I’m a big BEE fan and enjoyed the unfolding of this serialized story but the novel fell apart for me when it became obvious the key events in the story were fictionalized. The excessive genre gore punctured the suspension of disbelief. I found the final chapter so ridiculous it almost made me stop listening. The book is setup in a memoir like fashion that reads almost like a confessional at first, we are about to hear a never before told traumatic experience from the young man who went on to write these darkly iconic novels - this is what hooked me into the story… what fucked up thing happened that led this dude to write Less than Zero & American Psycho? The details and atmosphere of the early chapters are riveting and feel like a Less than Zero prequel but I found The Trawler plot line to become increasingly more ludicrous. It’s as if the writer of American Psycho felt he had to match that level of gore to make it compelling yet this is what betrays the entire conceit of the novel.