Reviews

Underworld by Don DeLillo

kevindillaerts's review against another edition

emotional reflective sad slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

rltinha's review against another edition

A genialidade narrativa de DeLillo poderá ser comprovada logo no primeiro capítulo, que é um portento narrativo que até a alguém que não quer saber nadinha de basebol faz abanar a alma (é essencialmente sobre um certo jogo ocorrido na década de 50 do século passado). O restante não acompanha qualitativamente, mas só porque a «personagem principal», face às secundárias, é tão interessante de ler como calcular juros de mora. Prova de que o sonho americano - que é isso que a personagem pretende incorporar - é uma balela e um aborrecimento.

Realmente notáveis e extraordinárias são várias dessas personagens secundárias, numa riqueza criativa e narrativa como poucas vezes se tem a sorte de encontrar, com aqueles passos da hábil dança que estes mestres da verborreia da americanidade da segunda metade do século XX tão bem executam, entregando ao leitor o ovo de Páscoa plantado um par de centenas de páginas antes, tudo fazendo convergir. Ora expressamente, ora na vontade leitora, que é convocada com efectivo esforço e não através de vacuidades armadas aos cucos.

Há muito que tinha o DeLillo como desonrosa lacuna nas minhas leituras e em boa hora colmatei tal lacuna. Espero durar para ler mais deste autor.

fachir_04's review against another edition

challenging reflective slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

For me, this book was really too much, just overwhelming. It felt like a loose collection of unrelated scenes and episodes. There's no real plot, except American post-WWII and cold war history. Maybe I'll read some other DeLillo, hoping for it to be better.

fabiene's review against another edition

2.0

Splendid writing! Some brilliant bits & scenes
BUT:
-way too long
-more characters than Delillo (&/or the plot) can handle
-no coherence, seems like a random set of episodes which are, at best, losely connected
-story arches that are underdeveloped/unfinished/barely started
-overly complex (not in a good way)

in short: more editing would have done this novel some good...

binstonbirchill's review against another edition

2.0

I went back and forth a few times with this book. It starts off with a prologue about a 1951 baseball game that coincides with the Russians testing “the bomb”. We jump forward to the 90s and gradually make our way back. The cast is rather large, with no particular character being of too much interest or importance. America in the post war years serves as the focal point.

What DeLillo writes about doesn’t really interest me but then for a few pages he does something I find quite interesting, whether it’s the few moments where two character’s are having three strands of a conversation at once, or the best moments in the book for me, the couple times we have pre coital interlocution between characters I can’t even remember. My interest in the book started out moderate and went down, came back for a hundred pages or so, went way, and then by the end it wasn’t really too enjoyable and I had to settle for ⭐️⭐️

jammasterjamie's review against another edition

5.0

This is one of my favourite books ever. Don't let the title mislead you. The Underworld DeLillo is writing about has nothing to do with the mafia or organized crime, but rather the worlds that exist beneath our very souls, born from our very pasts that stay with us and are always a part of us no matter who we are in the present or who we become in the future. Underworld is a masterpiece of modern story-telling and a fantastic examination at what lies beneath the faces that we show the world.

george_r's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark reflective medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

wulfus's review against another edition

5.0

"There is something somber about the things we've collected and own, the household effects, there is something about the word itself, effects, the lacquered chest in the alcove, that breathes a kind of sadness - the wall hangings and artifacts and valuables - and I feel a loneliness, a loss, all the greater and stranger when the object is relatively rare and it's the hour after sunset in a stillness that feels unceasing."

Joyce Carol Oates said DeLillo has "frightening perception" and the way you read his passages about trash heaps, memorabilia, nuclear waste, condoms, certainly paints a terrifying emotional landscape of America. Not one to be despised or pitied, but one that longs to be cared for, for reconciliation. Makes me want to go to a Cubs game and smoke a Lucky Strike

stephen_coulon's review against another edition

challenging funny informative reflective sad slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.0

It’s a book about a diverse set of boomers suffering nihilistic crises when they hit middle age in the early 1990s. I’ve read several late 80s early 90s literary novels recently, all authored by gen-boomers,and in a way it’s led me to understand their mindset a bit more. They share a grave sense of childhood betrayal vis-a-vis the American Dream. It’s a defining characteristic, idealizing an impossibly perfect Americana in their early years that is suddenly shattered by the cultural upheaval of the late 1960s. Ironically, they revel in their participation in the 1960s chaos while simultaneously lamenting the loss of the American pastoral they were pointedly seeking to destroy as young adults. It’s a really schizophrenic worldview, and they’re really unhappy with its whiplashing implications (those boomers self-reflective enough to understand the paradox at least). For a gen-X reader like me, this is all a bit anticlimactic. Delillo alights on all the right topics here for the next wave of American disappointment (gun violence, terrorism, consumerism, neoconservatism), but his boomerish penchant for staying stuck in the 50s and 60s prevents him from foreseeing the magnitudinous changes coming in the next few years. His cynicism here seems quaint knowing that Columbine, 9-11, Iraq, and the great recession were just around the corner. So unlike his touching exploration of nihilism at the very personal, familial level in White Noise, this grand-narrative attempt at crafting a “great American novel” is overshadowed by the actual American history that followed shortly after.     

negativelee's review against another edition

3.0

The writing is excellent, as is usually the case with DeLillo. The huge devotion of plot to sports did not resonate with me as a reader and felt overly drawn out.