You first heard about him in conjunction with Less Than Zero. Your curiosity was piqued by the buzz around American Psycho and you were secretly horrified that you enjoyed it (despite its violent excess). You may even have picked up Glamorama and been surprised to find that it had a plot… sorta.

Well, you’re in for a treat. You’ve been putting it off, but it’s time to read Lunar Park. Buy it now. I’ll wait.

OK… I used the verb ‘read’. ‘Listen’ is fine, too. More on that later.

BEE’s latest book is a great stew of genres. Meta memoir? Reverse Roman à clef? Supernatural haunted house story? Retelling of Hamlet? Lunar Park is at times each of these things, but simultaneously deconstructs them. It’s complicated, sometimes confusing and often wonderful.

Just for fun, before reading it, reread Breakfast of Champions. The scenes where Vonnegut intrudes into his own narrative? Great, right? You’re going to enjoy how ‘writer Ellis’ steps in to interfere with the fictional ‘narrator Ellis’ and how it makes you consider how these fictional worlds take on lives of their own.

Oh, yes… the ‘listen thing’. Over the last year or so, I’ve started listening to a lot of audio books. My brain seems to be able to cope with listening to one story while reading another (not simultaneously, mind you) without twisting together the plots too much. I guess I process and store stuff I hear differently from stuff I read. Well, anyway, a good narrator can really make an audio book something special. James Van Der Beek (who starred in the movie adaptation of Ellis’ Rules of Attraction) does a wonderful reading of Lunar Park. If you’re so inclined, I recommend checking it out in audiobook format. Join Audible.com – you’ll be glad you did.

Do yourself a favor: read (listen to) Lunar Park. Then invite me out for coffee and tell me what you think the deal is with that crazy furr-ball monster thing and the demonically possessed toy.