"Less Than Zero" by Bret Easton Ellis

This is a disturbing book.  Especially towards the end.  It starts like other BEE books, with a young guy, from a well-to-do family, coming back to LA from the first semester out East, and hanging out with his high school friends, all of them rich, spoiled brats, never wanting for anything in life, and yet becoming broken, numb, apathetic human beings.  The main character's name is Clay.

Towards the end of the book is when things become really disgusting.  First we find out that Clay's best friend (and maybe occasional lover, after all, all BEE male characters are bi-sexual) Julian became a male whore because of huge drug debt and his pimp, a disgusting caricature of a man, pimps him out to mid-western businessmen, who cannot indulge in boy-flesh in their native, fundamentalist areas, where they have to show a wife and kids.  Clay watches while one mid-western businessmen pounds Julian for close to 5 hours in a seedy hotel. 

Clay's other 'friend' and main drug dealer, on the other hand, has tried everything by the time he's 18, so he organized a gang-raping of a bound 12-year old girl, whom he keeps constantly high by injecting her with heroin at intervals.   He invites Clay to take part, but Clay refuses (wow, BEE, you're getting soft!), although the two guys with Clay (his "friends")  have no qualms about jumping in.

Clay's high school girlfriend, Blair, is supposed to be the book's main female character, but just like in other BEE books, the female lead is lifeless and unpersuasive.  Blair doesn't seem to have a hold on anything, even her professed love for Clay, which she tested multiple times by sleeping around with other guys.  She seems like she wants Clay, but doesn't really do anything about it, except a few bouts of below-average sex.

This is BEE's first book, and the style and subject matter is similar to 'Rules of Attraction' however it is written with more shock-value in mind.  It is a gripping read, only because one is curious to see what would happen next, even though none of the characters are truly likeable or relate-able, and the plot consists of nothing, just 4 weeks of winter Xmas vacation.