I don't think the average person will like this book.
I'm not even sure if the people you would expect to like this book intellectuals, philosophizers and Hitchcock film buffs will like this book.
But that's not to say "Point Omega," Don DeLillo's newest novel, is not worth reading. Rather, readers' satisfaction with the novel will depend largely on what they hope to get from the experience of reading it.
The body of the novel tells the story of Richard Elster, an elderly scholar who has become disillusioned after trying to help the government develop a strategy for the war in Iraq. "I wanted a haiku war," Elster says. "I wanted a war in three lines. This was not a matter of force levels or logistics."
He retreats to his vacation house in the desert, where he is joined by a middle-aged filmmaker hoping to make a film about Elster's experience. Elster's daughter, Jessica, enters the novel later on, providing some much-needed emotional content.
Sandwiching the bulk of the novel are two chapters about a mysterious man standing in a gallery, watching "24 Hour Psycho" an actual 1993 film by Douglas Gordon in which Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho" is slowed down so much that it takes 24 hours to get through the whole thing.
Don't read "Point Omega" expecting to like it just because you liked DeLillo's "White Noise" the two are very different. DeLillo's prose in "Omega" is so spare it's off-putting. Usually, when I read, the words play out like a movie in my head. This happens after I've read a page or two, and it happens sub-consciously. With "Omega," however, the transformation from words on a page to a vivid story in my head never happened.
That's not to say the novel is boring it's too strange to be boring. But if you're looking for a good story, don't look to "Omega." If you're looking for compelling ideas, however, you may want to give "Omega" a try.
Although the novel provides ample food for thought, I expect most readers will find "Omega" too vaguely philosophical. The characters don't talk much to begin with and, when they do go on for more than a few sentences, it's almost always on some philosophical tangent. DeLillo peppers their conversation with phrases like "Consciousness accumulates" and "Matter wants to lose its self-consciousness. We're the mind and the heart that matter has become. Time to close it all down. This is what drives us now."
If those are the kind of phrases that really get you excited, then by all means, spend the $24 on "Omega." But if you're looking for a good story one that has that magical way of transporting you to another place look elsewhere.
