The first book I read by Mr. Ellis was "The Rules of Attraction" and I couldn't believe how unlikable his characters were and how casual they were about sex and drugs and failing school. Well, you can imagine how surprised I was to read this one, which is a collection of vig nettes about horrible, morally-devoid rich and beautiful people in L.A. For some reason, though, it was a relatively easy read, and I kept going back to it, fascinated with how natural the characters spoke about things that would absolutely blow my mind to experience in my own boring life. These characters don't really have worries, and if they do, they're nothing compared to the average person's worries. Somehow, this book ends up making you feel both bummed and enlightened. Probably, for me any way, because you're sorry that there are walking corpses in L.A. who don't care about anything and are affected by nothing, but the enlightenment exists because I can al! so take solace in the fact that I'm not one of them. Mr. Ellis is my favorite author, and I liked the book, but it is definitely not your average reader's cup of tea.

In The Informers, Bret Easton Ellis continues with his stream of dark consciousness style, plunging deeper into our American wasteland. There is not a plot to speak of. This book is an expose, a strung out journal. No linear story exists. Not a single pleasant thing happens to any of the characters, with the exception of Anne, who does manage to meet a boy, but of course he winds up getting slaughtered by vampires. Even the vampires suffer, vomiting into toilets after discovering their victims blood was rich with heroin. Ellis ended American Psycho with the alarming, "This is not an exit," but The Informers offers perhaps even less redemption for its sorted cast. Loveless and stark, with no epitaph to speak of. Ellis does manage to evolve and branch into, for him at least, new literary territory. In The Rules of Attraction and American Psycho we are introduced to Sean and Patrick Bateman. The young spoiled, exceeding wealthy, ubiquitously jaded brothers who form the crux of Ellis's dusky landscapes. Sean even has a cameo of sorts in The Informers. But Patrick and Sean are young like Ellis is. They are men like Ellis. In The Informers Ellis introduces us to something different, their families. The mothers and the fathers, the sisters and brothers. The portrait is now complete. Here is the why behind the hedonism, the violence, and the senseless moral ambiguity of it all. This is where the monsters come from. Here we find roots, jaundiced and sickly, but roots never the less. Ellis has managed to mature and enlarge his shadowy world, without sacrificing any of the unholy brimfire that continues to be so fresh a voice.

3 and 1/2 stars leaning towards 4.

Bret Easton Ellis applies his cold Californian brushstroke to another slice of L.A. life. He is still using the same kind of clipped, cold and quick-to-read writing, but the difference here is that is is applied to more marginal members of society (as opposed to highschoolers, uni students and yuppies) such as rock stars, modern-day vampires, murderous dealers as well as possibly more familiar family settings.

Some of these stories are pretty good (The Secrets of Summer, Letters from L.A. & Discovering Japan), others are more average (Water From The Sun), but really if you know Bret Easton Ellis, then you know what you're are getting (bored, cold and uncaring charcters in interesting surroundings), the main difference here is due to the lack of an overall story there is a wider range of terrain and a little less cohesion. If you dig the man, you'll probably dig this book, it's a pretty decent page turner, but not in the same league as "Less Than Zero" or "American Psycho".

'Found in the Street' is certainly one of Highsmith's stranger books. Firstly, nearly all the characters are gay, bi-sexual, or at least very gay accepting. Even in today's era of enlightenment I found all this to be a bit unrealistic. Secondly, Highsmith lets down the reader by not capitalising on the suspense built up throughout much of the book. In other words the book's ending is a dud. Having said all this, 'Found in the Street' is standard Highsmith in that it is well-written (nice prose) and the characterisations are quite decent (despite the contrived gay aspect).

So what's the story about? It concerns a young, newly gay-enlightened woman in NYC being chased by an obsessive middle-aged bachelor. Coincidentally this middle-aged bachelor finds a wallet in the street owned by an artist. This artist's wife has some lesbian tendencies. All the characters then mesh together and, well, that's pretty much it. As I mentioned above, the ending is rather poor.

As an aside, Highsmith has done a MUCH better story concerning lesbians in her classic 'Carol'. That book is strongly recommended regardless of the reader's gender or gender preference.

Bottom line: 'Found is the Street' is really a forgettable piece of lesbian-mystery nonsense. Yet it is generally well-written, and I suspect Highsmith fans will find it okay.

Patricia Highsmith is one of my favorite novelists, but this was not one of her best books (though I agree with the reviewer who found the character of Ralph very well conceived). Was it not odd, for example, that, while Ralph *was* right in the end, the tension that was built up surrounding his character--his potential capacity for violence--never amounted to anything?

And there's something else that troubled me about this book and about The Price of Salt: the attitude toward children implicit in them. Yes, yes, I know that this is fiction and the attitudes expressed do not necessarily express the attitude of the author. But I, at least, found the characters' distance from their children in both novels troubling and unrealistic. In Found in the Street the daughter is forever given to babysitters to raise, while the parents live almost as if they had never had a daughter in the first place: nightclubbing until all hours, and the mother went off on a trip for six months, we are told, when the kid was two, leaving the child with a grandmother for the duration. Perhaps Highsmith intended thereby to portray the parents in a certain light, but I wonder whether she found this sort of behavior remarkable or indeed realistic. In The Price of Salt, on the other hand, while one of the characters *is* broken up about not being able to see her daughter enough, I got the impression from the book that in the heirarachy of relationships, children rank below lovers.

But perhaps I am missing something. I am curious about others' reactions.

This was my first Highsmith novel and I am pleased to know that there are better ones out there. I did think that the pacing was good and the tension sufficient for my limited tolerance. However the characters were outlandishly polite and accepting over death, our of marriage affairs, gay and otherwise, and the gentle manner by which marital sex was managed. There were so many brilliant moments in their lives, successful books, art world ingenuity, even two very significant deaths were magnificently endured. Following one murder, the couple shared drinks, mulled over the wife's gay affair and the husband's otherwise erotic obsession, to be followed by lamb chops-perfect, I'm sure. The child of this wealth and beauty union, was over the edge of my tolerance however. She could draw upon command, was never impossibly intrusive and went easily whenever the plot commanded, to the abundant babysitters who could instantly be called upon for days of support.
And yet the book had a definite intelligence, a psychological frisson,in the the ambiguous questionably sinister watchful movements of a lonely and completely marginalized 50 year old man. We try to stay ahead of that very slender line where he keeps his madness, his rage and consuming sexual confusion from psychopathic proportions. At the same time the story is unbearably tragic when he is brutalized by the violent toughs who reduce him from even the slightest acceptability. We wait for another personality or some violence from him or to him, its a gamble and it's well done. We do not know the details of how this character became isolated by his own broken memories, Ralph is isolated by virtue of his own broken memories, but we know they are unmentionable. The book is redeemed through his part in it.