Last year saw the twenty-fifth anniversary of the publication of Bret Easton Ellis's Less Than Zero, the classic portrait of nihilistic L.A. youth zonked out on high grade marijuana, heroin mom's tranquilisers, and (natch) the ennui of modern consumer culture. Everyone was too listless to summon up anything as uncool as an actual emotion, even in the face of death. Of course, Ellis's precursors were decidedly literary: in the 1980s he was the MTV-friendly face of a tradition which spanned back through David Foster Wallace, Don Delillo, Thomas Pynchon, Salinger and further. He was postmodernism-made-sexy for the new-wave generation. But twenty-five years is a long time, a generation in fact, and his sensibility - that is, his deadpan point of view, his terse, ostensibly emotionless style - have proved remarkably influential to a new generation of young writers striving to describe the world around them, including Gavin James Bower and Tao Lin. Joining this list now is Abigail Tarttelin, a young actress and writer whose debut novel Flick, published in the UK last month by Beautiful Books, could become a slow-burn cult classic.

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