A semi-autobiographical horror novel, detailing Bret Easton Ellis's rise to fame and the fictional story of his second-tier movie star wife and their experiences in a suburban house that may be haunted...
It's also a partial sequel to American Psycho and an homage to The Shining.
This book contains the following tropes:
- As Himself: The book is narrated in first person by Bret Easton Ellis, the successful writer of American Psycho and other novels. At the beginning, it sounds autobiographical, but then completely descends to fiction.
- Abusive Parents: Bret's father certainly was one, and he fears going down a similar path.
- Big Bad: Bernard Erlanger is a Loony Fan of American Psycho who copycats the murders in the book and torments the author/protagonist Bret Easton Ellis.
- Book Within A Book: The book that Bret is writing, entitled Teenage Pussy.
- Crapsaccharine World: The world of Lunar Park is much less of a downer than the rest of Ellis's works, but it still sucks. Aside from the implied police state that is going on in the rest of the country, the main setting of Lunar Park is an upscale Stepford Suburbia filled with Political Overcorrectness and a wave of missing child cases.
- From Bad to Worse: Terrorist attacks, nationwide disappearances of pre-teen boys, a haunted house, a local serial killer patterning his crimes on American Psycho and Keanu Reeves. These things are merely a pretext to whats to come.
- Homage: Lunar Park is largely a Stephen King pastiche, especially The Shining.
- Jack the Ripoff: The Big Bad of the novel is revealed to be Bernard Erlanger, a man who became so obsessed with American Psycho that he began to imitate Patrick Bateman's murders and terrorize Ellis himself over the phone, while also posing as Detective Kimball and pretending to investigate his own crimes.
- I Have Many Names: The Copycat Killer poses as several of Ellis's characters such as Clayton, Detective Kimball, and of course, Patrick Bateman...
- Impersonating an Officer: A detective, to be exact. The Serial Killer who takes after Patrick Bateman also poses as Detective Kimball and pretends to investigate his own crimes.
- Karma Houdini Warranty: The final fate of Patrick Bateman is to be trapped in a pier fire.
- Life Embellished: The book is a mock-memoir with clearly fictional elements and characters that have nothing to do with real Ellis's life.
- Mind Screw: Around the time Bret starts discussing things with and getting information from the writer you might get a bit confused.
- Misaimed Fandom: In-Universe, American Psycho was written as a vicious satire of the 80s yuppie subculture, with Serial Killer Patrick Bateman as a Villain Protagonist and a Hate Sink who serves as the living distillation of everything wrong with yuppies. Bernard Erlanger, the out-of-universe Big Bad, is a Loony Fan of the novel who thinks Bateman is a role model to be emulated.
- Reckless Gun Usage: Bret ends up brandishing his gun in his house when he sees Patrick Bateman/Clayton inside. Later subverted as his wife took the bullets out, causing it be empty at a crucial moment.
- Recursive Canon: Patrick Bateman exists and so does the novel American Psycho.
- Sdrawkcab Name: Terby. Y Bret. Why Bret?
- Shout-Out to Shakespeare: The story is full of Hamlet references.
- Sitcom Arch-Nemesis: In the first chapter, Keanu Reeves.
- Stepford Suburbia: The backdrop for the story is a place like this, and Ellis goes into detail describing the tense, fear-ridden atmosphere and distrust of the post-9/11 America. And there's also a Serial Killer haunting the neighborhood.
- Title Drop: The last 2 words of the novel.
