American Psycho

By: Bret Easton Ellis

Narrated by: Pablo Schreiber

Length: 16 hrs and 29 mins

Publisher's summary

In American Psycho, Bret Easton Ellis imaginatively explores the incomprehensible depths of madness and captures the insanity of violence in our time or any other. Patrick Bateman moves among the young and trendy in 1980s Manhattan. Young, handsome, and well educated, Bateman earns his fortune on Wall Street by day while spending his nights in ways we cannot begin to fathom. Expressing his true self through torture and murder, Bateman prefigures an apocalyptic horror that no society could bear to confront.

As an added bonus, when you purchase our Audible Modern Vanguard production of Bret Easton Ellis' book, you'll also get an exclusive Jim Atlas interview that begins when the audiobook ends.

This production is part of our Audible Modern Vanguard line, a collection of important works from groundbreaking authors.

©1991 Bret Easton Ellis (P)2009 Audible, Inc.

Critic reviews

"Bret Easton Ellis is a very, very good writer [and] American Psycho is a beautifully controlled, careful, important novel....The novelist's function is to keep a running tag on the progress of the culture; and he's done it brilliantly....A seminal book." ( The Washington Post)

"The first novel to come along in years that takes on deep and Dostoyevskian themes....[Ellis] is showing older authors where the hands have come to on the clock....He has forced us to look at intolerable material, and so few novelists try for that anymore." ( Vanity Fair)

"A masterful satire and a ferocious, hilarious, ambitious, inspiring piece of writing, which has large elements of Jane Austen at her vitriolic best. An important book." (Katherine Dunn)

OMG, Did I just go there? Wow

I read the reviews but I didn't think it would be like this... That was some... uh... really twisted stuff. But like others have said, I couldn't stop listening. Very satirical to the point I was laughing out loud. And then I cringed. So graphic. So if you have a weak stomach, don't go for this book. But if you want to listen to a phenomenal performance, and really well written prose then, you need to listen to this.

Distasteful and ugly in exactly the right way.

The book definitely began to drag for me. There is not really any escalation. There are some peak points in the "Action" but over all it was just the same thing over and over past a certain point in the book. This helped the book for me. The way the violence became dull gave the story a PERFECT feel for me.

This is not an exit , nor is it an orgy of gore

Don't NOT read this book because of what you may have heard about the backlash that occurred when it was first published.

Read this book because it's a very good primer for how we got here , 2019. Our current American Nightmare .

Read this book , just because it's really good fiction. Read this book because , understanding what is below the surface is crucial to figuring out what's going on ..on the surface . Who we are . Who we have become since this book was written.

And don't try and answer THE ? . It just doesn't matter.

Incredibly difficult to listen to, great performance

Pablo kills it (pun!) with his performance of the emotionally detached Patrick Bateman.

Probably the best book by Ellis, it is whole and complete and interesting and funny and devastating, but includes many acts of violence from the second half that are near unbearable when listened to. I have a feeling reading instead may take some of the vitriol out of it. (I had to take a week off from the book after the first murder scene involving a homeless man, but that is probably due to my squeamish nature.)

Many passages near the very end verge on poetic, and of course the 25 minute long description of the discography of Huey Lewis and the News is wonderful.

DAMN!!!!😱

What can I say? This book was obviously powerful. It brought me into a mind where I was pretty uncomfortable being. On a more cheerful note, at work today with a sinus infection, I thought to myself that I may have felt a little out of body, but I still wasn't where Patrick was. Really powerful!

Laugh Riot!

Hip... Very hip!

Brett Easton Ellis description is beyond amazing. I recommend this to anyone that is a fan of his work.

Mind-numbing

It takes at least 4 or 5 hours to slog through the endless tedium of shallow people leading uninteresting lives. After that the brutality waxes and wanes for many more hours. The torture-pron builds and builds until you're numb to it at which point the book shifts gears again into something like fever dreams.

This novel was far far FAR too long and rambling. Unfortunately, aside from a few really interesting or grotesque moments, what I felt most often was boredom.

While I'm not keen on how the book goes about it, I can admire the scathing indictment of 80s yuppie culture where brands, artifice, or business cards elicit great reaction but human brutality is met only with cold detachment.

Props to the narrator. The entire book was well performed. In particular though, I was struck by the lurid scenes. The scenes were performed as very awkward and orchestrated, not at all arousing. To me this is entirely in line with Bateman's character. It also teases that these improbable Penthouse-letter-esque scenes may well have only taken place in his mind.

there is an idea of a Patrick Bateman

disturbingly beautiful. If you're looking for a book that will leave you in complete disgust at the same time leave you captivated from beginning to end than look no further. This book is just great, maybe not all the murders but how the author creates the atmosphere of what its like inside the heaf of a ill mind.

American classic

Patrick is crazy. What else do you need to know? Such a great horror story. A perfect mix of graphic scenes with psychotic mind states.

Highly recommend it

Those with weak stomachs should keep away from this. Narration is excellent, doing a fine job of getting into the head of a possible serial killer. I believe most or all of the murders aren't real, all in Bateman's head. Felt like I was in the background with Bateman during every event. Many say the detail is over the top, and, that may be the point, to show how obsessed people are.