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Underworld

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Underworld

By: Don DeLillo
Narrated by: Richard Poe
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Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize
Finalist for the National Book Award
Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award
Winner of the Howell’s Medal of the American Academy of Arts and Letters

“A great American novel” (San Francisco Chronicle) that spans five decades of American history, following the intimate lives of the men and women who lived through them.

It begins with a moment of legend: the 1951 baseball game between the New York Giants and the Brooklyn Dodgers in which the winning homerun known as the Shot Heard Round the World coincides with news of the Soviet Union’s first hydrogen bomb test.

The baseball itself, scuffed and passed from hand to hand, becomes the thread that weaves an astonishing tapestry that spans the Cold War, the Civil Rights Movement, Vietnam protests, and beyond, telling the story of Nick Shay, Klara Sax, and the hidden histories of a nation both haunted and illuminated by its past.

Sweeping yet intimate, Underworld is an astonishing story of men and women brought together and torn apart against the backdrop of half a century of American history. Classics Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Sports Funny Thought-Provoking
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This is my first read, and this book is a trip and a half. How it slowly unfurls but backwards is like completely amazing, a very sad, brutal and paranoia inducing book with red herrings dotted in it, but a resounding resolute triumph if you stick to the very end. A great thought provoking book, I will be sure to check out more of Don Dellilo. Great performance very funny and quite relaxing haha :)

Insane

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A prescient novel that documents the years it covers. DeLillo's easy style grips you from page 1. His brilliant depiction of Post-War USA is heartfelt, but satire and irony is never far from the pages. A Collosal book with terrific narration. If USA can be understood DeLillo is the man for the job.

A Tour de Force

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I bought this audiobook after reading reviews of the book as one of the great American novels and listening to people on radio book programmes praise it. I too can appreciate the ideas, the writing - but it made me think of Joyce's Ulysses and how difficult and tedious that it is except as an intellectual exercise. My attention kept wandering and I lost the plot - well, hardly the plot as there isn't one - but I lost track. And I found it depressing, undoubtedly an insight into American culture that is perceptive and accurate but a nevertheless depressing one. I haven't finished it. I hope to return to it when I'm feeling stronger. And the sun is shining. Maybe I'l Ill try the book itself - however good the reader, his cadence and inflexion have a great effect on how the listener perceives the book and this reader has a style of falling away at the end of a sentence.

Appreciated not enjoyed

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I have tried to read De Lillo's underworld three times. I've got 3 quarters of the way through on one occasion. Circumstance always drags me away, but despite this I maintain, this is one of the best books ever written - a modern classic.

It's a sprawling epic that you have to dedicate time to, an ensemble piece that spiders webs out of the Bronx into wider America, and wider life. There's a definite poetry to the way De Lillo writes, he loves rhythm and repetition. The repetition doesn't always sound totally convincing (or naturalistic) on the audio book, however, Dellilo's words are often profound and thought provoking, golden nuggets of wisdom spilling out as thick and fast and thrown away as garbage going into a landfill.

His reveals about his characters come seemingly randomly throughout the book, often when we've grown to trust characters, we suddenly learn something about them which we're perhaps not so fond of - like life maybe!

The book documents the end of the last century, it's peppered with historical characters some real some fictional, all fallible. It made me google certain events and I loved the continually present problem of waste, and junk (the central character is in waste management).

I managed to listen to the book when I was driving, when I was ironing, when I was cooking. I've had a real Underworld couple of weeks and loved every minute.

Maybe I'll even do it again sometime.

A great book. One of the greatest books of our time. Highly recommended.

A modern classic - read it

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The book does indeed have a fantastic opening. Then it goes nowhere. This is not necessarily a bad thing but fans of conventional novels may feel let down by the lack of obvious narrative arc. The language however is exceedingly rich, it is no wonder that DeLillo received high acclaim from critics. The writing is poetic and draws you into the characters' situations in such a way that undramatic moments are realised as vividly as any book's most important plot points.
The characters are so real (some of them literally) that it is easy to believe that the story is a historical account rather than a work of fiction and the book provides a fascinating insight into US history and culture especially for a non-native. The performance of the narrator is utterly confident and the emotions of the characters are tangible in the nuances of the delivery. All in all a great work but not for the easily pleased.

Absorbing and Rewarding

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