1001 Books Round-up February 2023

Just the one this month but was it a winner or loser?

The Body Artist by Don Delillo – Other – What GR says: 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. Ugh

My Thoughts: This is a short novella about grief and adjustment it started normally enough with a couple having a mundane breakfast together. As it happens this is their last breakfast together and what follows on from this point is totally bizarre and for this reader at least had no point. There are unexplained characters and behaviour and everything is so remote that I felt no connect whatsoever. The story was easy to read and short but I am left feeling what the actual f**k did I just read.

3 stars it is not awful and you might understand it and even if you don’t at 124 widely spaced pages it will at least be another book of your list.