The Shards

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I REMEMBER IT WAS THE SUNDAY afternoon before Labor Day in 1981 and our senior year was about to begin on that Tuesday morning of September 8 and I remember that the Windover Stables were located on a bluff above Malibu, where Deborah Schaffer was boarding her new horse, Spirit, in one of the twenty separate barns where the animals were housed, and I remember I was driving solo, following Susan Reynolds and Thom Wright in Thom s convertible Corvette along Pacific Coast Highway, the ocean dimly shimmering beside us in the humid air, until we reached the turnoff that took us up to the stables, and I remember I was listening to the Cars, the song was Dangerous Type on a mixtape I d made that included Blondie, the Babys, Duran Duran as I kept behind Thom s car up the winding road to the entrance of the stables, where we parked next to Deborah s gleaming brand-new BMW, the only car in the lot on that Sunday, and then checked in at the front office, and where we followed a tree-lined trail until we located Debbie trotting Spirit by his reins around a gated arena that was deserted she had already ridden him but the saddle was still on and she was wearing her riding attire. The sight of the horse shocked me and I remember that I shivered at its presence in the late-afternoon heat. Spirit had replaced a horse Debbie retired in June.

Hey, Debbie said to us in her flat, uninflected voice. I remember how it sounded so hollow in the emptiness that surrounded us a deadened echo. Beyond the manicured stables painted white and pine green was a forest of trees blocking the view of the Pacific you could see small patches of glassy blue but everything seemed ensconced and still, nothing moved, as if we were encased in a kind of plastic dome. I remember it being very hot that day and I felt that I had somehow been forced into visiting the stables simply because Debbie had become my girlfriend that summer and it was required of me and not something I necessarily

BRET EASTON ELLIS is the author of six novels, a collection of essays, and a collection of stories, which have been translated into thirty-two languages. He lives in Los Angeles and is the host of the Bret Easton Ellis Podcast available on Patreon.

Ellis is a true literary craftsman, and the novel s imagery is lush and gorgeous . . . there is an exciting new vulnerability in Ellis s latest book, inviting the reader more profoundly into the emotional realm of the protagonist than he has with his previous characters.   The New York Times Book Review
 
It s been a dozen years since Bret Easton Ellis published a novel. And his latest, The Shards . . . is worth the wait. Hermetic, paranoid, sleek, dark and with brief explosions of the sex and violence that have characterized Ellis oeuvre The Shards is a stark reminder that the American Psycho author is a genre unto himself. NPR

Cleverly done . . . eerie . . . The Shards establishes a tricky two-step of sincerity and unreliability. The Wall Street Journal
 
The teen narrator is perversely endearing, through the sheer force of his striving and unreliability . . . Here, for sure, is a horror story of the 80s. Air Mail

"A thrilling page turner from Ellis, who revisits the world that made him a literary star with a stylish scary new story that doesn't disappoint. Town & Country

[Ellis] ups the ante in several ways: he depicts a lavish lifestyle fueled by money and privilege, explores his own fluid sexuality (and that of some of his friends), and adds a lurid story of home invasions and murders (one victim is a high school friend). In effect, he mashes up Less Than Zero with American Psycho . . . As Ellis explores the theme of lost innocence, he demonstrates his skill as a storyteller. Publishers Weekly

"A surprisingly seductive work of erotic horror . . . [Ellis] ably captures how Bret s paranoia intensifies out of that emotional distance and how the urge for feeling and connection infects and warps his personality. Bret Ellis the character is trying to play it cool, but Bret Easton Ellis the author knows just how much he s covering up. Kirkus Reviews