There is nothing infinitely soothing in these pages rather, The Shards is a compulsive exercise in escalating dread and paranoia broken by moments of shocking violence and explicit sex. The tension between the shimmering illusion of luxury, affluence, and privilege-empire, Ellis would call it-and the potential for evil, for real darkness, that underpins our world pulses through the book. Reading The Shards, the dark and disturbing new novel by Bret Easton Ellis, it occurred to me that the hole across the street could just as easily be a mass grave. Is there anything more emblematic of the Southern California lifestyle? David Hockney, in his paintings, celebrated the color, the light, and the sexual yearning embodied by the private pool, and Joan Didion wrote that “a pool is water, made available and useful, and is, as such, infinitely soothing to the western eye.” I watched as the hole grew and a dark shape formed in the grass. My neighbors across the street were putting in a swimming pool.
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