The Body Artist is a novella written in 2001 by Don DeLillo. It explores the highly abnormal grieving process of a young performance artist, Lauren Hartke, following the suicide of her significantly older husband. The novella is sometimes described as a ghost story due to the appearance of an enigmatic figure that Lauren discovers hiding in an upstairs room of the house following her husband's death. Lauren Hartke and her film director husband, Rey Robles, are occupying an isolated house outside New York City. They have a sparse verbal exchange over breakfast before Rey leaves for work. Later... that morning, Rey is found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in his first wife's Manhattan apartment. An obituary detailing the frequently ambiguous details of Rey's life ensues, where Rey's age is revealed, along with his history of depression and the fact that Lauren had been Rey's third wife. A bereaved Lauren remains alone in the house against the advice of her friends and relatives. She becomes disconnected from the temporal world and from her own body, experiencing frequent and inexplicable déjà vu.
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| Author: | Don DeLillo |
| Genre: | Fiction, Speculative fiction, Novella |
| Year published: | 2001 |
| Number of editions: | 10 |