Sonia Baelo-Allué is a lecturer at the Department of English and German Philology at the University of Zaragoza, Spain, where she teaches American Literature. She has published widely on Bret Easton Ellis's fiction. Her research centres on popular culture, trauma studies and contemporary American fiction.

'A balanced, thoughtful and fair-minded study of the critical reception of Ellis's work, exploring his status as serious contemporary writer, alongside his reputation as a sensationalist (and misogynist) trouble-maker. Baelo-Allué's examination of the shallow surfaces and schizophrenic self-awareness of his work is subtle, informed and extremely well-judged - this is unquestionably the most thorough and wide-ranging study of Ellis's oeuvre to date.'

• Acknowledgements \ 1. Introduction \ PART I: BETWEEN THE HIGH AND THE LOW \ 2. The Low: Ellis in the Celebrity World \ 3. The High: Ellis in the Literary Field \ PART II: LESS THAN ZERO (1985) \ 4. The Reception of Less Than Zero \ 5. The Use of Mass Culture and Mass Media in the Novel \ 6. The Aesthetics of a Blank, Coming-of-age Novel \ PART III: AMERICAN PSYCHO (1991) \ 7. The Reception of American Psycho\ 8. The Use of Popular, Mass and Consumer Culture \ 9. The Aesthetics of Serial Killing \ PART IV: GLAMORAMA (1998) \ 10. The Reception of Glamorama \ 11. The Use of Celebrity Culture and the Novel of Manners \ 12. The Aesthetics of the Impossible Conspiracy Thriller \ PART V: NEW PATHS? \ 13. Lunar Park (2005): The Turning Point? \14. Imperial Bedrooms (2010): Coming Full Circle \ Works Cited \ Index