The Body Artist by Don DeLillo - review by George Walden

George Walden

A Secret Interloper in the House

The Body Artist

By

Picador 124pp £13
 

After the publication of Underworld, Don DeLillo confessed in an interview to being a bit of an Italian show–off. He was talking about his style, but The Body Artist shows off something else: his extraordinary range of mood. It is a long way from the hilarious White Noise via the luxuriant Underworld to this gaunt, mysterious novel.

Rey Robles, a failing film director, and his wife Lauren Hartke, a body artist, are renting a house on the New England coast. One day Rey goes off to his first wife’s New York apartment and shoots himself. Alone in New England, Lauren discovers a half–crazy though innocuous intruder who

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