Here is a book that must be recited. Surely it is of 3 stars, yet there are things that I still don't understand or that surprise me.

It is a short novel, about an artist who is forced to survive the days after her husband's suicide. Living alone in a vacation house, she feels the loneliness and the presence of her husband in all the gestures and ordinary objects. A mysterious presence takes her out of this state. We don't know if the presence is a ghost, an imagination or a kind of reincarnation of the dead husband.

The story is full of mystery and emotions. The author manages to create a tense atmosphere that keeps the reader on the edge of their seat. The characters are well-developed and the plot is engaging. However, there are some parts that are a bit confusing and could have been explained better.

Overall, it is a good read, but it could have been even better with a bit more clarity and depth.

Body art is a small novel where everything «happens around the verb to seem»: the physical presence of the world, of people, everything seems «to flow with a dissociative movement, giving the impression of, or presenting the appearance of». Even the pain of the protagonist, the body artist Laurene Hartke, takes on the guise of a deformed man with unintelligible language («Being here happened to me. I am with the moment, I will leave the moment»).

Don DeLillo's gaze - no longer interested in the monumental snapshots of American society - is lean and meticulous. It insinuates itself into the silences and voids of a grief, of an (apparently) insurmountable and tangible anguish, emphasizing the metamorphic body of the artist and her perceptions.

The body art - the author seems to suggest to us - is nothing more than this: the possibility of sublimating suffering, giving it a form and, finally, assimilating it. It's a journey of self-discovery and transformation through the medium of the body. The story unfolds in a way that makes us question our own perceptions of reality and the meaning we赋予 to our experiences. It shows how art can be a powerful tool for dealing with pain and finding a sense of purpose in life.

A sensual, hyper-real Delillian song. Donnie's poetic prose lilts in sustained focus through ghostly sibilance, sinusoidally evocative and throb-inducing. It's as if the words dance in the air, creating a magical atmosphere that captivates the reader.

A brief encounter and a drawn-out epiphany. An instant under a microscope reveals such texture as the merely human eye cannot perceive. This moment of realization is like a lightning strike, illuminating the hidden corners of the story and adding depth to the narrative.

The hero of this novel is the author. Its heroine a quintessential artistic martyr. The protagonist embodies human transformations, encounters death, stews in it, and with palpable empathy, construes it into art. Through the eyes of the protagonist, we witness the power of art to transform and heal, even in the face of tragedy.

Should an artist live in the world of their art? The story might have elapsed forever, unfolding into silent voids. The book is haunted, beware, but its slow regard of human animals will thrill like any previous susurration from the pen of this American maestro. This question lingers in the air, making us wonder about the relationship between art and life, and the sacrifices that artists must make to create their masterpieces.

It has something to do with what we are when we are not playing who we are.

Sometimes time seems to slow down or even stop and we do the same.
We don't stop, no.
But we become vulnerable, uncertain.
Like when you have a high fever or in a dream.
Or in the pain of being abandoned.

It's disturbing.
Between 4 and 5 ☆☆☆☆☆

(The fifth little star is missing, only because it has the specific weight of osmium.)

This passage delves into the complex relationship between our true selves and the masks we wear in different situations. When we step out of the role of presenting a certain image, we are left with our raw and often vulnerable selves. Time seems to behave strangely during these moments, either slowing to a crawl or coming to a standstill. We find ourselves in a state of uncertainty, much like when we are in a fever-induced haze or lost in a dream. The pain of abandonment also strips us down to our core, revealing our true vulnerability. This sense of being exposed and unguarded is deeply disturbing. The rating of between 4 and 5 stars indicates that there is something significant and thought-provoking about this exploration, yet the missing fifth star suggests that there may be an element that is not quite as perfect or complete as it could be, perhaps due to the specific weight of osmium, which adds an interesting and mysterious dimension to the overall piece.

The Body Artist is truly a remarkable work.

In the opening description of a couple's breakfast, it sets a tone that is both intimate and thought-provoking.

This book is a deep and thoughtful read, delving into the complex themes of loneliness and the power and capacity of the English language.

It is heavy going at times, requiring the reader to engage deeply with the text and grapple with its profound ideas.

However, this complexity also makes it a great choice for those who are interested in studying literature.

It offers a wealth of insights and interpretations that can be explored and analyzed.

While it may not be the most轻松的 read, it is definitely one that will stay with you long after you have finished it.

Overall, The Body Artist is a must-read for anyone who is looking for a challenging and rewarding literary experience.

The Body Artist commences with an extremely ordinary scene of a married couple within a kitchen, engaged in the act of preparing breakfast. The husband, a film director, and the wife, an artist, go about their morning routine.

Every single action is magnified, with a meticulous description of their actions, words, and the entire process of the morning's activities.

It is overly exacting, as the day-to-day and the trivial are dramatized to emphasize the tragedy that is soon to unfold. Subsequent to the husband's suicide, the artist is submerged in grief: a grief of detachment, a sunken despair that distorts reality.

This is a brief read, consisting of just over 130 pages, and is replete with DeLillo's trademark interrogation into what constitutes our humanity and how the boundaries between our numerous realities are, in fact, astonishingly thin. It makes the reader ponder deeply about the nature of human existence and the fragility of our perceived worlds.

When the early Japanese constructed their language, they blended all the shades of blue and green to concoct a single, homogenized term - ''ao'' (青).

Even today, the Japanese refer to specific vegetation, apples and vegetables as ''ao'' (such as blue apples, blue leaf, blue grass). As someone who always took pride in her understanding of the words, I felt betrayed at this contrived attempt to synthesize the human experience of all the vastly different shades of colours into a single, bare word - 'ao'.

No, it isn't an anomaly - there are far more subtle yet fierce ways that our language has failed us. While the reader in me dismays in our incompetence, the human in me corroborates the hidden fact that not everything can be encapsulated in writing.

There are emotions that can't ever be justified on paper. I don’t have the words to explain the moment I first held my dog, a mass of tangled fur and bones and fleas, his brown eyes impossibly wide and tiny mouth opened in a screech of anguish. Or how it felt to walk out into the screeching sunlight after my last exam, letting go of years of toil that I held tight in my sweaty hands, instead filling it with fear of taking control of my life. Or the smell of home after being away for days.

So we just try, we find vague proxies, approximations of the true emotion, useless stand-in words shoved together, we use emoticons and gifs to encapsulate our emotions. This is what made this book powerful to me. Don Delillo exploring the various shades of grief. While the intensity of grief is reflected in the sentences, there's also a far more consuming interpretation of this emotion that hides in the space between words, sketching everything that a mere dictionary definition can't.

There are ways that our language fails us. And maybe that's okay. This way we can keep throwing words into the chasm of this human experience, not always trying to convey ours, rather giving birth to a new shade every time we let someone else touch it.

The Body Artist is an engaging and thought-provoking rumination. However, my one piece of advice is this: make sure you are in the right frame of mind for this particular work. It is not your average novel, as there is no traditional plot to speak of. Virtually nothing happens in a conventional sense.

Nevertheless, it has the power to make you think deeply. It compels you to ponder the nature of identity and what truly defines us as individuals. In fact, The Body Artist is more of a parable than a typical novel.

The two main characters, Lauren, a "body artist" who transforms her own body into a state of nothingness, a blank canvas, and an odd man she discovers living in her home who can imitate other people's voices with uncanny precision but has no voice of his own, are fascinating due to their strange similarities.

Despite the lack of a traditional narrative arc, DeLillo's writing is simply marvelous. If you are in the mood for something experimental and are willing to explore the deeper recesses of the human psyche, then give this one a try.

By; Elizabeth Hendry

THERE'S 1000 STORIES IN THE CITY OF GOODREADS - THIS IS ONE OF THEM - Yes, Another Dreadful Reviewer/Author Encounter


I reluctantly emerged into consciousness, much like a resurrected Jesus burdened with an excessive alimony payment. A stinging slap to the chin jolted my memory, and I recognized the clean-cut, chiseled features that would frame the next supercilious question.

"Feeling better, Mr Bryant?" Of course, it was The Don. But I wasn't going to yield easily.

"Not really, you post-modern gargoyle of meaninglessness. You can take your convoluted, ungrammatical fever dreams and shove them into a place where the sun has never shone, in a cavern of immeasurable depth, down to a sunless sea, O Felchmeister of the English tongue."

Crack! That was the sound of my head bouncing off the dingy walls of whatever filthy, dilapidated place DeLillo had imprisoned me in.

"Less of your mouth, and more of mine," he sneered.

I felt two pairs of strong arms seize me from each side. I caught a glimpse of DeLillo's repulsive acolytes. Just as I suspected. Steve Erickson on one side, and yes, the infamous transvestite Bret Easton Ellis ("Bretsy" to his nonexistent friends) on the other. They were giggling like schoolgirls.

"Oooh, the things he said about me, and in public!"

"Oooh, let's do page 149 and then page 301!"

"You won't get away with this," I grunted.

"We will, you know, we aren't in the YA business and we're not going to blog about this!" Bretsy hissed.

The Don ordered them to be quiet, and they obediently fell silent. It was abundantly clear to me that among American postmodern novelists, there was The Don. His very eyebrow had been rapturously reviewed in the NYRB more times than all the others' entire genitalia combined. And they knew it. Now, he was heating a pair of ordinary garden secateurs over a pile of remaindered early Franzen novels (the ones before Oprah discovered him).

"Snip snip, Mr Bryant. One snip for every nasty little thing you said about me in your nasty reviews, and one more for encouraging your friends to mock me in surrealistic boxing match fantasies, and a final little snip for my two good buddies who have been truly hurt by the dreadful things you say. I suppose you wish us all to write like your precious but sadly deceased Raymond Carver? Hmm? 'And then this sad alcoholic fell over and then this other sad alcoholic went shopping for a mop. The end.' Is that it? That's how you want us all to write?"

I was on the verge of dismantling his crude parodies of my crude parodies of his and his good buddies' rancid fictions – I had vowed that wild horses wouldn't make me remind him that I'd given five stars to Libra – but the application of the secateurs to my dorsal extremities brought an end to rational thought. I heard the terrible giggling of Bretsy – "Just one more finger, please! Hee hee!" – and I plunged back into the welcome abyss of never writing another book review.

This short novella marks my initial encounter with Don DeLillo's writing, and I must admit that I am thoroughly captivated and eager for more.

The opening chapter is truly remarkable. The language is so concise and almost lyrical that I couldn't help but read it aloud to myself, as if it were a poem.

It details a simple morning, a breakfast shared between a husband and wife. They go about their routine: getting juice, toasting bread, rinsing blueberries to top the cereal, pouring coffee and tea, listening to the radio, reading the newspaper, and watching the birds at the feeder outside the window. Yet, this seemingly ordinary morning is momentous... because it is the last one they will ever spend together.

What follows is the stark newspaper account of the suicide death of Rey Robles, a world-renowned movie director, at the Manhattan apartment of his first wife.

After the funeral, Rey's current and newly-wed wife, the body artist Lauren Hartke, returns to the sprawling house they have been renting on a desolate coast to mourn. A few days later, she discovers a strange man in one of the bedrooms. He can hardly string words together, but she doesn't call for help. Instead, she begins to take care of him, naming him Mr Tuttle.

Strangely, he sometimes speaks in Rey's voice, sometimes her own, repeating conversations they have had or something she finds herself saying a few days later. He seems to exist outside the normal flow of time. "Maybe the idea is to think of time differently. Stop time, or stretch it out, or open it up. Make a still life that's living, not painted. When time stops, so do we."

My friends are probably aware of my fascination with time, time travel, and the bending of time. They must realize that this kind of exploration into the strange workings of time (do moments of life still exist in another realm?) is perfectly suited to my reading preferences.

Through the story of Lauren, a body artist, we learn to understand fate, inevitability, pain, suffering, and the power of time. Each of us in our lives has faced the sense of loss, emptiness, and depletion that the lack, the absence causes when a person leaves and is no longer part of our lives. Lauren confronts the sense of emptiness and abandonment given by the figure of her suicidal husband and questions life and its meaning. It is a story in which time reveals itself as our best ally and the only one that can try to make us feel good. We see how Lauren struggles with her emotions and tries to find a way forward. The passing of time slowly heals her wounds, but the memories still linger. She discovers that although the pain may never completely go away, she can learn to live with it and find new meaning in her life. The story of Lauren is a powerful reminder of the importance of time in our lives and how it can both hurt and heal us.

Holy shit! This was so haunting and gorgeous.

It was as if a mysterious force had reached out and touched my soul. The beauty before me was both captivating and eerie, sending shivers down my spine. Every detail seemed to tell a story, a story that was both tragic and enchanting. The colors, the shapes, the atmosphere - it all combined to create a scene that was truly unforgettable. I found myself completely immersed in this strange and wonderful world, unable to tear my eyes away. It was a moment of pure magic, a moment that I will cherish forever.