Bret Easton Ellis

When you sit across from Bret Easton Ellis, he smiles, greets you by name, and immediately puts you at ease. You want him to like you, so you avoid the cliche questions that follow him around like a bad odor. You want to penetrate, go beneath. Unearth what rankles him, and shine a light on where he wants to go.

One month into a tour that finds him in Toronto promoting his latest book, "Lunar Park," journalists think they've got Ellis pegged when they uncover some already well-documented truths. Did he abuse drugs? Yes, but not while writing or when giving interviews. Was "Lunar Park" influenced by the deaths of his father and former companion? Yes and yes. And has he come to terms with his most infamous literary work "American Psycho"? Yes and no. But ever the gracious interviewee, Ellis invites you to ask him anything.

The book, which comes six long years after the best-selling "Glamorama," bear's the author's trademark wit and satire (there's a self-aggrandizing author-narrator named Bret Easton Ellis, now trapped in suburbia, and married with kids). But at its heart "Lunar Park" is a ghost story, with the author's usual twists and turns, which reconciles the author's tormented relationship with his late father.

There are moments of Ellis' over-the-top hilarity (in one scene the narrator tries to coax his friend, and '80s literary rat-pack rival, Jay McInerney, to do a line with him, while his daughter natters on about her toy bird; and in another, Ellis tries to choose a movie to watch with his kids that won't confuse one, or annoy the other). But the book abandons the casual disaffectedness that mediates the relationships in previous works like "Less Than Zero" and "The Rules of Attraction," pointing to the lasting scars parents can leave on their children. And in "Lunar Park's" closing scenes, the 41-year-old hints at something new: genuine emotion.

"The whole thing is emotional," an older, but still preppy looking Ellis says while downing lunch at the head office of his Canadian publisher.

"After spending three years with Patrick Bateman (from 1991's "American Psycho") I wanted to do something fun," Ellis says. "I wanted to write a haunted house book.

"I wasn't old enough though," he says. "So I decided to write 'Glamorama' since I was closer to the narrator's age and disgusted with celebrity culture."

Because "Glamorama" took so long to write, things happened in Ellis' life that shaped what "Lunar Park" was going to be about. His father's death provided the book with its "ghost," and gave the narrative its main haunting, he says.

"Around the same time," he adds, "I was also haunted by Patrick Bateman and the success of 'American Psycho,' and that got folded in there too. Patrick Bateman became such an iconic character and I couldn't understand why."

But the father-son story was something that Ellis felt he needed to explore.

"My father was a tough guy and we had a really combative relationship," he says frankly. "He was an abusive alcoholic, and he died unexpectedly before we had resolved anything.

"It bothered me a lot, and no amount of therapy and no amount of drunken Sunday nights with my sisters was going to help me work out my feelings.

"I should have known that ultimately I would work out my anger, frustration and resentment in a novel, and that something was going to lift off of me, which it did."

As a result, the writing in "Lunar Park" is very much a return to the autobiographical style Ellis adopted early in his career, before he was vaunted to literary rock stardom in 1985.

"The writing in 'Lunar Park' is a lot closer to the writing I did as a teenager. There's a lot more metaphors; a lot more lyricism.

"'Less than Zero' came from a much more satirical place," he reflects. "The impetus to write it came from looking at my generation and not being particularly happy with what I was seeing. So, that was the first time I created a narrator that was unlike me.

"With 'The Rules of Attraction,'" he continues, "I was making fun of the college experience, while 'American Psycho' and 'Glamorama' were summations of everything that I found repellant in the world.

"I was angry," he shrugs, "and that anger turns into satire. That's how I work."

So now that the nihilism is gone, and the weight lifted, how does Ellis feel about using his acidic pen to dig deeper, uncovering the less dark areas of the human heart?

"I have a Nicholas Sparks book in me somewhere," he laughs. "Seriously though, I've been thinking about it a lot. I've been thinking of 'Less than Zero,' and where those characters are now. Part of me thinks it's a truly terrible idea, but unless I'm hit by a bus it (a sequel to "Less Than Zero") looks likes it's going to be the next book."

"Lunar Park" is in stores now.