The body artist by Don DeLillo
Lauren, a body artist, loses her older husband and deals with his death with the help of a stranger, or a ghost, who can mimic voices and past discussions as if he has recorded them in his mind and can play them back. At first it’s not understood who this stranger is, called Mr Tuttle by Lauren: was he hiding in their huge house and listening in to the couple’s talks, like a stalker would do? Or does he not even exist?
Although I thought that the central theme was Lauren’s peculiar way of trying to keep her husband’s memory alive through the stranger’s sudden outbursts of fragmented and eerily familiar sentences belonging to other people (like a sort of communicator with the dead), in the end it’s actually time that is the focus in this book.
Time, which we can measure, but which we can also stretch, by making it seem longer, by looking very closely at the details. As Lauren says in the book:
''Stop time, or stretch it out, or open it up. Make a still life that's living, not painted”
9/10
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