Great Novels Like American Psycho
Great Characters and Voice Make These Two Books Winners and Perfect for Your Book Club or Reading List
The novel American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis explores the mind of a serial killer. If you like being inside a psychopath's head, try these great books.
Bret Easton Ellis’s American Psycho is a fascinating glimpse inside the mind of a psychopathic serial killer. Having recently done some research on the mental machinations of serial killers (for my next novel, due out someday,) I was impressed both by the veracity of the things that main character thinks and does and by the perfect consistency of the main character’s voice. By voice, I don’t mean the literal tone and timbre of a human speaking voice (I read it; I didn’t listen to it,) but I mean the way the author carefully chose the words, the way the sentences flow, and the subject matter of each chapter. Remember: the main character Patrick Bateman is supposed to be venal, banal, and as shallow as black ice. His lengthy reverie about his oral hygiene routine becomes somewhere between stultifying boring and fascinating that Bateman tells us about it in such tedious detail.
If you think American Psycho is a great book for the deep characterization and voice, consider these other books. (If you’re attracted to the character of Patrick Bateman, seek help.)
I cannot highly recommend enough City of Tiny Lights by Patrick Neate. It takes place in London. The main character, Tommy Akhtar, is a drunk Muslim Ugandan-Indian private detective. Neate’s careful attention to Akhtar’s voice is wonderful. When Melody Chase, a hooker with a collection problem, appears in his office, he tries to give her the boot so he can crawl back into his bottle, but she’s persistent. The Russian Mob and a Member of Parliament are eventually involved. Parts of this book are hysterically funny, some are violent, and some are so sad. Neate’s unfurling of Akhtar’s backstory and his precise voice make it memorable.
Another book with a fantastic main character with a distinctive voice is The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon. The main character is 15-year-old, autistic Christopher Boone, falsely accused of killing a neighbor’s poodle. His attempts to logically deduce the world around him because he has no access to the emotional lives of other people are fascinating and frightening. (Are we neurotypicals really so mercurial and unfathomable?) Haddon carefully renders the world as an on-the-spectrum person must see it. Literally, he boils the world down to its most physical, literal components, and Christopher guides us through our unrecognizable society.
If you like these books, try the interesting plot convolutions of Great Books Like The Da Vinci Code or Great Books Like Harry Potter.
