SOURCE: "Love Me, Love My Porsche," in New York Times Book Review, September 13, 1987, p. 14.

In the following review, Spenser critiques the superficiality of Ellis' characters in The Rules of Attraction.

With his first novel, Less Than Zero, Bret Easton Ellis made a name for himself here and abroad with an account of life among the overdrugged, underloved rich kids of southern California. It was a kind of Valley of the Dolls for the 80's, but it had its own oblique power, and there was something remarkable in the fact that the author was merely 20 years old. Now, two years later, Mr. Ellis gives us The Rules of Attraction—maybe the first expose of what really goes on in the coed dorms we've heard about. It serves to establish Mr. Ellis's reputation further as one of the primary inside sources in upper-middle-class America's continuing investigation of what has happened...