From the back cover:
"Jeffrey Lockhart's father, Ross, is a billionaire in his sixties, who happens to be the primary investor in a remote and secret compound where death is exquisitely controlled. There, bodies are carefully preserved until a future time when biomedical advances and new technologies can return them to a life of transcendent promise.
When Jeff is invited to join Ross at the compound, he finds that among those about to surrender their bodies is Artis, Ross' younger wife, whose health is failing. Slowly, as Jeff prepares himself to bid 'an uncertain farewell' to his stepmother, he finds himself confronted with humanity's most unanswerable questions – about the legacies we leave, the nobility of death and the ultimate worth of 'the mingled astonishments of our time, here, on earth'.
Don DeLillo's seductive, spectacularly observed and brilliant new novel weighs the darkness of the world – terrorism, floods, fires, famine, plague – against the beauty and humanity of everyday life."
Unusually, the cover blurb is pretty much spot-on. This chilly novel strips away all certainties, just as Ross Lockhart's cryogenic facility represents a portal between worlds and an opportunity to question our assumptions about the meaning of life and death. The location is brilliantly Kafkaesque and Ballardian – both facelessly corporate and enigmatically designed – leaving DeLillo much to explore and many questions to dangle before the reader. How does the facility change those who live there, work there and speak its jargon? Why do the screens in the corridors show brutal disaster footage? Is this footage part of the propaganda PR for the cryogenics project – an encouragement to leave behind a world in turmoil? What, if anything, lies behind the doors in the corridors? What is the function of the mannequins encountered by Jeff? The mysteries pile up and the lack of simple answers builds a claustrophobic atmosphere. DeLillo plays with elements of science-fiction, but rooted in a grittily real-world setting. He seems to love the "remote bunker" motif, which has appeared in his previous novels.
The book draws the driest possible humour from its sublimely deadpan delivery. Some of the spoken questions in the dialogue don't bother with question marks. Amid all the clinical talk of the Convergence, DeLillo displays a rich empathy for the three main characters and you quickly become drawn into their worlds. He covers many fundamental topics: is it only the fact of death that gives life value? What does life mean if death can be avoided – or delayed? What responsibility do you have to parents, children, lovers? And what would happen to love, language and religion if human lives are no longer finite?
It's addictive and profound.
