Their voices enfold us as seamlessly as those of DJs heard over a car radio. The characters go to the same schools. They eat at the same restaurants. They have sex with the same boys and girls. They buy from the same dealers. Fusing voices into an intense, impressionistic narrative that blurs genders, generations and even identities, these stories capture the lives of a group of people, connected in the way only people in L. A. can be -- suffering from nothing less than the death of the soul. 'A writer at the peak of his powers ... The book takes us from the first to the seventh circles of hell, from Salinger to de Sade' Will Self 'Ellis has the ability to capture modern reality with the ferocity of a collector driving a pin through a social butterfly' Guardian 'The Informers is spare, austere, elegantly designed, telling in detail, coolly ferocious, sardonic in its humor; every vestige of authorial sentiment is expunged' New York Times