Dear reader,

For some reason – almost certainly something to do with my co-presenter’s dark and fevered imagination – I have been reading some very bleak books recently. The carefree summer days of A Court of Thorns and Roses and The Code of the Woosters are but a distant memory. I thought Lolita was pretty strong stuff, and then came Lord of the Flies. But there aren’t many grimmer and bloodier books than American Psycho.

As with some of the other books we’ve done on the show, I can vividly remember when I first read Bret Easton Ellis’s controversial bestseller. I was in the Lower Sixth at school, which means I was about 17. One of my friends had been absolutely gripped by it, and I remember picking it up off his desk and becoming steadily absorbed.

To be honest, I’m not sure my friend had been reading it for the right reasons, but I guess that’s part of Ellis’s point. In many ways the Patrick Bateman character is a frustrated teenage boy’s fantasy of what life as a grown man might look like – expensive clothes, fancy dinners, lots of money, a high-flying job and the company of a vast horde of attractive women. As my friend put it at the time: “It’s brilliant, and then it gets a bit weird” – which was putting it mildly.

And of course that was the trick. It never occurred to my friend, or to me, that Bateman might be an unreliable narrator, or that we weren’t actually meant to see him as the hero. So when the book started to turn very, very dark indeed, and he turned out to be one of the most horrifying monsters in modern fiction, the shock was all the greater.

Whether that makes American Psycho a particularly good book is a different matter. Re-reading it this summer, I flew through the first fifty pages or so, but then began to wonder if the rest was just more of the same. And although I’m not an especially squeamish reader, I did find myself wondering whether Ellis needed to go quite so far. Could the point have been made in a more subtle, less horrific way? Maybe, but then it wouldn’t have been so shocking. Either way, I definitely don’t need to read it again.

We’re very conscious, by the way, that lots of you don’t read to be shocked. So please rest assured that we’ve got lots of lighter books coming up. In fact, I was chatting to our brilliant producer Nicole today about books for the first half of 2027. We’re keen to incorporate lots of your suggestions; I think Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita is currently the audience front-runner. And we’ve got some novellas and short stories in mind too, because I know from experience that it’s not always easy to get through a book every week.

But please keep the suggestions coming! And also tell us if there are other things you’d like us to do on the show: interviews, Q&As, whatever. We’ve already got some fun plans for the next year, but we’re really keen to hear your thoughts.

On that note, this week, instead of our usual Book Notes, we have an interview with the director of the film of American Psycho, Mary Harron. Starring Christian Bale, it came out in 2000. For obvious reasons, the screen adaptation is not quite as shocking as the book, and Bale is so charismatic that it comes across as much more light-hearted – an odd thing to say about a misogynistic serial killer, I know.

My teenage son - who, I stress, has NOT seen the film or read the book, as far as I know - has developed a complicated theory that there is a single Christian Bale cinematic universe, in which Patrick Bateman reinvented himself as Bruce Wayne and then called himself Batman after his original name. It sounds bonkers. But who’s to say he’s wrong?

Until next time,

Dominic

“It’s funny to me that now that [American Psycho] could be part of a book club because 30 years ago it was so scandalous and people were so horrified by it,” says film director Mary Harron. “And now it’s been kind of embraced, in some way.”

After Dominic and Tabby analysed American Psycho, we spoke to Harron, the Canadian filmmaker and screenwriter best known for her 2000 adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis's book, starring Christian Bale. She has directed I Shot Andy Warhol, The Notorious Bettie Page, Charlie Says, episodes of Six Feet Under, Oz, Alias Grace and much more. Before directing, she was a fixture of the 1970s New York punk scene and a rock critic for The Guardian and The New Statesman.

We spoke to Harron for her take on the humour of the book, her key decisions in turning it into a movie and why it now seems eerily prescient.

The first thing that really struck me in the opening chapters was that it was funny and satirical, and none of the outraged press had mentioned that. I thought it was like early Evelyn Waugh. I was a big fan of Decline and Fall and Vile Bodies, a kind of ruthless social comedy of the upper classes.

I thought that there was a lot to be said that was quite serious politically to capture about the 1980s, but you could do it in a fun way. When I started reading the book, I really enjoyed the lists. There's something kind of like a mantra about them. I found them kind of soothing. These endless lists of what people are wearing.

Bret had noticed in the 1980s that there was an obsession with labels. Designer labels were very big, and people were noticing them and competitive about them, and it would be part of Bateman's [psyche] what he's aware of, how he sees the world, and probably an element of his anxiety too.

It's the difference between reading and watching. We do [have listing] in the scene that is constantly parodied now on YouTube, which is Bateman's morning routine, where he lists all the products, and we don't name them all, because we weren't allowed. But you can fetishise things in a different way in a film, so we’re fetishising the products he used. The production designer Gideon Ponte had a great idea where he lit the bathroom cabinet from behind, so all the products he uses have this magic glow. So you get a sort of obsessiveness, which is the point of it - a slightly mad obsessiveness, by showing them in a fetishised way.

I think there's more elements of madness in all of them than there is necessarily [villainy]. Or, elements of monsters. American Psycho is really a monster story. Because Bateman is a malformed human being, he can’t really control who he is. It’s like Frankenstein. It's horrifying, but it's also pathetic.

The novel's kind of avant-garde actually - that was another thing that I noticed in terms of it being this postmodern Gothic thing. It's sort of slippery, and the narrative slides. Sometimes it's in the third person, sometimes it's in the first person. Because it is about madness, Bateman sort of slips into different genres, which is kind of interesting. That's quite hard to represent on film.

There's a whole thing where they go to the Hamptons, him and his fiance Evelyn. It was done very romantically, like a J Crew commercial, and I loved it. They're on the beach and sitting by the fire and then at some point he's trying to microwave a jellyfish and as Evelyn's sleeping he's putting a bag over her head. The craziness starts creeping into this blissful Hamptons week at the beach. But it would have been a big sideways step. I had to try and give the film a bit of narrative drive. But I've always been sad that I couldn't film that.

I never thought it was just about the 80s. I thought it was about vulture American capitalism and that Bateman was almost like a synthesis or a fusion of everything really bad about the late 20th century and actually the 21st century so far. The Reagan era, which of course is now flowering into the Trump era, which was this contempt for the poor, a worship of money, an obsession with things and surfaces and possessions and style - that was what it was about.

When we made the film, we were still in the very last months of the Clinton era. We made it in 1999. And the blatant Reagan thing, which is illustrated in the film, where people like Bateman and his friends, would be openly misogynist or openly homophobic or openly racist, had been covered by a sort of veneer of saying the ‘right’ thing. Actually, one of my favourite scenes is the one in the sushi restaurant where Bateman suddenly starts telling off his friends for being anti-Semitic or misogynist or something, and he gives this monologue, which is full of liberal platitudes, and it’s kind of hilarious. That was more a feature of the Clinton era and the Obama era, where people would say the right things and not necessarily do the right things. So there's little bits of the 90s in there as well.

Yes. I think the reason why the film has had this weird afterlife where it's so very popular now is because it's about something that is still going on and, under Trump, became much, much more obvious and severe.

The American government is - and a part of society is too - much more openly misogynist and racist and celebrating a triumph of a kind of bully capitalism. So it's really no longer just a period film. It has as much to say about today as it did about the 80s.

Today it relates to the tech bro and their obsession more and more with isolating themselves, as Bateman does. Bateman's isolated in his sort of pristine apartment, and that seems to be a very tech bro thing because they want to isolate themselves on private islands. And it also relates to influencer culture, presenting an idealised version of yourself. Bret really caught that early on, that people want to project a public image… I always thought the extreme violence in the book, which I didn't want to reproduce, is about someone who is so obsessed with perfect surfaces that they'll rip open bodies, rip open the surfaces and dismember them, and you know, everything horrifying inside. It's this contrast.

Because [American Psycho] has such an obsessive and big cult audience, and it also has a lot of people who really dislike it, you have to leave it to be argued over. Why can't both things be true? Why can't it be a satire and want to shock and surprise? A book or a film can be a number of things at once.

When Bret was writing it, he got himself into a kind of a state. He read a lot of serial killer books and stayed up for days at a time, and just wrote the very violent things in one burst. At least that's what he told me. So I think it's hard to say. It's all mixed up: what is real? What is fantasy? What is satire? It doesn't have entirely the control of satire, because the violent things are very crazy and they go really far. They go beyond satire. The book has a lot of satirical elements, and then it has horror elements and some weird hallucinatory elements. I think one of the interesting things [is that] I wouldn't ever define it as just one thing.

I love Balzac, and I’ve always said I want to adapt some of him, but it's a lot to take on during 19th-century Paris. The book I've probably read more times than anything else is Crime and Punishment but I don't know that you could make a film as good as that book - you obviously couldn't. In a way, the things that I probably love most in literature, I'm not sure they would translate. I'm still interested in adaptation, and especially in limited series. I did Alias Grace, the Margaret Atwood novel, and I felt like we got a lot of that because we had six episodes, six hours to do it. But for a movie? I don't know. I have one novel I'm trying to do but I'll keep that to myself.

“I just want to fit in.”

After being so entrenched in Ellis’ novel we asked Harron what quote stayed with her. “It's so funny,” she says. “My husband and I have private jokes where we still repeat lines from the film/book to each other and this is one.” But what quote stayed with you after you finished the book? Email us and let us know.

We’re taking recommendations here to share with the Book Notes community. Tell us what book fellow members should pick up next by sending two or three sentences about your novel of choice and we’ll feature as many as we can in future weeks… Email [email protected].

We can’t wait to see your responses to American Psycho. Write in to [email protected] with ‘review’ in the subject line and tell us…

Last week, the presenters were spellbound by the much-less divisive Jane Eyre. And it seems you were too.

Your polls

We asked for your position on how we cover “spoilers” on the podcast and while the vote was fairly split, those who said they don’t mind and want more discussion of endings won out with 60% of the vote.

Richard wrote: “If I like the sound of the book you’re reviewing I will read it regardless of if I now know the ending. The beauty of reading is experiencing what generations of previous readers have encountered and now discovering it for yourself for the first time.”

And many of you echoed Ana, who said: “The idea is for listeners to have read the book before listening to the podcast episode so they can confront their ideas with yours. That said, many times we don't do that, it's true (I speak from experience). However, I believe the analysis is not complete if you try to avoid spoilers. So, if someone doesn't want to know what is going to happen in the book, they shouldn't [be] listening to the podcast episode before reading the book.”

Leigh-Anne agreed: “If there's a real twist (e.g. Rebecca) a spoiler alert is nice just in case, but otherwise there should be an assumption that a book club will actually talk about the entire book. What's the point otherwise?”

Many of you, however, (38%) said it was pitched right at the moment where the presenters make a judgement. “If I don’t know a particular book, your podcast usually makes me want to read it for myself - so hearing the ending discussed would spoil that,” said Lizzy. And Veronika joked: “I have a memory of a goldfish, so even if you spoil anything, I won't remember it in a week or two.”

When it came to scoring the book, hundreds of you (66%) rated Jane Eyre 10/10. Isle said: “Jane Eyre is one of those exceptional novels that has lived on for two centuries in the collective mind and memory of so wide a body of people. Why? Because it’s powerful, imaginative, and so, so well written! Extraordinary!”

“Unsurpassable!” said Catherine. “The magical realism within Jane Eyre heightens the emotions and allows the characters’ thoughts and desires to be expressed with an intensity that a purely straightforward, pragmatic account would lack entirely.”

Though Valerie countered: “It’s a bit too melodramatic for me and the overportrayal of Bertha’s madness and the lack of nuance is a real failure. Wide Sargasso Sea is a so much better book.”

Steely Jane

It’s clear from our inbox that Jane is also a favourite heroine of many of you, like Tabby. Anne gave us this perspective: “One of my favourite parts of the book is when Jane is on the moor and nearly dies in the elements. Having had my own health struggles Jane’s steely strength has come to mind during tough times. I realise Jane’s example won’t make any of us superpowers (and indeed we nearly lose her) but it sure helps me and shows the power of literature.”

Heroines you love

Some of you answered our call for your favourite literary heroines. Barbara told us: “Sairdy [Sayward] Luckett in the The Trees [by Conrad Richter]. Like Jane, Sairdy had to fend for herself in the early 19th century. Abandoned by her father and his grief for a daughter taken by a native tribe, Sairdy cares for the rest of her siblings and carves a life out of the dense forest of the Ohio frontier. It is no Little House on the Prairie. Sairdy is fierce.”

Kristy said hers is Hester Prynne from The Scarlet Letter: “She bears the sin; she takes all the shame, and then towards the end when the townspeople see her A as meaning Able, a direct connection to Cain/Abel is again reinforced with the narrator telling us that her sacrifice is good in the eyes of God, that she is the one He is pleased with.”

A constant friend

Many of you wrote in to tell us you’d read the book many times, after our presenters commented on its seemingly-endless depths.

“I’m 58 and it’s been my companion since I was about 12,” said Trish. “I read it at least once a year and find something different every time. Despite how I’ve changed Jane remains a constant friend to me. Her independence, determination, passion and intelligence never falter. Sometimes I wonder about why she falls for Rochester who can be so mercurial but I feel she has power in their relationship. She does what she feels is right. What a feminist icon in the 1800s!”

And Karen wrote in with how her experience of reading was changed (like Tabby’s) by . Wide Sargasso Sea. “When I first read Jane Eyre I thought Mr Rochester was a complete dreamboat, so stoical and dutiful with the burden of his clearly unhinged wife,” she says. “I'm also a big Orson Welles fan so that didn't hurt either. But after reading Jean Rhys's take on things, oh my God! Fighting talk. I was ready to unleash the dogs of war on that raging misogynist! There is a whole chapter where it's just him talking and he doesn't even let Jane get a word in edgewise. What a horrible, horrible man. I still loved the book and love Jane but was left furious at the thought she would be saddled with that windbag for the rest of her life.”

Karen added: “I am now 52 and have a system of re-reading all of my favourite books 10 years after my first reading to see how I've changed, because of course the books stay the same. I am happy to report Three Men in a Boat is always the same to me - a complete delight. If I ever see anything in that book other than how funny it is and no longer take joy in the brilliant characters, I know I need to seek professional help as I have gone wrong somewhere in life.”

The Bertha Mason suite

Who with a mischievous family can relate to this brilliant tale from Clare? “I knew the story of Jane Eyre long before I was old enough to read it because whenever we stayed with my grandparents, my little brother and I would be put in one of three attic rooms at the top of their house, nicknamed ‘The Bertha Mason suite’,” she writes. “We were told that Bertha Mason lived in the one with the closed door and that if we fooled around or got out of bed, ‘She would know’ and come bursting out of the room. It terrified us so much that when the lights were out, I’d hear my brother’s trembling five-year-old voice in the dark whispering from the other bed, ‘Which way are you facing?’ because he wouldn’t be able to go to sleep if I had my back to him. Too dangerous. My mother and grandparents found it absolutely hilarious and luckily for them, it became one of my favourite novels of all time. Otherwise, I’d be in therapy.”

Enjoy, Pippa

We always ask who you’d recommend our books to, and Barbara says: “Jane Eyre was the first classic book I ever read. It was the gateway to all the classic 19th century female writers I loved. I was 14 at the time and I would give this book to my 14-year-old granddaughter, Pippa. I think I will.”

Sunrise

We’ll finish with this lovely image from Martin, who wrote in to say about The Book Club: “I’m a retired literature teacher (plus Film and Art History) and I listen to it as I climb a mountain in the present hours. Many of the books you’ve featured I have taught for many years and you do a brilliant job. I always learn something new and often go back and reread them. By the time I reach the summit and the podcast is done, the sun is rising over the mountains in the east and within me as well. Your work pleases me that much.”

See you next week for Goldfinger.

The Book Club Team