Underworld, Don DeLillo's epic stab at the Great American Novel, exceeded his many impressive works in both size and scope, so it's no wonder that he decided to start small again with his new novel The Body Artist. Tiny at just 124 pages but no less ambitious for its slimness, the book patiently doles out information until its hidden complexities come to light. The Body Artist begins in a country home, where a husband and wife quietly go about the rituals of breakfast and small talk while reading the paper and watching birds. DeLillo drops hints that the two, connected enough to converse in clipped code, don't quite know each other inside and out. Their habits still hold enough small mysteries to surprise each other, even if their conversation plods with the bored distance of familiarity. DeLillo interrupts his burgeoning story with an obituary, indicating that the husband was Rey Robles, an aging and depressed filmmaker, and the woman with him is Lauren, his third wife. (Lauren is the titular body artist, a profession never entirely explained until the novel's conclusion.) DeLillo then returns to the country home, where Lauren remains alone, not quite in mourning but also not quite ready to return to the real world. Dazed and mildly upset at her husband's suicide, she begins to see things, specifically a strange man-child (whom she calls Mr. Tuttle, after an old science teacher) with an uncanny ability to mimic the actions, memories, and voices of Lauren and her dead husband. Is this creature real or illusion, and what does his presence portend for DeLillo's protagonist? Internalized almost to the point of claustrophobia, the disorienting sentence fragments and bits of cryptic prose add to The Body Artist's general level of confusion and supernatural creepiness. The relentless oddness serves DeLillo's larger purpose, however, with a conclusion that places Lauren's interaction with the enigmatic Mr. Tuttle in a clearer context, offering an intriguing take on the nature of artistic inspiration and showing how death, loss, and loneliness inform the creative process. DeLillo's mastery of contemporary language—and the crazed language of isolation—also gives this seemingly minor work added weight. While some of his obsessions do arise (a news report mentions, in passing, an accidental missile detonation, introducing the author's recurring theme of impending apocalypse), most of the book centers not on the world outside, but on the void inside. This different and sometimes dazzling side of DeLillo finds him far more intimate and serious than usual, with frequently haunting results.