‘Lunar’ mesmerizing tale written from author’s heart

Bret Easton Ellis, the “enfant terrible” of the literary Brat Pack of the 1980s, is sorry for all the pain and trouble he has caused.

He’s sorry for playing up to the hype that greeted the publication of his first novel, “Less Than Zero,” when he was 21; for becoming addicted to drugs and parties and fame; for writing “American Psycho”; for posing for too many narcissistic photographs and giving too many self-important interviews; for being a jerk, basically.

Ellis is the narrator of “Lunar Park,” the new novel by the actual author named Bret Easton Ellis. But despite their suspiciously similar careers, the two should not be confused.

“Regardless of how horrible the events described here might seem, there’s one thing you must remember as you hold this book in your hands: all of it really happened, every word is true,” the story begins.

You’ll know that’s not true long before the first monster shows up, but there’s still enough Ellis to make “Lunar Park” a mesmerizing read. It finds him baring his soul without the protective buffers of irony, cynicism or detachment. The book is from the heart, by an author often accused of not having one.

It is also a horror novel, an homage to Stephen King, whom Ellis has cited as a major influence. Strange things start to happen when narrator-Ellis hits professional and personal rock-bottom (“My life – my name – had been rendered a repetitive, unfunny punch line”) and straightens out his act.

He marries his on-again, off-again actress girlfriend, with whom he has fathered a son, and moves to the suburbs, leaving behind his beloved New York City, now a wasteland of terrorists, military police, snipers and “grief on an unimaginable scale.”

He also intends to leave behind the heavy drugs, but cocaine, vodka and Xanax won’t take no for an answer. The depiction of Ellis in the suburbs, attempting to raise his son and stepdaughter and be a good husband, is comical and sad, like watching the zonked-out protagonists of “Less Than Zero” trying to be responsible adults and failing miserably.

Then his stepdaughter complains that her stuffed animal tried to bite her. The furniture rearranges itself. Ellis spots something not human lurking at the edges of his back yard.

A cream-colored Mercedes 450 SL – the same car driven by Ellis’ estranged father, who died 15 years earlier and whose ashes are unceremoniously stored “in a safe-deposit box in a Bank of America on Ventura Boulevard next to a dilapidated McDonald’s” – is prowling the neighborhood. Several boys in the area are missing, and a serial killer is re-enacting the horrific crimes Patrick Bateman committed in “American Psycho.”

Ellis puts his namesake through the proverbial wringer in “Lunar Park,” and while he allows the narrator to defend himself (on “Psycho”: “It was about society and manners and mores, and not about cutting up women. How could anyone who read the book not see this?”), there is an aura of repentance to the novel, the sense of an older, wiser writer coming to terms with his past:

At times, Ellis does King proud, with genuinely frightening and violent passages. But other elements, such as the significance of Steven Spielberg’s “1941” constantly playing on the TV, come off as hokey.

The book’s horror veneer serves as a perfect vehicle for its meaning. “Lunar Park” is a story about the momentous pain parents inflict on their children, and Ellis’ appropriation of his own life – which initially seems like a vainglorious stunt – ends up adding an extra layer of poignancy to this most personal of novels.