Product Description

The "Body Artist" opens with a breakfast scene in a rambling rented house somewhere on the New England coast. We meet Lauren Hartke, the body artist of the title, and her husband Rey Robles, a much older, thrice-married film-director. Through their delicate, intimate, half-complete thoughts and words DeLillo proves himself a stunningly unsentimental observer of marriage, and of the idiosyncrasies that both isolate and bind us. Rey says he's taking a drive and he does, all the way to the Manhattan apartment of his first wife. Lauren is left alone, or so she thinks. She is soon to discover, however, that there is a stranger in the house. An eery individual who often speaks in Rey's voice or in her own, who knows both intimate moments of their past life and things that haven't yet happened. "A novel that is both slight and profound, a distilled meditation on perception and loss, and a poised, individual ghost story for the twenty-first century" - "Observer". "A masterful talent is behind its language, so magnificent in simplicity. Inspiring. God, but it's a beautiful book" - "Independent on Sunday".

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1801634 in Books
• Published on: 2002-01-25
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 192 pages

Review
'A novel that is both slight and profound, a distiled meditation on perception and loss, and a poised, individual ghost story for the twenty-first century' Observer; 'A masterful talent is behind its language, so magnificent in simplicity. Inspiring... God, but it's a beautiful book' Independent on Sunday

About the Author
Don DeLillo is the author of eleven novels including White Noise, Libra, Mao II and Underworld which was an international bestseller. He has won the National Book Award, the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction and the Irish Times International Fiction Prize. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and lives in New York.

Customer Reviews

Strange and seductive novel, filled with ambiguities.
The Body Artist is one of the strangest--and most seductive--books I've read in a long time, a "ghost story" with a character who is described as if he were real, and whom the main character believes to be real, and who may, in fact, be real--but who may also be a figment of imagination. Events which are described as real may be fantasies, and even the relationships the main character has or has had with people who seem to be real may, in fact, be colored by wishful thinking. Ultimately, even the linear progression of the narrative itself is called into question since, DeLillo tells us, "Past, present, and future are not amenities of language."

The story begins with the intimately described minutiae of breakfast, as a couple, married just a short time, gets ready for the day. We learn that it takes two cycles on the toaster to get the bread the right color, that the cup is his and the paper is hers, that a blue jay comes to the bird feeder, that she puts soya on her cereal and that it smells like feet. When Rey Robles, the husband, dies later that day (something we know from the beginning), the world of the wife, Lauren Hartke, changes from one of communication and an outward focus to a world of grief and an inward focus. When she discovers a stranger living on the third floor of her rented house, we aren't sure whether he is real or whether he materializes to show Lauren's unresolved feelings about her loss and the depth of her trauma. The stranger, dubbed Mr. Tuttle, is handicapped, unable to understand or communicate in language in any traditional way.

Fascinating in its focus on internal action, the reader must ultimately just accept the story for what it is while enjoying the glories of the meticulous prose, the acutely felt portrait of a woman grieving, the suggested symbolism in birds and nature, and the author's depiction of the ambiguities and uncertainties of life and time. This is a work which uses language in new ways, ultimately even calling into question the use of language itself to make sense of the world. Like Lauren, DeLillo himself is a performance artist. Mary Whipple

god awfull
This book was by far DeLillo's worst. The book was rather short, yet I had to fight the urge to put it down after every page. I gave DeLillo the benifit of the doubt, and I wish I hadn't. I was confused throughout about what was going on but more about why I should care. I feel sorry for anyone who is introduced to this giant of American Literature through this book. BEWARE DELILLO FANS THIS ONE WILL DISSAPOINT!

A coping book
A woman's husband commits suicide. She struggles to cope when she discovers someone else in her house. It is a nice story of a lady's struggle to cope atfer her husband's death.