lunar park by Bret Easton Ellis

Imagine becoming a bestselling novelist while still in college and almost immediately famous and wealthy, and seeing your insufferable father reduced to a bag of ashes in a safety-deposit box, even as your celebrity drowns in a sea of vilification, booze and drugs. Imagine having a second chance, as the Bret Easton Ellis of this remarkable novel is given.

Now married to the mother of his previously unacknowledged son and living in the suburban hinterlands, Ellis here recounts the unravelling of this new life. He glimpses a disturbing character at his fateful Halloween party, and a car identical to his late father’s; his stepdaughter’s doll violently ‘malfunctions’, and their house undergoes bizarre transformations. Connecting these aberrations to graver events – a series of grotesque murders, and the epidemic disappearance of young boys – Ellis struggles to defend his family even as his wife, their therapist and the police insist that his apprehensions are rooted instead in substance abuse and egomania.