[...] It was hardly surprising that a novel which unequivocally condemned a way of life to which many people had sacrificed their youth and energy was tepidly received; journalists were as much at the mercy of the status-driven conspicuous consumption of the eighties as anyone else and the forth over the book's alleged violence may have concealed a hideous disquiet that the leotards and Agnes B. leggings, the enormous mortgages and obscene restaurant bills were ... just ... not worth it.

beyond his own jejune philosophical agonizings

[...] that still leaves the problem of trying to define when the author himself has decided to distance himself from events. He might, for example, mistrust women but presumably he wasn't in favour of popping out people's eyeballs? This put the critic in the ludicrous position of, firstly, supplying the moral framework to the book and arguing, in effect, for dualism and old-fashioned fictive ambiguity and secondly, of having to tangle with the autobiographical element in fiction -- of defining the author's own feelings, intentions and standards. This has the effect of turning the tables on the reader; rather than being presented with a well-ordered fictive universe, secure in its moral delineation, the reader is, forced to engage personally with the text, to fill in the blanks, as it were, if he is not to produce a completely coarse and slip-shod reading. The reader is forced to scrutinize his own values and beliefs, rather than those being provided for him within a Good-Evil fictive universe. The alternative is to reject these misleading binary oppositions that Jacques Derrida has defined as intrinsic to Western thinking and to immerse oneself in the free play of signifiers within the text. Ellis himself does not achieve judgment and closure in the text but an endless circularity and deferral of meaning.

[...] Towards the end of the book, when Patrick's narrative increasingly tends to shiver and shake around the edges, the litany of designer names begins to falter: shoes by "Susan Warren Bennis Edwards" becomes shoes by "Warren Susan Allen Edmonds" and then shoes by "Edward Susan Bennis Allen". For such a tiny detail this is conspicuous in its effects. What ego-madness possesses a designer (and she's certainly not the only one) that she will inflict an insanely complex name on an entire retinue of stockists, advertisers, fashion-journalists and consumers? Why do we meekly accept and repeatedly intone such a vast array of fancy, complex, weirdly spelt (Manolo Blahnik) and obviously self-assumed names? What drives Patrick crazy is driving us all crazy -- why don't we all just crack up and start screaming about brand-names and up-town pizza recipes, like he does? Thus, detail by detail, as if bricking up a tomb, Ellis defines Patrick's insanity and our own place within it.

[...] any encounter with Luis tends towards the farcical. When he returns from his business trip to Phoenix he describes the dinner he had with his client, a routine-sounding affair of roasted chicken and cheesecake. Patrick gets anxious, confused "by this alien, plain-sounding list". He asks feverishly, "What sauce or fruits were on the roasted chicken? What shapes was it cut into?" Luis is confused. "It was ... roasted,"he says. Patrick demands to know what the client's bimbo had. Scallops, apparently. "The scallops were grilled? Were they sashimi scallops? In a ceviche of sorts? ... Or were they gratinized?" "No, Patrick," Luis says. "They were ... broiled." Patrick then thinks for a while. "What's broiled, Luis?" "I'm not sure," he says. "I think it involves ... a pan." There lies the gulf between the yuppies and the rest of the known world.