Less Than Zero

Content Warning: This novel depicts rape, drug addiction and overdose, eating disorders, sex work, and graphic violence, and it describes these actions in detail using graphic language. For fidelity to the original text, this guide includes explicit language in its citations.

The first of the eleven untitled chapters begins in Los Angeles. In the first section, Clay is returning from his first semester at Camden, a college in New Hampshire, for winter break. Blair, his on-again-off-again girlfriend, picks him up at the airport. For reasons he cannot explain, Clay is irked by her comment that “people are afraid to merge on freeways in Los Angeles” (1). When he arrives home, Clay notices that his mom has hired a new maid, and he has lunch with his mom, who tells him he looks unhappy.

Clay’s two sisters, who he thinks are 13 and 15, discuss Christmas shopping. The four of them shop in Beverly Hills. The mother shops alone in Neiman Marcus while the girls use their father’s charge card to buy him a gift as well as items for themselves from a store called Privilege. In the car, Clay’s sister accuses him of locking the door to his room, which he claims that he does so that they don’t steal his cocaine.