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