An interesting little meditation on mortality and death, but a little too didactic for me. Characters speak like they're reciting an essay, and that's never worked for me.

A very painful read; it seemed like it was trying to be a book of "big ideas," but I didn't care the slightest bit about it.

I think my expectations where a little too high for this book. it didn't quite reach the heights I was expecting. I didn't not enjoy it, but it just left me feeling quite cold (see what I did there?!) and unmoved. Was just a step too clinical for me I think.

I'm pretty sure Don DeLillo is a genius. This isn't so much a futuristic sci-fi story as it is a meditative, philosophical thought experiment on the nature of existence and what it means to live and to die. Beautifully written.

An amazing read which carefully blends modern sci-fi while provoking certain ethical and philosophical debates. Does one gamble on future technology for the promise of medical cures or immortality? Does the self exist without others? Can ideas of selfhood or identity exist without individuals, trees, rocks, etc.? What is the gesture of love in the discovery of self? All of these ideas are tied together in a lovely way which promotes inward reflection not only of the characters, but to the reader as well. It was a very unexpectedly I teresting book and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Interesting premise, bad execution. I didn't finish it on account of it being so hard to read. The author has this weird style where he uses sentence fragments and all the characters basically speak in poetry. At no point did I understand what was happening and I couldn't get attached to the characters because all they did was speak in metaphors and retell their life stories. The whole book (or what I read of it) is like a fever dream that makes sense when you are dreaming but when you wake up you think, "how in the world did I think that made sense?".

This read like a college senior's creative writing final. It's too impressed by its own use of language to do anything with the plot, other than move cardboard characters back and forth from the desert and every New York cliché.

3.5

So, one quarter into the book, I gave my husband the bare bones: gazillionaire, interested in cryopreservation, younger (second) wife dying, they're going to freeze her, story's from the perspective of the adult son who has come along to witness, and he's at this creepy compound where the freezing will be done. When I was halfway through the book, husband asks me, is the father caught up in a cult? And I said, well, there are more things to tell you, but are you going to read it? And he sighed, and he said, "It's Don DeLillo. Reading DeLillo is like doing f*cking pushups. But yes, I'll read it." EXACTLY. YOU WILL EAT YOUR GRUEL, AND YOU WILL LIKE IT.

But, no spoilers. For him, or in this review.

It was good to read this right after [b:Party of One: The Loners' Manifesto|56478|Party of One The Loners' Manifesto|Anneli Rufus|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1408145733l/56478._SX50_.jpg|55038]. Both have me thinking about the human condition and our utter aloneness, at the end of the day. Back to the earth we go, utterly alone.

Somebody smarter than I am can explain what the book was really about.

I got this book as a blind date with a book.

I should have known. Dating and I just don’t mix very well.

Let’s just say…if this book was a guy and we went out to dinner, about 40% of the way through I would have climbed out the bathroom window and never looked back.

This is a very philosophical book. But a book without a plot. At least in my opinion.

This may have been for someone, but it just was not for me.