It was useful reading Bret Easton Ellis' debut novel “Less Than Zero” before diving into his latest “The Shards”. In this new novel a fictional version of 17 year old Bret is working on that first book and in this autofictional mode presents the story of his early life as a confession about the dramatic events which occurred during that formative period. (At the conclusion of the novel we're assured that this book is entirely a work of fiction.) It's 1981 and Bret is entering his senior year of high school in this uber-privleged side of LA with its mansions, servants, flashy cars, easy access to drugs and designer backpacks. Like in “Less Than Zero” we bear witness to this extremely beautiful and wealthy set of youth engaging in endless parties and sex. However, there is also a serial killer who has been dubbed “The Trawler” stalking the city's elite and murdering them (and their pets) in a gruesomely ritualistic fashion. The perpetrator(s) could be a deranged loner, a satanic cult prowling the city or the mysterious new boy at school, Robert Mallory, who charismatically worms his way into Bret's friendship group. Worrying signs reveal that the killer is getting closer and closer to Bret who becomes increasingly anxious and unhinged as his world of entitled excess implodes.

At its core, this novel is a very effective thriller with a rich atmosphere of suspense and tension. Real hazardous signs of violence appear even as we grow increasingly mistrustful of our narrator, a progressively paranoid (and medicated) Bret. As a writer for the large and small screen, Ellis is very adept at integrating elements such as creepy telephone calls, suspect vans which follow characters and a carefully judged release of information to consistently surprise and titillate readers. Bret's obsession over Robert is both intensely erotic and full of dread which builds a powerful sense of salacious danger. There's a clear propulsion to the story which builds towards its much foreshadowed “ironic and tragic conclusion”. The novel does feel overlong which is probably a hangover from it being initially written and released in serial form on Ellis' podcast. Though the author has stated a large chunk was edited out for the physical publication it still feels bloated as we get the back and forth gossipy details of these rich teenagers' vapid lives. The overly dramatic and cinematic denouement also feels a bit forced and unsatisfying with its gallons of bloodshed. Nevertheless, I felt mostly engaged throughout the bulk of the novel.

The book is also a kind of revisionist teen fantasy where Bret casts himself as being part of the most popular social group at his school. He's with a rich beautiful girlfriend whose father is a studio executive and he also gets to have lots of sex with two incredibly handsome guys on the side – details of which are related in highly descriptive detail. Though it doesn't actually happen, Bret even has a possibility of lunching with one of his literary idols Joan Didion. In this way, the novel feels like a curious blend of wish-fulfilment and nostalgia. Interestingly this pull toward the past was also present in “Less Than Zero” as Clay gazes longingly at buildings from his personal history. “The Shards” also reveals the degree to which Bret was inhibited by the sexual norms of the time. He felt pressured to have a girlfriend though he really longed for sex and a relationship with another man. There's an aching resentment over this but, of course, Ellis isn't the kind of writer who'd directly address this kind of oppression as a societal issue because it would involve engaging in identity politics – something I assume he rolls his eyes at.

It feels like a missed opportunity for emotional sincerity and showing the importance of gay rights as a means of attaining personal fulfilment. Of course, one could argue novels shouldn't have to engage in politics in this way but I believe if Ellis had done this the novel would have been more striking as it'd show growth and maturity. Instead what we get is very competent suspenseful fiction which refashions the same subject matter he first dealt with forty years ago. Only this time we get much more explicit detail about hot young guys and hot sex with those hot young guys from an author pushing 60. Sex positivity is one thing but it feels to me like this falls into yet more wish fulfilment by a man recasting his youth. On another level, Ellis does address a political issue but in a darker way. In one scene Bret accepts an invitation to lunch with Terry Schaffer, a powerful studio executive, about potentially writing a film script. However, it's abundantly clear that this is really an opportunity for this much older lecherous man to have it off with sexy 17 year old Bret. They do have hot sex and Bret walks away with a bleeding anus. Though he realises that he probably won't get the chance to put forward his script he comments when glancing in the mirror “I looked not only remarkably composed but as if I'd actually accomplished something – it wasn't what I wanted but it wasn't so bad. I was okay.” Given the very prominent discussions surrounding the MeToo movement in the past several years, it feels like this a direct rejoinder to this conscious fight to make accountable those who abuse their power.

Sure, it was a different time and it's just one character's personal experience but the way it's presented feels callous and disregards the vulnerability of younger individuals involved in a situation where the physical and emotional consequences can't always be anticipated. Instead of actually engaging with the complexity of this issue which has provoked many nuanced debates, Ellis presents a situation which blithely dismisses it. The larger consequences and meaning of such an exploitative exchange aren't addressed in “The Shards” any more than they are in “Less Than Zero” when protagonist Clay passively watches his best friend prostitute himself to pay off his drug debts. Certainly fiction should encompass all points of view, but personally I prefer them to be more sophisticated and artfully presented as in the novel “Vladimir” which shows the effects of power dynamics in cross-generational sexual relationships with more complexity. You could argue that Ellis shows the karmic consequences of this instance because Terry Schaffer gets his comeuppance but only in a melodramatic way that's not actually concerned with justice.

The annoying thing is that Ellis would probably eye any such critiques of his novel with a wry smile because I'm playing his game; I'm reading and discussing his novel; I'm making it all about Bret Easton Ellis because that's the subject matter Bret Easton Ellis is most interested in. In “The Shards” he comments that in writing “Less Than Zero” “it was about mebut there was no story”. So in this new novel he makes himself the protagonist as well as giving us a plot. It's effective on that level but the more I ponder this book and consider the way Ellis publicly presents his opinions the more it feels like a hollow egotistical exercise. I guess he wants to generate divisive opinions because it keeps him as the focus of attention – a technique successfully used by many populist leaders and megalomaniacs. So I'll sum this up by saying I'd recommend this novel if you're looking for a competent thriller, but bypass it if you're looking for anything more substantial.

It may seem perverse to read an apocalyptic novel when we've spent the past year living through a pandemic. I can certainly understand the hesitancy to engage in a fictional crisis when there's so much in reality to make us anxious or angry or mournful about what we've so recently lost. Yet, I think it's ingenious the way Jessie Greengrass has written about an environmental disaster which floods the country and leaves a small group of people subsisting on a small plot of elevated land. This story reassuringly solidifies the physical world at a time when our minds are consumed with calamity. When you're in a moment of deep distress it's common for someone to calmingly say to you “there, there.” To be reassured that “you are there” when feeling trapped in an interminable limbo is a precious comfort. Similarly, reading the accounts of three individuals recalling the events which brought them to this house and the stark nature of their meagre living energetically brings us back to the present moment.

Francesca is a world-renowned environmental scientist and activist who sees with alarming clarity that there will be a widespread disaster due to climate change. This has been highlighted by scientists and the media so often that it doesn't need to be explained in the narrative. The difference in this story is that Francesca knows it will occur sooner than we thought possible or were willing to admit so she makes provisions in a house she inherited and its surrounding farmland to prepare for this crisis. Unlike most survivalists, she does this not to save herself but her young son and his older step sister. She also arranges for a local young woman and her grandfather to live in this sanctuary to help maintain it. The fact of this cataclysmic event is inevitable from the start of the novel, but what Greengrass presents so meaningfully is the journey of how Caro and her brother Pauly and Sally and her grandfather (who is nicknamed Grandy) arrive at this place. Just because we know what has happened and where they will end up doesn't decrease the spellbinding tension of their flight or their sober realisation of the large-scale devastation.

There's a pared down simplicity to this story which enhances its effectiveness. From the characters' actions to their dialogue there doesn't need to be any philosophical speeches, whimsical descriptions or melodramatic flourishes because what they are dealing with is the stark reality of tragic situation. For instance, the question of survivor's guilt is presented rhetorically: “What option is there, in the end, for those few of us who have survived, but to be the unforgivable, and the unforgiven? All those who might have lived instead of us are gone, or they are starving, while we stay on here at the high house, pulling potatoes from soft earth.” The unstated emotions of sorrow, doubt, grief and existential crisis are all here beneath the surface of the immediate necessary action of pulling potatoes from the soft earth so that they may continue to eat and live.

I found it especially poignant the way that salvaged objects, the things they grow and the stored supplies are enumerated because we know their importance in this strained new reality. Equally, we strongly feel the longing for objects that were taken for granted and have now been lost when Caro recalls a half-consumed chocolate pastry or the forgotten scissors which would have made cutting her brother's hair so much easier. These present and absent objects are what bring Greengrass' story into such sharp focus. It's akin to how Virginia Woolf described the power of “Robinson Crusoe”: “by means of telling the truth undeviatingly as it appears to him – by being a great artist and forgoing this and daring that in order to give effect to his prime quality, a sense of reality – he comes in the end to make common actions dignified and common objects beautiful. To dig, to bake, to plant, to build – how serious these simple occupations are; hatchets, scissors, logs, axes – how beautiful these simple objects become.” In the specificity of these realistic details the world of Greengrass' characters with all their attendant emotions arise fully formed in the reader's imagination. Thus we come to better appreciate what we have and take for granted.

Greengrass has previously imagined what effect widespread disaster would have upon an individual in her fiction. In her collection “An Account of the Decline of the Great Auk, According to One Who Saw it” there is a story called 'Some Kind of Safety' in which a narrator is trapped in a bunker with a dwindling food supply. It's unsurprising that an author prone to testing out philosophical concerns should fictionally conjure scenarios where individuals are cut off from the wider society to arrive at a place that allows deep contemplation. What's admirable about this novel is the way no special insight about humanity or the cycle of nature is achieved from arriving at this state. The grandfather simply states: “All I can think is that what's different now is that no one can claim this is progress.” Nor does it prompt the characters to lyrically describe the ruins of the world that's left. Rather, it simply gives them a perspective about the true value of the things they have and the agency they possess to support each other and continue to survive.

If you follow the news for any length of time it's difficult not to feel an imminent threat of crisis and thus we often bear the weight of the world's problems on our shoulders. Of course, we watch the news because we want to be informed, but like the characters in the novel we can be left wondering “what difference did my knowledge make?” Lucy Ellmann voluminously documented this condition in her lengthy novel “Ducks, Newburyport”. Where Ellmann skilfully captured this mental state, Greengrass has encapsulated the dignity of our individual actions and the true value of what we possess. In the past year we've become all too aware of the potential lack of the things we take for granted because the merest hint of scarcity sends us all racing to the shops to stock up on toilet paper. Equally we now know what it means to be physically removed from a collective and many of us have felt intense loneliness and isolation while being in lockdown. Like the characters in the novel we've run the risk of losing “that sense of being a small part of a whole which persisted, even when we might dislike everything about it.” So reading about characters forced into a state of self-reliance when the larger world is drowning around them gives a strange sort of comfort. It connects us to humanity and makes us grateful for what we still have and what we have to lose.