Zero K by Don DeLillo

“What’s the point of living if we don’t die at the end if it?” observes a nameless monk in Don DeLillo’s seventeenth novel. It’s a question we find ourselves posing repeatedly in the first half: Jeffrey, our guide, arrives at a mysterious compound where his father’s ailing wife Artis is preparing for cryogenic freezing, until a future time where improved medical science can give her new life. Relationships are strained and disconnected – particularly between Jeffrey and father Ross – and occasionally that transmits from the page to the reader, making for an uncomfortable experience in the opening stages.

Things settle down before the second act, however, and gradually the novel reveals itself to be more than a simple exercise in speculative, lightly philosophical what-iffery. It explores notions of control; how we flail at even the slightest sense of purpose or authority when they seem to be slipping from our grasp. How we seek to establish or relinquish them across relationships, identities and public personae. Most importantly, it’s an incredibly written work whose emotional punch sneaks up softly, DeLillo remaining an undisputed master of the stirring emotional précis.

That title, incidentally, refers to the unit of temperature known as absolute zero from which the compound takes its name, although “the temperature employed in cryostorage does not actually approach zero K.” Despite its chilly beginnings, the novel never quite loses its warmth either.