American Psycho

Set in Manhattan in the late 1980s, American Psycho spans roughly two years in the life of wealthy young investment banker Patrick Bateman. Bateman, 26 years old when the story begins, narrates his everyday activities, from his daily life among the upper-class elite of New York to his forays into murder by nightfall.

Bateman comes from a privileged background, having graduated from Philips Exeter Academy, Harvard (class of 1984), and then Harvard Business School (class of 1986). He works as a vice president at a fictional Wall Street investment bank, Pierce & Pierce (the same investment bank at which Sherman McCoy works in The Bonfire of the Vanities), and lives in an expensive Manhattan apartment on the Upper West Side . He embodies the 1980s yuppie culture. Through stream-of-consciousness narrative he describes his conversations with colleagues in bars and cafes, his office, and nightclubs, satirizing the vanity of Manhattan yuppies.

The first third of the book contains no violence, and is simply an account of what seems to be a single Friday night, as Bateman documents travelling with his colleagues to a series of nightclubs, where they indulge in massive amounts of cocaine, drink a variety of alcoholic beverages, critique fellow clubgoers' clothing, trade fashion advice, and question one another on proper etiquette.

Beginning with the second third of the book, Bateman begins to describe his day-to-day activities, which range from committing brutal murders to such mundanities as renting videotapes and making dinner reservations. Bateman's stream of consciousness is occasionally broken up by chapters in which Bateman directly addresses the reader in order to critique the works of various 1980s musicians such as Whitney Houston.

In addition to describing his daily life, Bateman also speaks at length about his love life. He is engaged to a fellow yuppie named Evelyn, though he possesses no deep feelings for anyone; additionally, he frequently solicits sex with attractive women ("hardbodies"), lusts after his secretary, and tries to avoid the attention of Luis, a closeted homosexual yuppie who confesses his love for Patrick. Bateman