A review in the FT from the beginning of this year referred to it as by far your saddest book. Do you feel it as a sad novel? And does it seem to you a sad object now? I think all of my novels are sad novels. But I don't know if I look at the shards of the sad novel as much as I look at it as a wistful one in a way, and also slightly scary and at times horrific.
Los Angeles, 1981. A group of beautiful, rich, high school students are playing adult in their absentee parents' empty mansions, fueled by lust and prescription drugs, and filled with fear and disaffection. This is the world of The Shards, Bret Easton Ellis’ first novel in 13 years, part auto-fiction, part horror. The provocative and polarising author joins Alex Preston, award-winning author and journalist, to speak about the emptiness of adolescence, the lawlessness of the 80s, and how it feels to look back at it all aged 56 in 2023.
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