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Set in a fictional affluent college town where students attend more parties than classes, and sexualities are more fluid than before, The Rules of Attraction presents a bizarrely dark and satirical take on the upper-middle-class college student culture, as told mainly through the view points of Sean, Lauren and Sean.

Still Ellis here is keen to keep the reader guessing as he randomly throws in the view points of other students, including Clay (the lead of his debut novel "Less Than Zero" aswell as Victor who would also get his own novel with "Glamorama". It would also be with this novel that Ellis established his long running theme of allowing the characters from his books to crossover, as especially highlighted by the first appearance here of Patrick Bateman of "American Psycho".

Does this multi view point style of storytelling provide a fuller world view or are all three of his leads as morally deprived as each other?

Equally with so much sex, drug taking and general bad behaviour on show, is there a real point that Ellis is trying to tell with this book, or is this essentially just an exercise in shock and awe?

The floor is now yours to discuss.

Sex, drugs and bad behavior are poured into a lot of fiction for shock and awe, but that's not my feeling toward The Rules of Attraction.

For me, it felt really authentic. He based the accounts on his experience at Bennington college and I think thats why it rings true.

Whenever I pick it up and flip through it, I'm always reminded of various things I love. The suicide scene was really effective I thought....and there was so much great sardonic humor, like the fact that the girl who killed herself got the same note in the mail about the suicide that everyone else got....I also always laugh at all that dialogue Paul has to have through the door his mother and her friend are having a hard time opening it.

I may come post again here. I love remembering The Rules of Attraction.

It's been a while since I've read The Rules of Attraction, but I'm a fan of Ellis so I'll have a go...

I agree with Bobby: I enjoyed the sardonic humour; although I wasn't around Bennington College during that time, the viewpoints and actions of the characters do feel authentic based on my own personal experiences.

The monotony, the narcissism, the debauchery - I guess one way to look at The Rules of Attraction is to find out what's NOT being narrated or mentioned in each passage. Where are the good people? Where are the good souls?

Ellis was a moralist, and the monotony of sex and drugs in each story was deliberately trying to tell us something about his generation - probably that they were pretty fucked up and had a whole lot of fun.