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Title: The Body Artist
Author: Don DeLillo
Narrator: Laurie Anderson
Format: Unabridged
Length: 2 hrs and 57 mins
Language: English
Release date: 11-03-16
Publisher: Macmillan Digital Audio
Genres: Fiction, Contemporary
Publisher's Summary:
The Body Artist begins with normality: breakfast between a married couple, Lauren and Rey, in their ramshackle rented house on the New England coast. Recording their delicate, intimate, half-complete thoughts and words, Don DeLillo proves himself a stunningly unsentimental observer of our idiosyncratic relationships. But after breakfast, Rey makes a decision that leaves Lauren utterly alone, or seems to.
As Lauren, the body artist of the title, becomes strangely detached from herself and the temporal world, the novel becomes an exploration of a highly abnormal grieving process; a fascinating exposé of who we are when we are not rehearsing who we are; and a rarefied study of trauma and creativity, absence and presence, isolation and communion.
Members Reviews:
Poetry as Prose. A beautiful, subtle work of art.
A hauntingly beautiful novella that explores themes of time, language, grief and art. Delillo's prose dissolves into pure poetry; his sentences are lush and sublime. You should read this novel slowly to take it all in. These sentences deserve a slow reading in the same way a great red wine deserves to be consciously sipped instead of chugged.
Some people won't get it. This is literary fiction that explores deep themes and plays with language. Delillo makes you work a bit, and if that is not the fiction you enjoy, then do not read this book. But if you like literature-as-art, then by all means, delve into this little work of genius and raw subjectivity. You can read it in a couple of hours; preferably on a rainy autumn day, next to a fire place, drinking a glass of Merlot. :)
Quality Book, Just Not for Me.
A VERY SLOW START. The book is well written with plenty of creativity, but it just isn't for me. I don't appreciate what DeLillo was trying to accomplish here. Still, I compliment the male author for convincingly writing from a female perspective; very-well done.
Haunting Novel
Ostensibly, this is a story about grieving. Lauren is a body artist, meaning that she expresses her thoughts and feelings on stage through a variety of body appearances and positions. Her expressions reflect her extraordinary sensitivity to the world around her.
When Lauren's husband, Rey, takes his life in suicide, what is left of their relationship, like her body work, assumes a visual expression in the form of a boy-man of indeterminate age, who lives in the past, present and future all at once. The image brings to her remnants of Rey, of herself, and of Laren-Rey (their relationship). Mere remnants remain because Rey is dead, and life's full richness with him is no longer possible.
The boy-man is a tangible, seemingly real image, just as her body works are real to Lauren when she performs. This is not a ghost story. Rather, Lauren is grieving. Her grief takes this boy-man shape, helping Lauren to cope with Rey's death and her feelings about the suicide, about Rey, about their relationship, and about how she will express herself in her art.
We all are haunted by those in our past, not by ghosts, but by our memories and remnants of our feelings. DeLillo's novel is an extension of these common feelings, as seen through the eyes of a most expressive protagonist. We all live simultaneously in the past (our memories, our character bases), the present, and the future (our hopes, fears, plans, dreams). All of this brews within us as we journey through our life's drama and trivia.
