A list of 15 Novels about Consumerism

  1. American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis

    Patrick Bateman, a wealthy investment banker, constructs his identity almost entirely from luxury brands, exclusive restaurant reservations, and social status. His obsessive, detailed monologues about business cards and stereo systems reveal a profound emptiness at the core of 1980s yuppie culture.

    Through vicious satire, Ellis exposes a society where surface appearances have completely supplanted morality, leading to monstrous consequences.

  2. Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk

    The unnamed narrator attempts to build an identity through his IKEA catalog-perfect apartment, believing that the right furniture will fill his spiritual void. This pursuit of material perfection leaves him numb and disconnected.

    His rebellion, instigated by the anarchic Tyler Durden, is a direct assault on the consumerist ethos that promises self-worth through purchases, ultimately questioning whether true freedom requires the total destruction of material identity.

  3. White Noise by Don DeLillo

    In this satirical masterpiece, the supermarket becomes a modern-day temple and brand names are chanted like prayers. The lives of professor Jack Gladney and his family are saturated with the background hum of advertising, media, and consumer goods, which serve as a fragile buffer against their overwhelming fear of death.

    DeLillo masterfully shows how consumer culture offers comforting but ultimately hollow rituals in the face of modern anxieties.

  4. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

    Jay Gatsby’s immense wealth is weaponized to create a spectacle of consumption. His lavish parties, overflowing with expensive goods and fleeting acquaintances, are a desperate attempt to purchase the past and win the affection of Daisy Buchanan.

    Fitzgerald critiques the Jazz Age’s moral decay by demonstrating how materialism corrupts the American Dream, replacing genuine connection with the empty promise of status.

  5. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

    In this foundational dystopia, consumerism is a tool of social control. The World State engineers a populace conditioned from birth to desire new things, operating under the mantra “ending is better than mending.”

    Citizens are placated with mindless entertainment, endless products, and the mood-stabilizing drug soma, ensuring a stable society devoid of deep thought, authentic emotion, or individuality.

  6. Less Than Zero by Bret Easton Ellis

    Set against the sun-bleached, decadent backdrop of 1980s Los Angeles, the novel follows Clay, a college student adrift in a world of casual cruelty, drug use, and immense privilege. The characters’ lives are defined by their designer clothes, luxury cars, and exclusive party invitations, yet they remain emotionally vacant and numb.

    Ellis presents a stark portrait of a generation for whom rampant materialism has resulted in a complete erosion of meaning.

  7. Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace

    This sprawling novel imagines a near-future America where citizens are terminally addicted to passive entertainment and consumption. The story revolves around a film cartridge so entertaining that its viewers lose all desire for anything else, including survival.

    Wallace satirizes a culture that has outsourced its pursuit of happiness to corporations, exploring how the endless supply of pleasurable distractions can become a prison that annihilates free will.

  8. Cosmopolis by Don DeLillo

    Billionaire asset manager Eric Packer takes a day-long limousine ride across Manhattan for a haircut, conducting business and indulging his whims from within his mobile throne. The journey becomes a surreal exploration of late-stage capitalism, where wealth is an abstraction and the physical world is a mere inconvenience.

    Packer’s detachment highlights a consumer culture so advanced it has disconnected from tangible reality, valuing data and currency over human experience.

  9. Pattern Recognition by William Gibson

    Cayce Pollard is a marketing consultant with a unique affliction: a phobic sensitivity to corporate logos and branding. Hired for her uncanny ability to sense the "coolness" of a product, she navigates a globalized landscape saturated with commercial imagery.

    Gibson brilliantly uses Cayce’s condition to examine how brands infiltrate our subconscious, shape our identities, and create a powerful, often invisible, layer of meaning in modern society.

  10. Pastoralia by George Saunders

    In this collection of novellas and short stories, Saunders satirizes the absurdity of a service-and-entertainment economy. Characters work bizarre jobs—such as playing disgruntled cavemen in a historical theme park—where their survival depends on maintaining a corporate-mandated persona.

    The stories expose the desperation and moral compromises required to stay afloat in a culture that commodifies human experience and demands performative enthusiasm.

  11. Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart

    In a near-future America on the brink of collapse, personal worth is publicly rated based on consumer data, attractiveness, and credit scores. Relationships are mediated through handheld devices that stream every detail of a person's life.

    Shteyngart delivers a hilarious and heartbreaking satire of a society where genuine human connection is threatened by the relentless pressure to perform, purchase, and project a marketable identity.

  12. Confessions of a Shopaholic by Sophie Kinsella

    Through the comedic misadventures of financial journalist Rebecca Bloomwood, this novel offers a lighthearted yet sharp critique of compulsive consumption. Becky’s identity is inextricably linked to the brands she wears and the thrill of the purchase, leading to a life of spiraling debt and elaborate deception.

    Kinsella playfully exposes the personal chaos and absurdity spawned by a culture that equates shopping with therapy and happiness.

  13. Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture by Douglas Coupland

    This novel captures the ennui of a generation struggling to find meaning in a world saturated with mass media, corporate drudgery, and the hollow promises of consumerism.

    Through a series of vignettes and marginalia, Coupland’s characters express their profound disillusionment with the mainstream "McJobs" and materialistic ambitions of their parents, coining a vocabulary for a life lived in the shadow of commercial culture.

  14. The Circle by Dave Eggers

    When Mae Holland joins a powerful tech company that resembles a fusion of Google, Facebook, and Apple, she is seduced by its culture of radical transparency and endless innovation. The company’s products encourage users to broadcast every moment of their lives, transforming privacy into a commodity and personal experience into marketable data.

    Eggers presents a chilling vision of how tech consumerism, disguised as progress, can lead to the erosion of individuality.

  15. Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris

    Told from the collective “we” of a struggling Chicago advertising agency, this novel satirizes the way corporate life subsumes personal identity. The employees’ lives are governed by office gossip, fear of layoffs, and the accumulation of company-branded perks.

    Ferris brilliantly captures the tragicomedy of a workplace where individual hopes and fears are absorbed into a singular corporate consciousness defined by its role in the consumer economy.