The Shards

The Shards is a 2023 autofiction novel by American author Bret Easton Ellis, published on January 17, 2023, by Alfred A. Knopf. Ellis's first novel in 13 years, The Shards is a fictionalized memoir of Ellis's final year of high school in 1981 in Los Angeles. The novel was first serialized by Ellis as an audiobook through his podcast on Patreon. Plot summary Bret, the narrator, relates the story of the events of his senior year of high school in 1981, of he and his close circle of friends' acquaintance with new student Robert Mallory and the tragedy that followed. Bret and his friends are all the children of affluent film directors, producers, and other major players of the Hollywood scene, living in the heights and canyons of the Hollywood Hills, Los Angeles. The main characters are Generation X kids with much freedom to come and go as they please from their homes as their distant parents focus on their own lives and sexual freedoms. They all attend an elite prep school, Buckley, have easy access to drugs, go to lavish parties, and drive luxury cars. Bret, although tightly knit with the rest of the group, is also somewhat of an outsider, renowned for his overactive imagination as a writer. When new student Robert Mallory first arrives at Buckley, Bret is sure he had seen him at a movie theater months before, but Robert denies this. Bret learns that Robert had previously spent time in a psychiatric facility. Immediately and thereafter, Bret distrusts him and comes to believe that Robert is responsible for the murders of the "Trawler", a serial killer that has been targeting mainly female teenagers in the Los Angeles area. The Trawler's victims first find that furniture has been mysteriously rearranged in their homes, then their pets disappear and they receive phone calls with hang-ups, before they are abducted, mutilated and killed, and their corpses and those of their pets are later found made up into an "assemblage." The Trawler is thought to be connected to a mysterious Satanic cult operating in the area known as the Riders of the Afterlife. Bret's circle of friends, which includes the Homecoming king and queen - Thom and his girlfriend Susan - all welcome Robert into their circle and trust him throughout the novel, despite Bret's insistence that Robert is a liar, psychotic and "deranged." These accusations all fall on deaf ears, and Bret's girlfriend Debbie believes Bret is imagining things. Bret is bisexual and prefers men, but passes as straight.