“…and there would always be a distance between us because there was too much darkness around us. Did she ever promise anything to the false reflection in the mirror? Did she ever cry because she hated someone so much? Did she ever want to betray so badly that she pushed the most brutal fantasies into reality and then only she understood the consequences, playing the game as she went along? Could she tell when exactly she died inside herself? Does she remember the year during which she became this? The blackouts, the flashbacks, the rewritten scenes, all the things that go away afterwards - I'd love to explain them all to her now, but I know I never will, including the most important one: I've never liked anyone, and I'm afraid of people.”

The book is seemingly about nothing. It seems full of characters you won't like. Stupid and cold and unnecessarily long and misogynistic.

Except it's not. Ellis is a master at writing about nothing. And few, very few, will find it to their liking.
Because on the surface, that's all it is, and the story seems empty and about nothing. Yet that is its main point, for it tells of people whose lives are as empty as Ellis's seemingly empty stories about them, who have elevated this nothingness to the meaning of life and built their lives out of trivial, uninteresting and unimportant things.

As human beings, we are despicable. Disgusting and pity-worthy. We are so beautifully despicable.

(It contains brutal and obscene parts. It's Ellis after all.)