Zero K

By: Don DeLillo

Narrated by: Thomas Sadoski

A New York Times Notable Book and New York Times bestseller, “DeLillo’s haunting new novel, Zero K—his most persuasive since his astonishing 1997 masterpiece, Underworld” (The New York Times), is a meditation on death and an embrace of life.

Jeffrey Lockhart’s father, Ross, is a billionaire in his sixties, with a younger wife, Artis Martineau, whose health is failing. Ross is the primary investor in a remote and secret compound where death is exquisitely controlled and bodies are preserved until a future time when biomedical advances and new technologies can return them to a life of transcendent promise. Jeff joins Ross and Artis at the compound to say “an uncertain farewell” to her as she surrenders her body.

“We are born without choosing to be. Should we have to die in the same manner? Isn’t it a human glory to refuse to accept a certain fate?” These are the questions that haunt the novel and its memorable characters, and it is Ross Lockhart, most particularly, who feels a deep need to enter another dimension and awake to a new world. For his son, this is indefensible. Jeff, the book’s narrator, is committed to living, to experiencing “the mingled astonishments of our time, here, on earth.”

Don DeLillo’s “daring…provocative…exquisite” (The Washington Post) new novel weighs the darkness of the world—terrorism, floods, fires, famine, plague—against the beauty and humanity of everyday life; love, awe, “the intimate touch of earth and sun.”

“One of the most mysterious, emotionally moving, and rewarding books of DeLillo’s long career” (The New York Times Book Review), Zero K is a glorious, soulful novel from one of the great writers of our time.

The Great Novel

Rarely we applaud the arrival of a Great Novel. Serious and compelling. Fills one with questions. Plausible and fantastic. Terrible. Huge.

So Much Milage in Each Sentence

DeLillo's prose is thought-provoking to the point that you're forced to pause and internalize individual sentences throughout the story. It feels like he took an episode of the Twilight Zone and turned it into a great American novel.

well done

I enjoyed the narration of this book. I had to pose from time to time and say Wow something to think about.

Depressingly good

I think this doesn't measure up to earlier novels by DeLillo, but it's a very, very good book. It's still often as distantly analytical and chilled as is typical for him, but god it's sad.

Beautiful words with no story to tell

The book swings repeatedly from the amazingly poignant and thought-provoking to the crushingly dull, with more of the latter, sadly. This is my first Don DeLillo novel, and given his celebrity, I would like to think it's far from his best. Perhaps the most annoying is how he endlessly describes mundane things that have nothing to do with what little story the book does have: how the narrator plays with items in his pocket, how a passerby on the street was dressed, etc., as if he just wants to show you his amazing ability to describe things and notice the little things in life. And he does have that skill, to be sure, but a string of such observances does not make for a compelling novel. The book also lacks any interesting characters. I found myself having no emotional attachment to anyone on these pages.

I was able to finish the book only through the skill of the narrator, Thomas Sadoski, my first encounter with him as well. His pacing and tone are near perfect. If he can boost his ability to do character voices a bit more, he'll be in the realm of the greats like Simon Vance.