maybe it’s an autobiography. In fact, it’s both. The Shards is a fictionalized retelling of Mr. Ellis’s 18th year.

It tells the story of a group of superficially sophisticated teens have their lives shattered by a series of terrible events. It’s 1981 Los Angeles and a local serial killer known only as The Trawler draws ever closer to Bret and his friends. He taunts them with grotesque threats and acts of violence. As Bret’s obsession with the killer grows, he spirals into paranoia and isolation.

This mesmerizing novel is a vivid and nostalgic fusion of fact and fiction at the edge of what’s real and fantasy. Bret Easton Ellis is probably best known for his now-iconic book American Psycho (1991) and the highly memeable film that followed.

Bret Easton Ellis was interviewed for the John Adams Institute by Dutch writer and critic Joost de Vries at Boom Chicago in January of 2023.

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