The Shards: A Novel

Bret is the main character and narrator. Though he has much in common with Ellis, Bret is a fictional character. During the main narrative timeframe, Bret is 17; yet the narrator is 54 and thus already knows how events in the young Bret’s life will unfold. He has more information than the reader, and his friends call out his “tendency to embellish” and add “additional details” (187). Thus, Bret is not a reliable narrator: His version of the story is subjective, filtered through his teenage perspective and shaped by his own insecurities and longings. The violence taking place all around him begins to look, at least to him, like a projection of his own imagination into the real world. He loses the ability to tell the difference between the dark undercurrents of American empire and those of his own individual psyche.

Murders, violence, and unreliability aside, Bret is an intense and highly observant narrator. He details the streets and places of Los Angeles, the songs he hears, the books he reads, and the movies he watches. His meticulousness makes him an expert on the city and the culture of American “empire” as it manifests in wealthy Los Angeles enclaves in the 1980s.