The Shards Audiobook By Bret Easton Ellis cover art

The Shards

A Novel

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The Shards

By: Bret Easton Ellis
Narrated by: Bret Easton Ellis
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About this listen

NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • A novel of sensational literary and psychological suspense from the best-selling author of Less Than Zero and American Psycho that tracks a group of privileged high school friends in a vibrantly fictionalized 1980s Los Angeles as a serial killer strikes across the city

“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

Bret Easton Ellis’s masterful new novel is a story about the end of innocence, and the perilous passage from adolescence into adulthood, set in a vibrantly fictionalized Los Angeles in 1981 as a serial killer begins targeting teenagers throughout the city.

Seventeen-year-old Bret is a senior at the exclusive Buckley prep school when a new student arrives with a mysterious past. Robert Mallory is bright, handsome, charismatic, and shielding a secret from Bret and his friends even as he becomes a part of their tightly knit circle. Bret’s obsession with Mallory is equaled only by his increasingly unsettling preoccupation with the Trawler, a serial killer on the loose who seems to be drawing ever closer to Bret and his friends, taunting them—and Bret in particular—with grotesque threats and horrific, sharply local acts of violence. The coincidences are uncanny, but they are also filtered through the imagination of a teenager whose gifts for constructing narrative from the filaments of his own life are about to make him one of the most explosive literary sensations of his generation. Can he trust his friends—or his own mind—to make sense of the danger they appear to be in? Thwarted by the world and by his own innate desires, buffeted by unhealthy fixations, he spirals into paranoia and isolation as the relationship between the Trawler and Robert Mallory hurtles inexorably toward a collision.

Set against the intensely vivid and nostalgic backdrop of pre-Less Than Zero L.A., The Shards is a mesmerizing fusing of fact and fiction, the real and the imagined, that brilliantly explores the emotional fabric of Bret’s life at seventeen—sex and jealousy, obsession and murderous rage. Gripping, sly, suspenseful, deeply haunting, and often darkly funny, The Shards is Ellis at his inimitable best.

©2023 Bret Easton Ellis (P)2023 Random House Audio
Coming of Age Horror Psychological Scary Fiction
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Critic reviews

“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

What listeners say about The Shards

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Long but never slow!

Well written and very well paced. Oddly relatable for such an un-relatable world. Recommend!

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Disappointed in myself

I have a rule that I finish what I start. I should have broken the rule.

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Affluenza

Difficult to relate to these poor little rich kids. Plus the book could have been halved and still conveyed the same feeling. Creepy but predictable. Would enthusiastically recommend to people I don’t like much.

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Unputdownable

This is my first Bret Easton Ellis book and I thought is was fantastic. I couldn't stop listening. It was very graphic and raw, but just so compelling. I love a long book (I refuse to buy anything under 10 hrs) and this was just so interesting. I think a book is great when I'm still thinking about it in the days after finishing it and I might go back and listen to the end again! It was creepy and weird, funny, scary and sad.

I thought the way he painted a picture of the early eighties and the halcyon dream that was Hollywood at that time was really cool. Giving a glimpse into the drug-fueled lives of the privileged and entitled kids bombing through that lifestyle made me keep listening and the way he used the music of the time to set the tone made me nostalgic for my 1980's teen years. I'll admit, the main character (a fictionalized version of BEE) drove me crazy and I wanted to shake him a lot of the time, but I'm pretty sure that's how most of us feel about ourselves when we look back on our misspent youth. As a straight man I couldn't relate to parts of it, but it's just so well done.

Great job narrating and a great book.

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Excellently f*cked up

I didn't get bored. the narration is excellent. At no point was I like "damn. I wish I would have picked something else". good read

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Worth the wait!

I absolutely loved this audiobook. Ellis does amazing narration. The pacing is great, I got sucked in and never got sick of the story. Ellis proves again that he is one of the greats. could not recommend this audiobook enough!!

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It all paid off at the end!

See this through. It’s long but worth it. It leaves you thinking and going back quite a bit. Are the questions left unanswered? Are they answered? What about the clues? Are they even clues? Does it make perfect sense? Does it matter? Having to guess and think about it is the point and what makes it fun. BEE at his best.

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Return to form.

I am a long-time fan of Bret Easton Ellis; the way his works deal with identity, anxiety, paranoia, trauma, and alienation have always spoken to me in a way that no other contemporary author has. That said, The Shards is perhaps his best works since American Psycho: a gripping page-turner which never quite allows the reader to grasp what is true and what is merely the protagonist's projections or imagination. Ellis' ability to evoke the "vibe" of early '80s California, his (characteristic) fidelity to the trends and music of that time, and the manner in which he writes his characters -- none of whom ever seem fully trustworthy -- is top notch. Highly recommended for anyone who is a fan of Ellis (or, for that matter, Donna Tartt) and equally recommended for anyone who is just looking for a strange, spooky murder mystery that feels like an HBO limited series.

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Makes me want to hear Bret read Lunar Park

I first thought listening to White, but this book makes me want BEE to read us Lunar Park. I spent this year only listening to this while I traveled, so I had to re-listen to certain chapters, which only helped me to appreciate Bret's more emotionally atmospheric scenes as the story built. I would imagine this book comes off as narcissistic, but I feel he used his character of self the way one peeks down through clear still water in the middle of a massive lake and thinks the what they must be be that close to surface, as the true murkiness lies in the very illusion of transparent clarity.

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Couldn’t stop listening!!

I devoured this book in 4 sittings. It was to the point I didn’t listen to any music or watch any TV, any free time I had I gave to this story. It hooked me from page one in a way a novel hasn’t done in decades. It’s 1980s Euphoria, a thriller filled with lies, deceit, mystery, sex, rage, lust. Incredibly intimate and picturesque prose. I can easily see this adapted. I will be pondering the ending for some time. Can’t wait to read it again. Cannot recommend it enough. Especially read by Ellis. 10/10 phenomenal. My new all time fav novel.

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