4.75 stars. Trans and queer intergenerational family / grief / art / migration / solidarity / QTBIPOC community / BIRDS.

Literary fiction / magical realism / poetry / historical fiction.

This book is so beautiful, poignant and poetic. I listened to the audiobook which was stellar but if you like to eye read I’d recommend doing so for this because there are so many passages I would have wanted to highlight/go back to.

I loved the dual narration in which both narrators are addressing different people in the 2nd person.

There were a couple issues that brought this down from a full 5 for me but I’m rounding up since there aren’t 1/4 stars here. If you are super focused on plot this may be a lower star read for you but honestly that’s less important for me. I may write about my issues in the forum with spoilers because it’s hard to describe them without.

Highly recommend. Assign this for your queer literature course.

April 2nd, 2026. It's 4:32 PM and I'm wearing a pair of Nightmare Before Christmas pajama pants, fleece, that I got from Walmart two years ago for $20, a soft black shirt that I've owned for about 15 years now - a gift from my parents back when we still talked - and black bathrobe that I've had for about five years, the tag cut out, the source of where I got it now a mystery (my husband just informed me I actually stole this from my father during a stay at their house). For lunch I had two brown butter banana bread chocolate chip cookies, two cheddar cheese hot dogs, and a Dove Bar. I ate it while the soundtrack to Les Miserables played from the television. The Patty Winters show this morning was about extraterrestrials and the women who love them. At first I found the show absurd, but then as it progressed I was consumed by an emptiness, and my laughs turned to sobs. I was perplexed, until I realized it was because I had remembered I still had three videotapes that were horribly overdue for return and the fees would be ridiculous by now.

I'm musing on how to write this review. American Psycho is, for certain, a masterpiece, one of the best pieces of writing I've experienced. It is purposeful, it is a meditation on capitalism, on conformity, on dissociation, on masculinity, on perception verses reality, on misogyny, on performative liberalism, on parasociality. It mentions Donald Trump over 40 times. There are entire chapters describing meals and clothing and discographies of popular musicians. Sandwiched between those chapters are some of the most harrowing descriptions of graphic violence, depravity, hatred, and assault, that I have come across, described exactly as dryly as the meals he ate one chapter before. This is not splatterpunk, this is not violence as entertainment, this is not fun. Not one of the victims deserve their fates, the suffering is mindless and not even satisfying to Patrick himself before long.

The book is an endless slog of tedium, broken up only by Patrick's awkward fumbling through social interactions - this is not the Patrick of the movie. This is less of an "alpha male" and more of the incels that idolize him. He is pathetic, he can barely string together sentences, he is often incoherent. He tries to be hip but fails at it all the time, giving us brilliantly funny sections like where he lies about having tickets to see "Milla Vanilla". Everyone else around him is just as vapid, all of them trying to fit into the same cardboard cutout of "fitting in" which results in them all.... Being the same. I can not stress how shallow and boring 90% of this book is, intentionally. Do not listen to this. Read it, skim through parts even. It beats you to death as much as Patrick beats his own victims, to the point where even those bits need to ramp up more and more to elicit a reaction from you. It's a dare - "You're still here? Okay, how about this. Will this make you turn away? Will this bore you enough? Leave, leave, leave, escape my mind because I can't."

To me? This was perfect. I love the craft, I've loved the movie of this for decades now and I love the book even more. Everyone who idolizes Patrick is a goddamn loser idiot. And he would say so himself. He isn't a real person. He's barely anything, he sold his soul for investment banking in college and there are moments of such poignancy where he almost catches a glimpse of what he could be if he gave it all up, but he is also a goddamn coward who will never change, will never actually do anything to make himself happy. He sabotages everything good in his life that could make him feel anything genuine so that he can continue to dissociate further and further from an idea of self, thinking all he needs is to just get good enough to get recognition and validity from others, to keep going with the flow of things until he dies.

I think most people have a limit to their empathy, a point at which they stop seeing a person and see a monster instead, but I don't really have that. I think the scariest thought is that no one in the world is a complete monster. It excuses nothing, it just makes it that much sadder. Patrick is one of the most tragic characters I've ever come across. He refuses to redeem himself. And that was deeply upsetting to me in the same way that Alex from A Clockwork Orange upsets me. This could be, and is, some people. There's so many ways to interpret this work that allow for space to ask if he actually commits any of the violence, and if he doesn't? If he is just a slave to intrusive thoughts and delusions, that is so, impossibly, incredibly sad. I wonder who Patrick could be if he quit his job, got some actual medication that would help him instead of further dissociating him, and i dunno, got a boyfriend. I think that could have saved him.

It won’t change anything to say this though. He isn’t saved. He will never be saved. This review has meant nothing.