From one of the most dazzling and essential voices in American fiction, a timely and compelling novel set in the near future about five people gathered together in a Manhattan apartment, in the midst of a catastrophic event. Don DeLillo completed ...

NUBClub split down the middle on this book, with half of the readers hating it and half liking it. The issue centered around the characters. DeLillo sets up a scenario in which five people eventually arrive at a dinner party in the midst of an electronics blackout across the city. The characters have a variety of reactions to this that demonstrate their relationships and speak to some of the themes of our digital age: one character emulating a television sports broadcast while another recites random facts about a work of Einstein. Those who didn't like the book found this really unbelievable and were frustrated by the unrealistic characters and relationships. Nobody disagreed with this assessment of the protagonists, but those who liked the book took the whole thing as an absurdist metaphor on the modern age. Haters could see that, but didn't understand why there needed to be a whole story with characters if it was just going to be absurd. Ultimately, all of us agreed about what the novella was, and all of us thought that DeLillo showed his expected mastery of language, so it wasn't hard to read. We just differed in opinion over whether the use of two couples and a fifth wheel to make an extended metaphor about technology's place in our lives was a worthwhile project. If you consider reading this, just ask yourself if reading a 100 pages of very symbolic characters will bother you, and you'll know if you should take the plunge.