54 pages • 1 hour read
The Shards: A Novel
A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Introduction-Chapter 5Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Content Warning: The section contains depictions of antigay bias, sexual violence, sexual harassment, animal cruelty, animal death, substance use, addiction, graphic violence, graphic sexual content, cursing, illness, death, and emotional abuse.
Introduction Summary
The introduction occurs in the present, with the main character and narrator, 54-year-old Bret Ellis, reflecting on the difficulty of writing about the serial killer known as the Trawler, who impacted him and his friends during the fall of their final year, 1981, at the wealthy Los Angeles prep school, Buckley. Bret thinks of a novel as an irresistible “dream,” but he can’t dream away the violent, deadly “truth.”
In 2006, as he made notes for the novel, he had a panic attack. A year later, he spotted Susan Reynolds, his best friend and elusive romantic interest at Buckley, outside the Palihouse Hotel. Before he was ready to return to Buckley and to his teen self, he published two other novels and earned money working on TV and movie scripts. Bret has a long-term boyfriend, Todd, and feels that his literary persona has become less caustic. The author of the incendiary novel American Psycho is now “sunnier.”
As a teen in Los Angeles during the early 1980s, Bret and his friends felt free. They had driver’s licenses, and their parents mostly didn’t interfere with their lives. Bret remembers that the spring and summer of 1981 felt “paradisaical,” but the
