(Borrowed from NYPL, 40th St., Manhattan) I'll be frank. I picked this slim Don DeLillo novella because it was short. (Still not willing to go back to Peter Bogdanovich's insider-baseball interview with Fritz Lang.) It's beautifully written as with all of DeLillo's work, but confusing. A performance artist is mourning the suicide of her older husband, a revered filmmaker. A mysterious strange man shows up in their rented house on the New England coast. He appears to be mentally challenged and repeats phrases from the late husband, jumbled with other seemingly random sentences. (Some of the dialogue reminded me of Samuel Beckett.) The artist is inspired to create a new piece using her own body and she tries to decipher the mystery of her visitor. DeLillo never explains the meaning of the visitor and the ending didn't make sense to me. I did enjoy the description of a typical morning between the artist and the filmmaker which opens the book. The minute details of fixing breakfast, fleeting thoughts, observing birds at feeders, and avoiding conversation were meticulously observed and fascinating to read. DeLillo's books are always interesting, but this one puzzled me. A cold, clinical study of grief with more questions than answers.
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