The Blitz book club: Less Than Zero

Clay is back in Los Angeles for Christmas from his East Coast university. It’s the 1980’s, he’s a part of the lost generation, and feels like he’s walking barefoot on Mulholland Drive even though he’s wearing designer shoes. Upon his return he’s forced to confront his dysfunctional, vain, glamorous, and horrifying past where cocaine is breakfast, luxury cars are toys, and everyone looks like an extra in a music video on MTV.

His immaculately tan group of friends include his beautiful girlfriend Blair, who he tries to renew his feelings for despite his jaded apathy and same-sex hookups, anorexic Muriel who treats Cedars Sinai like the Beverly Hills Hilton, his truant bestfriend Julian who has fallen into a seedy underworld of heroin and prostitution, and Rip, who has everything, except anything to lose.

In a world where the maids are stoned, pre-teens are coke heads, lives are wasted at poolsides, Spago is McDonald’s, and there’s a twelve year-old girl tied to a bed and used as a sex doll, Clay searches for the remnants of himself that can’t be found at the bottom of a bottle of Pérignon before he disappears here once and for all.

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