The Body Artist

The Body Artist opens with a breakfast scene in a rambling rented house somewhere on the New England coast. We meet Lauren Hartke, the Body Artist of the title, and her husband Rey Robles, a much older, thrice-married film-director. Through their delicate, intimate, half-complete thoughts and words DeLillo proves himself a stunningly unsentimental observer of marriage, and of the idiosyncrasies that both isolate and bind us. Rey says he's taking a drive and he does, all the way to the Manhattan apartment of his first wife. Lauren is left alone, or so she thinks . . . 'A poised, individual ghost story for the twenty-first century' Observer 'Inspiring . . . a beautiful book' Independent on Sunday