Although I have read all of Don DeLillo's books, those that I read prior to joining goodreads don't show up on my feed. He's one of those writers I've followed for over 30 years, no matter what prior reviewers think. His style is distinctive. His viewpoint specific. I'll repeat from a prior review since it applies here as well: "In the years since publishing Underworld, DeLillo has written novels of spare prose, sharp and focussed that leave the reader disquieted and thoughtful. There is not an extraneous word or action. Underworld, still one of my favorite books of all time, is a string of interlocking stories using an iconic baseball as the Mcguffin ... He still writes at a distance, while getting inside the essence of the situation. He proves a writer doesn't have to use a lot of words to drive home his point."

This is another example of existential dread, a "... casual embrace that marks the fall of world civilization...". The collapse of the Internet on Superbowl Sunday 2022 as personified by five distinct individuals is believable, particularly in this uncertain word of Covid-19, which is referenced within. If you like him, you'll appreciate his contribution to the zeitgeist.

I am a fan of "modern" DeLillo...loved Zero K, Point Omega. I don't mind shorter formats; every books doesn't have to be Underworld. However, the nuggets of brilliance in The Silence are float in a sea of, well, dullness. There were passages where I nodded my head and passages where I shivered to think how accurately he portrayed/predicted covid, but mostly there were passages where I shrugged and went "meh."

Jim Kripps and his wife Tessa Berens confront their own mortality in-flight returning to NY from Rome. Their friends Diane Lucas, Max Stenner , and Martin Dekker await them in a Manhattan living room, big-screen TV, snacks, drinks at the ready to celebrate Super Bowl LVI in the year 2022, never knowing what oddities may prevent their doing so. Outside, Manhattan is full of disabled cell phones and blank screens, a disastrous hell-scape that requires person-to-person contact and actual conversation. Jim and Tessa have sex in a public bathroom in a very private, non-oral statement about their own survival and connection. I like the way this tableau is mirrored in a way by another less in-tune couple, I like how all five individuals maintain their own individual last names despite the convention of marriage, and I especially like the Albert Einsteinisms throughout this story although I kind of wish the one didn't open the book as I felt it diminished some of the statement's considerable thunder. I love the courageous way DeLillo calls out America, "We've seen it happening repeatedly, this country and elsewhere, storms and wildfires and evacuations, typhoons, tornadoes, drought, dense fog, foul air. Landslides, tsunamis, disappearing rivers, houses collapsing, entire buildings crumbling, skies blotted out by pollution." I even liked the sci-fi lines of questioning, have our minds been digitally remastered? Are we an experiment that happens to be falling apart, a scheme set in motion by forces outside our reckoning? DeLillo is the master at subtle subterfuge, and this quick read packs a wallop.

This novella just didn't grab me at all. Neither the characters nor the dialogue struck me as realistic. (Granted, Don DeLillo and I probably don't hang out with the same kind of people, but still....) Because it's DeLillo, I feel I need to say it's entirely possible that there is a deepness to the book that I'm not getting, but this didn't strike me as hitting the heights he has in the past. I don't quite get what he was going for.

I received an e-galley from Netgalley in return for the this review

Thanks to Netgalley and Scribner for the advanced ebook. I’m always so excited for anything by Don DeLillo. This is an interesting, and very short, book. Five people, two couples and a former student of one of the hosts, gather in an apartment in NYC to watch the Super Bowl together when there is a complete black out in the city, with no way to get any information from the world at large. Is it a simple glitch or the start of something so much more sinister? Five very smart people, in this tense situation, talk past, over and around each other as they all try to figure out what this night means to them.

A short book, which feels more like a play somehow. The characters not so much act as ramble. While some of it is insightful, I found it more annoying, really, as it feels too artificial.
It is well-written, yes, and in one place a dialogue of a younger man with a woman about Einstein, Rome and art has a beautiful erotic feeling, without any eroticism in the wording itself. But in other parts the words didn't have any similar effect.

Quick short read. Hit a little close to home with The current pandemic. Very eerie and creepy planes crashing and all electronics going down with no answers and every losing their crap. I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

Don Delillo never fails to engage me keep me turning the pages.Really interesting thought provoking while entertaining.Short book fast but very involving.#netgalley#scribner

Didn't get it. Odd, boring, over my head.

Thanks to publisher and Netgalley for the chance to read this book. While I got the book for free,it had no bearing on the rating I gave it..

It is Super Bowl Sunday in New York City, two years in the future. A man and wife, middle aged and well educated, are having a small gathering in their apartment to watch the game. One guest, a former student of the physics professor wife, has already arrived and another couple will be coming as soon as their plane from Paris lands. But just as the game is starting, the power inexplicably goes out along with all other means of electronic communication, throwing the world into a chaotic, albeit silent, state. So, what do people do when that happens? Apparently, they talk and wax philosophical until morning comes.

That is a very brief summary of Don DeLillo’s novel <i>The Silence</i>. However, to call this work a novel is a bit of a stretch; it likely does not even qualify as a novella, but reads more like a short story that has been extended just slightly beyond normal length. That distinction is important because after offering a provocative setup—what <i>would</i> happen if we were suddenly cutoff from all of our cyber dependencies?—the author does not really develop either the characters or the story in sufficient depth to address the topic in a compelling way. Instead, what the reader gets is a very cursory discussion of some high-brow topics (e.g., Einstein’s theory of relativity, cryptocurrencies) and even a quick, gratuitous reference to the Covid-19 crisis that occurred sometime earlier.

It is fair to compare this book to the author’s own estimable catalog of work. Not to the most brilliant of his stories (<i>White Noise</i>, <i>Underworld</i>, <i>Libra</i>), but to the lesser-known <i>Cosmopolis</i>, which also was published shortly after a cathartic global event (i.e., the 9/11 attack). Unfortunately, the comparison is not favorable for <i>The Silence</i> because that earlier book, while still concisely written, was developed with the sort of depth and insight that one would expect from a fully realized story. In fact, although <i>Cosmopolis</i> disappointed some readers by not being about the 9/11 tragedy directly, it proved remarkably prescient in predicting the advent of high-frequency trading and the Occupy Wall Street protests that would occur just a few years later.

I suppose it is worth noting that I have been a big fan of DeLillo’s work for many, many years. Like a lot of people, I was at first put off by the stilted and unrelatable characters he creates, but I soon learned that the author was writing novels about the important concepts that define our lives and that his characters were just delivery vehicles meant to convey the bigger message. And can he ever craft some amazing sentences! That much certainly remains true in this book, despite its failure to deliver on an otherwise promising premise. If I am disappointed in what I found here, it is only because I have been conditioned by this writer to set my expectations so very high.

So, this says that the book was completed just before the advent of COVID-19. There’s an actual reference to COVID-19 in the book, which I assume was added later?

This is a challenging book. I think at some point, someone’s going to take issues with some of the reviews here, telling us that we just don’t get it. I don’t think that’s true. I think we get it…we just don’t love it?

It’s not really a story. It’s a philosophical musing on humanity, technology, the environment, and what humans find important in the world. Using an apocalyptic event (basically sort of an EMP that takes down all tech), our characters find themselves lost. Unfortunately, they attack that sense of displacement in the world they know with meaningful looks, pithy conversations, meaningful utterings of things like “Cryptocurrency,” “Crypto…currency,” (with more meaningful looks), and full on monologues about the state of the world.

For such a short book, it’s exhausting.

Taking the not-very-important story away from the hit-you-over-the-head messaging, I kept saying to myself, “God, please don’t let any apocalypse leave us stranded with these precious, pedantic people.”

Taking the hit-you-over-the-head messaging way from the thin not-very -important story, I kept saying to myself, “God, please don’t let any apocalypse leave us stranded with these precious, pedantic people.”

I’m sure that there will be people who gain some insight from this – people who will read this, nodding sagely, and feeling superior to those who don’t like it.

But I don’t like it.

*ARC Provided via Net Galley

Is there anything better than the interstellar bursts of Don DeLillo's sentences? Not much, so we salivate over those we are given. Even the crumbs and scraps. This book (novella) might be the crumbs and scraps we need to sate our hunger. But it's not a full-course meal.

I can't be the only one longing for another big brick from DeLillo like Underworld, or something compact and dense like White Noise, Mao II, or Libra. It's unfair to have set such a high standard with past works that decent, fun, and readable books like The Silence or Point Omega are viewed as underwhelming.

Should you read it? Sure. It's 128 pages, and they are quick pages at that. The sentences are worth it, ie "The image, the optically formed duplicate." or "Counting down by sevens in the future that takes shape too soon." This latter sentence is a bit more delicious in light of the president's alleged ability to pass a cognitive test.

Is it the COVID book? Hmm. Maybe. It is referenced in the past tense in the book (set in 2022). I tend to think that book is yet to come. I wish it came from DeLillo, though. I will cross my fingers for another to grab that baton.

Thanks to Scribner for the advance digital galley.

Once again, Don DeLillo gives us much to think about. This story is almost too timely and will give readers pause. Read and think, "what if?"

This is one of those books that the blurb just oversells the book.
The only really interesting part of this book is the seemingly random loss of the digital connection. But the characters and their conversations are just not interesting at all. I flew through the book but was just bored and confused the entire time. Maybe if it been slowed down and had been like many of his other books (that are hundreds of pages) instead of just a short 128 pages (and it honestly didn't even seem like that since the book was mostly conversation so the pages fly by).
Overall just disappointed. At least it was a quick read and done in 2 sittings. .