Everything's a lie. That's what we learn in the opening pages of Ellis' Imperial Bedrooms, the sequel to his first (insanely popular) novel, Less Than Zero. However, although the former book was from Clay's perspective, it actually wasn't. Rather, the months in which it was set were lived through the eyes of another teenage friend (presumably Ellis himself) who conveniently painted himself out of the picture and used Clay to present it all. In the first few sections, the real and fictional collide, as the characters from Less Than Zero attend the very real, and almost completely unrelated, film in 1987. Now, in 2010, they are all older and successful within the film industry - they are trapped within the world which lied about their lives.
But we have to ask, why is Clay writing about his life now rather than at twenty, or thirty? Is this Clay we're hearing, or is it the former friend who wrote the last book? How can we trust a word which is said?
These questions are never answered, but the opening is an effective way of introducing us to a world which has moved on for Clay whilst he has not. Sure, he may have become noticeably more angry and sadistic, but underneath he's still the same apathetic teenager as they all were. Meanwhile, his loose connection to the city he grew up in and the people he used to know means that now he's finally return, it has all become tangled in an increasingly complex conspiracy, a theme he also looked at in Glamorama. The pages are drenched with paranoia, and a mystery just out of reach.
But, compared to Less Than Zero, I found this book to be a bit of a disappointment. Firstly was his use of violence and sex (which I know is like criticising minimalist music for being repetitive, but bear with me). I realise Ellis was using transgression to dispel the nostalgia which has settled around Less Than Zero, and I'd be all for it. The problem is that the violence just feels phoned in. It's incredibly gory, sadistic, yada yada yada, but it doesn't shock or even cause a particularly strong reaction.
Compare this to his early, apparently sentimentalised Less Than Zero, where this violence we expect in every novel of his only comes through near the end of the novel. It isn't as gory, but still brutal, violent, etc. The difference is, it shocked. The pace of the novel and the almost virtuosic placing of this scene made it truly difficult to read. This was the sort of effect Imperial Bedrooms would have benefited from.
Before reading the book, I had heard a lot about how Ellis' uses his now-infamous style to portray the 21st century, and I was looking forward to seeing his Douglas Coupland-esque spin on his characters. Instead, the references to iPhones seemed crowbarred in. Most of the time characters were checking their text messages, true, but that was around in the late '90s as well. The iPhone is used about twice, to look up videos and to check emails, but even then (considering how important it's become in society) it felt vastly underused.
Also, websites have become widespread in popular culture, with 'googling' already a verb and 'facebooking' and 'tweeting' soon on the way. But Facebook wasn't mentioned once in the book, which seems very unlikely for a culture-dominated society in 2010. Apparently Clay uses a YouTube application to watch a snuff film, but the word YouTube isn't used. The closest we get to this is when he IMDbs an actress. I understand that copyright issues might block using these names, but this didn't seem to stop the pages filled with lists of brands in American Psycho. It felt like the book belonged in the past.
If you've read Less Than Zero, and you find a copy of Imperial Bedrooms around somewhere, I'd still recommend it just to find out what happened to the teenagers of the '80s. Just don't expect it to be as hard-hitting as his other books.
EDIT 25/09/12: Regarding the lack of shock in the novel, I recently found an animation with a voice-over from the part of the book I was talking about, and it's much more effective than when I read it originally. You can watch it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Ff3V0bHrBs (Totally NSFW).
Imperial Bedrooms can be bought here
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