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KatAnansi t1_j6ll00k wrote

I finished the book last night, and have been mulling it over all day. I think the joy of an unreliable narrator written by a skilled author is that you don't really know for sure - and you can change your mind, change it back again and still never really be sure. There is no definitive version of events.

For me, I think that virtually all (if not all) of the murders were in his fantasies. He is unraveling throughout the story, becoming more and more unhinged and psychotic. So many of the things he thinks he says out loud are probably not said out loud. He's off his face. What is going on in his mind and outside in the world blur. A lot of the murders are unfeasible. Sure, you could get away with killing a homeless person - but the ludicrous and farcical multiple deaths involving power tools and the amount of blood and carcasses? Unrealistic to the point of the author having a laugh.

And it really does seem to me that alongside being a scathing criticism of 1980s consumerist capitalism it is also the author completely taking the piss out of pretentious yuppie culture. He's exaggerating, pushing further and further to see how much he can get away with, how much his readers will believe - or at least be entertained by.

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Z0mbifiedFr0g OP t1_j6m0wgi wrote

Yes, exactly! So much of what is described in the book just doesn’t make sense for it to have actually occurred. If I were to say any of the murders actually took place, I would say that I could give him the murder of the homeless man in the beginning as I think the logistics work and it’s detailed enough. I truly believe Patrick is just experimenting with these ideas in his mind or is straight up having delusions of legitimately committing these acts. The fact of the book itself being a satire in other areas, I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of it was just Ellis pushing with what he could get the reader to believe Patrick could do or get away with.

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