The Rules of Attraction

By: Bret Easton Ellis

Narrated by: Jonathan Davis, Danny Gerard, Lauren Fortgang

Set at a small, affluent liberal-arts college in New England at the height of the Reagan '80s, The Rules of Attraction is a startlingly funny, kaleidoscopic novel about three students with no plans for the future - or even the present - who become entangled in a curious romantic triangle.

Bret Easton Ellis trains his incisive gaze on the kids at self-consciously bohemian Camden College and treats their sexual posturings and agonies with a mixture of acrid hilarity and compassion while exposing the moral vacuum at the center of their lives.

Lauren changes boyfriends every time she changes majors and still pines for Victor, who split for Europe months ago, and she might or might not be writing anonymous love letters to ambivalent, hard-drinking Sean, a hopeless romantic who only has eyes for Lauren - even if he ends up in bed with half the campus - and Paul, Lauren's ex, forthrightly bisexual and whose passion masks a shrewd pragmatism. They waste time getting wasted, race from Thirsty Thursday Happy Hours to Dressed to Get Screwed parties to drinks at The Edge of the World or The Graveyard. The Rules of Attraction is a poignant, hilarious take on the death of romance.

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.

©1998 Bret Easton Ellis (P)2009 Audible, Inc.

Critic reviews

"Serves to establish Mr. Ellis's reputation further as one of the primary inside sources in upper-middle-class America's continuing investigation of what has happened to its children." ( The New York Times Book Review)

"Ellis is, first and last, a moralist. Under cover of his laconic voice, every word in his [novels] springs from grieving outrage at our spiritual condition." ( Los Angeles Times Book Review)

"Inspired. A wonderfully comic novel." (Gore Vidal)

It's good

But less than zero is still a little bit better.
great performances though. Enjoyable book.

Total hangout novel.

It's a struggle to finish and I enjoy the man's work. It also struck me how much Easton plagiarized from American Psycho.
Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed it. The voices actors were really well done too.

Fantastic Ellis book

If you could sum up The Rules of Attraction in three words, what would they be?

Crazy college yuppies

Who was your favorite character and why?

Sean is my favorite character. You can just tell that he is as insane as Patrick, his older brother, from American Psycho.

Have you listened to any of the narrators’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

I don't know.

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

When Sean is talking to Patrick in the hospital. Their father is dying and nobody cares.

Any additional comments?

Not a good listen if you hate hearing wealthy people whine.

Dark, shallow, disgusting, and so much fun!!

The dating scene in college is one long gross orgy. This book gives good voice to the reasons why I don't chill with frat guys and won't date sorority girls.

Great book

Characters that speak to youth in every generation it's prolific. I really enjoyed it and it spoke to me as a 23 year old.

Great cast

This was a great read of the book by a great cast. For some reason Vanguard tacked on an interview with Ellis which is interesting but he only talks about Less Than Zero and American Psycho...not sure why it wasn't included with one of those books instead.

Excellent performance by all

Love the choice to go with a different narrator for each character’s chapters. Every single voice is excellent. The way Sean’s narrator says his name at the start of each chapter is so riddled with angst and annoyance it brings me right into his headspace every time I hear it.

Not Ellis's best work

I am a huge fan of Bret Easton Ellis, but this was my least favorite of his books. I enjoyed it okay for about the first half, and the writing and narration is good, but then it started getting old and didn't go anywhere (I ended up giving up and not finishing it).

A very directionless story, which sometimes I don't mind, but there were sooo many characters (each chapter is written in a different character's voice) and they all were pretty similar so I couldn't keep them straight, much less really care about them. Maybe in a written format it would have been easier. There are many better ones-- Less Than Zero, Lunar Park, Glamorama.