The Rules of Attraction
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The Rules of Attraction
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About this listen
Incisive, controversial and startlingly funny, The Rules of Attraction examines a group of affluent students at a small, self-consciously bohemian liberal-arts college on America’s East Coast.
Lauren, who changes the man in her bed even more often than she changes course, is dating Victor but sleeping with Sean.
Sean - cool, ambivalent and deeply cynical - might be in love with Lauren, but he’s not going to let that stop him from bedding Paul.
Paul, as shrewd as he is passionate, is Lauren’s ex-lover and the final point in this curious triangle.
From the author of American Psycho, Bret Easton Ellis' The Rules of Attraction is a breathtaking tale of sex, expectation, desire and frustration.
©2019 Bret Easton Ellis (P)2019 W. F. Howes LtdListeners also enjoyed...
Critic reviews
"Inspired. A wonderfully comic novel." (Gore Vidal)
What listeners say about The Rules of Attraction
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Lord Emsworth
- 26-11-23
Brilliant narration of a great novel
My Bret Easton Ellis retrospective continues with The Rules of Attraction (1981) (having been inspired after reading The Shards (2023), which is superb).
I was curious how the books would stand up decades on and, to my surprise, and so far (this, Lunar Park and Less Than Zero), I still really love them
Bret Easton Ellis is a sly satirist whose books are very clever and funny however I suspect a lot of casual readers don't always understand or appreciate this aspect of his work. Many reviewers need to like the characters they read about to feel positively about a work of fiction. There are no likeable characters in BEE's work who are predominantly unloved rich kids with very messed up and unfulfilled lives.
The Rules of Attraction takes place in the late 1980s at liberal arts college Camden in New Hampshire. Sean Bateman (brother of American Psycho’s Patrick), a cynical, dim witted, hedonistic, promiscuous drug dealer and student at Camden believes he has fallen in love with the depressive Lauren Hynde who loves Victor, her ex currently somewhere in Europe. Another of Lauren’s ex-lovers, Paul Denton, claims to also be in a sexual relationship with Sean. This love triangle underpins a very amusing story of student sex, drugs, and casual relationships which is told via multiple voices providing first person narratives which usually totally contradict previous accounts, often hilariously so. Each first person narrator is voiced by a different person on the audiobook and they are all uniformly excellent. The multiple perspectives are a wonderful narrative device and The Rules of Attraction is bleakly brilliant and much better than I had remembered. It really stands up.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Emile Power
- 18-01-21
hilarious!
Hilarious from the first page and it never stops. it is a microcosm of American College life in the 80s for the children of rich Americans. A sccathing satire in Bret Easton Ellis' original style that is always deadpan and often laconic.
if you enjoyed American Psycho then you'll love this too.
Hilarious!
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance3 out of 5 stars
- Robert
- 22-11-22
Boring narrator
I'm writing this review simply because I think it has s boring narrator who's talking in a very monotone voice.
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance3 out of 5 stars
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Story3 out of 5 stars
- Mr T Kosuge
- 03-05-23
American Psycho is better
Traces of similarities with AP in this book. The theme of confused/inebriated young people still the focal point here.
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Overall2 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story1 out of 5 stars
- James
- 16-07-24
Blah...
Read one of his you've read them all. More spoilt kid drivel having sex & taking drugs
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Overall2 out of 5 stars
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Performance3 out of 5 stars
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Story2 out of 5 stars
- Rune Magnussen
- 20-08-22
The excruciatingly boring life of college kids.
The book starts out fine but quickly gets repetitive, halfway through I’m ready for this book to be over but I keep going in the hopes that something happens.
I get the feeling that there’s only one character in the book because they all sound the same, even the performances end up sounding alike.
I think women will enjoy this book more than men because of the everyday relationship drama, but as a man I ended up not caring for any of the characters, there was nobody to root for.
Some of his other books are much better and much more engaging, this one is a “meh”.
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Overall1 out of 5 stars
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Performance1 out of 5 stars
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Story1 out of 5 stars
- Amazon Customer
- 23-10-22
poor quality
the recording really let this down, it kept dropping out and had big silences in it.
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