The Shards: A Novel

Bret Easton Ellis is the author of The Shards (2023), which mixes crime, mystery, erotica, and metafiction. In The Shards, Ellis, who has cultivated a transgressive literary persona, turns himself into the main character and narrator. As with his other well-known works, including his debut novel, Less Than Zero (1985), and his third novel, American Psycho (1991), the book focuses on disaffected young people and their transgressive experiences with American society’s violence, vapidity, and lethargy. Many of Ellis’s novels have become films, and Ellis has written movies and TV shows, but The Shards has yet to become either. The main themes of the book are The Malleability of Truth in Storytelling, Alienation and Suspicion within Relationships, and The Complex Relationship between Sexuality and Identity.

The page numbers refer to the 2023 Alfred A. Knopf eBook edition.

Content Warning: The book and guide contain depictions of suicidal ideation, antigay bias, sexual violence, sexual harassment, animal cruelty, animal death, substance use, addiction, graphic violence, graphic sexual content, cursing, illness, death, and emotional abuse.

Language Note: For clarity, the study guide refers to Bret Ellis (the narrator and protagonist of The Shards) as Bret and Bret Easton Ellis (the real author and person) as Ellis.

Plot Summary

In the introduction, Bret Ellis, now 54, reflects on the book, The Shards, that he has written. Due to the traumatic events that occurred when Bret was 17, the story was difficult for Bret to tell. He feels like he was in a dream, but he couldn’t dream away the disturbing facts.

Bret’s narration includes countless references to real songs and movies, and he moves forward and backward in time, eschewing linear narrative. The primary action occurs in the fall of 1981. Bret and his friends are affluent teens who live in Los Angeles. They attend Buckley prep school, and they’re seniors.

Bret’s girlfriend is Debbie (Deborah) Schaffer. Bret has complicated feelings for Susan Reynolds, whom he’s known since seventh grade, and he has sexual feelings for Thom, who is Susan’s boyfriend. Susan is the student body president; Thom is the starting quarterback. Ryan Vaughan also plays football. He is wealthy, but not as rich as Bret and the others. Ryan spends a weekend at Bret’s house having sex with Bret while Ryan’s parents are in Europe. Bret also has sex with Matt Kellner, an “outcast” who lives in a pool house on his parents’ property.

Bret presents the period before the fall of 1981 as “paradisaical”; however, he admits that his privileged community has been beset by home invasions and murder. Three teen girls have disappeared, and authorities discover their horribly mutilated bodies. There’s a cult, the Riders of the Afterlife, which Bret compares to a “junior” version of the Manson Family (the deadly 1960s cult led by Charles Manson). Authorities attribute the murders not to the cult but to a serial killer, the Trawler. The Trawler follows a pattern. Once he identifies a victim, he makes several silent phone calls, rearranges their furniture, gives them a band poster, kidnaps their pets, and then abducts them.

Bret is an avid reader and is working on his first novel. He’s inspired by Joan Didion and Stephen King. He remembers that in May 1980, he saw Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of King’s horror novel The Shining (1977). He disliked the film version, but a mysterious teen boy at the showing entranced him.

In September 1981, Robert Mallory arrives as the “new kid” at Buckley. He lives with his aunt in a condo in Century City, having previously lived with his father, stepmother, and stepsister in Chicago. Bret learns that Robert’s mother, who died from a suspicious fall, blamed Robert for the missing pets in their neighborhood. His stepsister accused him of sexual abuse, and Robert attempted to die by suicide before going to a psychiatric hospital.

Robert gradually becomes a part of Bret’s social group. Bret thinks Robert is the boy he saw at The Shining in May 1980, but Robert denies being there. Bret believes something is “wrong” with Robert; at the same time, he’s sexually attracted to him. Susan is drawn to him, and their relationship causes conflict with her and Thom, who eventually break up.

Bret, suspicious of Robert, begins following him. Robert goes to his condo in Century City and then to an empty house in Benedict Canyon that belongs to his aunt and her ex-husband. Matt disappears and is later found dead. Details of his death indicate the Trawler. Bret suspects Robert of being the Trawler, and Robert suspects Bret, and the two veer between conflict and reconciliation. Susan throws a party for Robert, who becomes intoxicated. He takes off his clothes and jumps into the pool. Thom and Susan prevent him from drowning.

When Bret has sex with Debbie, he regularly thinks of other men, including Ryan, Matt, and Robert. Debbie’s mother, Liz, is a former model with alcohol use disorder. Her father, Terry, is an accomplished movie producer who often behaves inappropriately with his daughter’s male friends. Terry wants Bret to write a script for him. At the Beverly Hills Hotel, Bret has a fraught sexual encounter with Terry, who leads him to believe that his acquiescence is the cost of getting his script considered. Nonetheless, Bret insists that he is not a victim of sexual abuse.

Terry throws a party at the Schaffer house with famous people like John Travolta, Diane Keaton, and Jack Nicholson. Terry becomes unusually intoxicated and “gropes” Robert, who doesn’t minimize Terry’s behavior. Bret thinks of Robert’s anger as proof of his anti-gay bias. Somehow, Terry falls from the second story and onto the tiled floor. Liz yells at Terry. Bret believes Robert pushed Terry.

Someone brutally murders Debbie’s horse, and Debbie receives silent phone calls and a new band poster, details that match the Trawler’s modus operandi. Debbie thinks Bret is calling her, but he isn’t. Bret, too, receives silent phone calls, and he continually notices a beige van. He receives an audio tape in which a man using a scary voice sexually tortures Matt, and Bret thinks Robert is the voice on the recording. Bret tells Dr. Croft, Buckley’s principal, about Robert, but Dr. Croft is unmoved. Robert has already spoken to Dr. Croft about Bret.

Debbie swims in her pool, and someone tries to drown her. She receives a manila envelope of photos that someone took of Bret and Terry at the Beverly Hills Hotel. After Debbie yells at Bret, she vanishes. Bret thinks Robert abducted her, but she’s with a local musician in a hotel, and she reappears safely.

Susan is the victim of a home invasion, and the attacker—presumably, the Trawler—slashes her right breast. Thom arrives and tries to help her. Susan bites the Trawler’s right forearm, and the Trawler leaves. Robert appears and takes them to the hospital before returning to Century City.

Bret confronts Robert in his condo. They have knives, and they fight. The violence spills onto the balcony. As Robert tries to escape Bret, he jumps, lands on the garage, and dies. Bret creates a convenient narrative for the authorities so he looks like the person who defeated the Trawler. After the Trawler kills a fifth and final victim, and Robert’s aunt publicizes letters that prove people were stalking him, the idea that Robert was the Trawler loses validity.

Bret visits Susan in her bedroom. She needs reconstructive surgery, and she’s on many painkillers. She notices what she thinks is a bite mark on Bret’s forearm, which causes her to throw up. She tells Thom about the bite mark and that Bret is the one who invaded her home and attacked her, but Thom believes Susan isn’t thinking clearly due to the painkillers. Bret, as narrator, categorically denies this accusation, but his use of narcotics during the events in question makes his narration unreliable. The novel ends with the identity of Susan’s attacker and of the Trawler unresolved.