His rise to fame--during which he defined that special 80s zeitgeist--is the stuff of legend, and you can't tell me that when you read Less Than Zero or Rules of Attraction (because you most certainly did) in college that you didn't feel a twinge of some sort of jealousy...creative, social, or otherwise.

When American Psycho was released, Ellis graduated from bete noir to criminally insane douchebag. But, y'know, there's no such thing as bad publicity. Nothing he's written since then has attracted the same amount of notoriety or commercial success.

And that's where Lunar Park begins, with actual author Bret Easton Ellis giving up his debauched NYC partyboy lifestyle for comfortable suburban living. Or is it a Fake Bret Easton Ellis (FBEE), a fictional one whose life just coincidentally parallels that of the Real Bret Easton Ellis(RBEE)? The RBEE insists that LP is a work of fiction, but FBEE, the narrator, tells us that every word of it is true. (Ironic? Sarcastic? Postmodern?) I won't be ruining the book for you by mentioning that it aspires to be a horror story--obvious evidence that it's fiction, right?--but is FBEE the RBEE's homunculus or what? Because FBEE is both totally unsympathetic and also perversely, narcissistically proud of his shortcomings, just like RBEE.

FBEE is a man who wants to leave behind his drug-addled, star-fucking past, so he settles down in ur-Westchester County with Jayne Dennis, the big movie star with whom he had a child years earlier, in a posh residence on Elsinore Lane. (Pay attention, folks, because THAT, my friends, is called FORESHADOWING.) Forget the niggling drug addiction and the antisocial behavior of yore: The one thing that FBEE is unable to escape is the memory of his dead father. Why not? Because his father is sending him blank emails from beyond the grave! (Coincidentally, my mother also does this, but she's alive.) ELSINORE LANE! Get it?

Other weird things begin to happen. FBEE is being stalked by someone who resembles Patrick Bateman, protagonist of AP. Oh, and there's something leaving slime trails and peeling paint all around his house. The house which, inexplicably, is slowly turning into his childhood home. And, ah, also, his stepdaughter's doll is trying to kill him. Worst of all: This pretty grad student won't fuck him.

While all this paranormal activity is taking place, there are other earthly issues too. There's his substance abuse problem, his disintegrating marriage, and his estranged relationship with his 'tween son. It is hard to kick against the pricks, true, but by the time I got halfway through the story I was beginning to think it really should've been called Are You There God? It's Me Bret Easton Ellis. Because his struggles are more in the realm of adolescent angst than any slings and arrows Hamlet suffered.

Things happen: the stalking continues, the sliming/haunting worsens, area boys start disappearing, his wife threatens to leave him, and then someone starts murdering folks in the same style as Patrick Bateman. Ain't that some shit? FBEE comes to the startling, nonsensical conclusion that all of these problems are the result of the characters he's created in his stories. It's convoluted, but to keep this review short(er), I'll share the stupidest reason: All those blank emails he's been receiving from his dad? They're not blank; they have mpeg attachments! Of the night his father died! How his AOL account hadn't reached its storage capacity is beyond me, as is the fact that he hadn't noticed the attachments for over a year--but then again, it's hard to expect much from an AOL user to begin with.

In short order, the appearances of the apparition--a squat, snarling mouth-creature covered with hair--get so bad that he calls in Ghostbusters; the sexy grad student gets chopped into pieces, and everyone thinks that FBEE is going off the rails on a crazy train.

It's not difficult to tell a scary story--my brief stint in the Brownies taught me this--yet somehow RBEE fails miserably. Message to Bret: Psycho killer with hook for hand? Scary. Possessed child's doll and oversized Tribble? Not so much.

To complicate matters further, a third personality--The Writer--shows up to meta-narrate about three-quarters of the way through. So we've got RBEE, FBEE, and The Writer jockeying for who's the prettiest girl at the dance, and yet they're all so damned unlikeable that it's hard to really give a shit about any of them.

I'd love to know if Janet Maslin and I read the same novel, because while she was rhapsodizing, I was beginning to wish that Goatboy had descended onto the "Camden" campus* and gobbled up RBEE when he was an undergrad. A.O. Scott had a less charitable review, describing LP as "the first draft of an A.M. Homes novel." (Fuck you too, pal.) My conclusion? After a reading sixteen chapters wherein FBEE is chased around his McMansion by the hairy mouth creature, I was silently chanting GET HIM! EAT HIM!

*The seven of you reading this who also attended "Camden" and will get this. The other five of you reading this will just have to wonder.