Reading The Shards, the dark and disturbing new novel by Bret Easton Ellis, it occurred to me that the hole across the street could just as easily be a mass grave. The tension between the shimmering illusion of luxury, affluence, and privilege—empire, Ellis would call it—and the potential for evil, for real darkness, that underpins our world pulses through the book. There is nothing infinitely soothing in these pages; rather, The Shards is a compulsive exercise in escalating dread and paranoia broken by moments of shocking violence and explicit sex.
