Author(s): Bret Easton Ellis

General

Set at a small, affluent liberal-arts college in New England at the height of the Reagan 80s, The
Rules of Attraction is a startlingly funny, kaleidoscopic novel about three students with no plans
for the future--or even the present--who become entangled in a curious romantic triangle. Bret
Easton Ellis trains his incisive gaze on the kids at self-consciously bohemian Camden College
and treats their sexual posturings and agonies with a mixture of acrid hilarity and compassion
while exposing the moral vacuum at the center of their lives.
Lauren changes boyfriends every time she changes majors and still pines for Victor who split for
Europe months ago and she might or might not be writing anonymous love letter to ambivalent,
hard-drinking Sean, a hopeless romantic who only has eyes for Lauren, even if he ends up in bed
with half the campus, and Paul, Lauren's ex, forthrightly bisexual and whose passion masks a
shrewd pragmatism. They waste time getting wasted, race from Thirsty Thursday Happy Hours
to Dressed To Get Screwed parties to drinks at The Edge of the World or The Graveyard. The
Rules of Attraction is a poignant, hilarious take on the death of romance.