Title: Less than Zero
First published: July 1998
Description: Set in Los Angeles in the early 1980's, this coolly mesmerizing novel is a raw, powerful  portrait of a lost generation who have experienced sex, drugs, and disaffection at  too early an age, in a world shaped by casual nihilism, passivity, and too much money  a place devoid of feeling or hope. Clay comes home for Christmas vacation from his  Eastern college and re-enters a landscape of limitless privilege and absolute moral  entropy, where everyone drives Porches, dines at Spago, and snorts mountains of cocaine.   He tries to renew feelings for his girlfriend, Blair, and for his best friend from  high school, Julian, who is careering into hustling and heroin.  Clay's holiday turns  into a dizzying spiral of desperation that takes him through the relentless parties  in glitzy mansions, seedy bars, and underground rock clubs and also into the seamy  world of L.A. after dark.
Subjects: Drug addiction, Fiction, Friendship, Generation X, Young men, Young men -- Fiction., Drug addiction -- Fiction., Friendship -- Fiction., Generation X -- Fiction., Los Angeles (Calif.) -- Fiction., Fiction, coming of age, Friendship, fiction, Los angeles (calif.), fiction, New York Times reviewed, American literature, Generation X., Generation x, Young men -- fiction., Drug addiction -- fiction., Friendship -- fiction., Generation x -- fiction., Los angeles (calif.) -- fiction.
Places: Los Angeles (Calif.), Los Angeles
Time periods: 1980s