The body artist | Don Dilello

The sacrifice of the novel "The Artist of the Body" is the wideness in exchange for depth, so it narrows its perspective to one life, one death. But it has on you windows of feeling, with everything it releases of touching objects above and beyond your skin's awareness, and pores of your soul. The heroine of the novel is Lauren Hartki, whom we see sharing breakfast with her husband, Ray, in the first pages. And these pages indicate a brilliant brilliance of a great novelist. Playful thoughts pass through Lauren's mind as she pours the grains, or opens the tap, or looks out the window, or conducts a silly dialogue with no purpose other than playing with art. Ray moves from the breakfast table to his ex-wife's house, blows his head off, then leaves it to the reader to solve the puzzles, which do not cease in the end. Lauren returned from Ray's funeral, to rent a summer inn, and discover a strange hidden life in an empty room, a deaf man who cannot reveal himself, possibly disabled, and he has been there for weeks. His presence is harsh on her, then this mysterious entity begins to speak with Ray's voice, and her voice, recalling their dialogues almost before Ray's suicide. Has Lauren's husband reincarnated? Or was the man simply a fool eavesdropping, then reproducing the phrases he heard before in his hideout? Deleo does not reveal the situation outright. Rather, he lets Lauren step into more puzzles, and contemplate what she desires from that apparent fusion between the past and the present, life and death. Deleo says: "This is the mood, the voice, the push, and the fog behind you, so you slip into your life again, feeling a painful heaviness in your chest." With high expertise, he seeks abstraction in a small-sized novel, but one that disturbs your soul with adventure and danger. So you must savor or taste every paragraph, even every phrase, or rather every word, for the novel captivates the mind and stirs the imagination. "The Artist of the Body" is the eleventh novel by Don DeLillo, published after thirty years of creativity, all of which are long works, known for his mastery that repeats successes novel after another, especially "Americana" and "Underworld." In it, he presents a postmodern vision of life, expressed through a story narrated in a voice that lives in our time, a voice of forgotten spirits dwelling in our fingers and engaging with our culture in what is greater than life, greater than our bodies as they live life. DeLillo's world revolves around Hartki, "The Artist of the Body," who challenges the boundaries of the physical body with her work, and faces a strange man, without a specific age, and they begin a journey in the wilderness of time, time, love, and all human perceptions. As they say, great novels teach us how to read them. The book creates its own blend, its distinctive tone, and its brilliant narrative voice. Each character speaks with meaningful words that approach prose poetry. Publisher's note: "The Artist of the Body" offers a postmodern vision of life, expressing itself in a story narrated by a voice that lives in our time, a voice of forgotten spirits dwelling in our fingers and engaging with our culture in what is greater than life, greater than our bodies as they live life. A novel about time and love: do we only know love when we lose it? Life goes on, with an unexpected shock... and do we feel guilty because we are unable to understand? What a journey! At first, questions frustrate you, then they settle into your life with their meanings resting like the root of a branch in the branch.