Less than Zero by Bret Easton Ellis (Simon & Schuster)
Irrespective of effort, few young writers pull off even patchy brilliance. Writing is just too tricky a skill to acquire in a hurry on the whole. Rare examples of the prodigies who buck the trend include Lord Byron, Truman Capote and, latterly, Bret Easton Ellis. The Los Angeles-born author (below) once described his 1985 post-American dream debut, Less than Zero, as 'pretty good writing' for a 19-year-old.
The pacy, precocious book, originally hailed as the first MTV novel, catapulted Ellis to brat-pack stardom status. It remains so good in Ellis' eyes that he has decided it warrants a sequel.
In keeping with the original, the title - Imperial Bedrooms - is lifted from an Elvis Costello record. Set to appear in May 2010, the sequel will explore how the characters' relationships have unravelled in the ensuing two decades.
They are messy from the start. At the heart of the dryly described chaos stands a college student called Clay. After returning to LA for Christmas, Clay embarks on a seasonal cocaine-fuelled bisexual orgy, flitting from party to party.
The orgy is punctuated by outbursts of extreme ugliness. In one episode, Clay is forced to sit in a chair for five hours to watch his best buddy, the degenerate Julian, sell his body to a businessman to raise funds for his heroin habit.
The accumulated weight of the nightmares will drive Clay to leave glacial, amoral LA. Rootless in the meantime, he is haunted by a sign that confronts him in the course of his freeway meandering.
'I come to a red light, tempted to go through it, then stop once I see a billboard sign that I don't remember seeing and I look up at it,' Clay says. 'All it says is 'Disappear Here',' Clay continues, 'and even though it's probably an ad for some resort, it still freaks me out a little and I step on the gas really hard and the car screeches as I leave the light.'
To some critics, Ellis' freaked-out fable is just juvenilia, a feeble foretaste of the greying boy wonder author's cult gore-fest, American Psycho. But Less than Zero is tighter and much more atmospheric - a slacker classic.
The author's rawness may always fuel the novel's fascination. It remains amazing that anyone could write with such finesse at 19 - the same age group as the vapid lost generation brats depicted so deftly.