Rating: 
Summary: Can you say "American Psycho"??
Review: I think people are just scared to admit that this book is terrible lest they be snubbed by other members of the Book Snob Elite. Unfortunately, Brett Easton Ellis did this story a long time ago - and better. DeLillo sleepwalked through this one - a total waste of time. Not worth finishing for any good reason at all.
Rating:
Summary: What was he thinking?
Review: I don't need 1000 words to express my lack of enthusiasm for this book, my first DeLillo read. For the first 50 pages I took notice of his use of adjectives, quite innovative. The rest of the book, about a heartless, robotic man who "becomes" what he "sees" is nonsensical and cold. I knew what the ending would be, but held back my desire to skip to it and end the torture. Definitely not recommended for anyone who appreciates good literature or is looking for news on the human character or condition.
Rating: 
Summary: mind blowing!
Review: Cosmopolis follows a day in the life of one Eric Packar, a man who's very whims dictate his reality. DeLillo has accomplished with this novel what most post-modern writers strive for: a grasp of what the world shows us but doesn't want us to see. DeLillo has his finger on the pulse of existential cynicism. For those who enjoy the writings of Palahniuk or Brett Easton Ellis, DeLillo is where they draw their inspiration.
Rating:
Summary: A Literary Abomination
Review: I fail to see how the other reviewers of this book can praise it so effusively without breaking down into school-girl giggles. Cosmopolis is not a novel, it is a form of torture. The dialogue is unrealistic to the point of absurdity, filled with inane observations and non-sequiturs. In fact, the entire book is so rife with irrelevancies that I'd swear a child with ADD wrote it. My three year-old cousin can compose more coherent sentences than the ones which litter the pages of this atrocity. I seriously wonder whether DeLillo actually thought about what to say in his passages, or if he merely rifled through the dictionary and chose words at random. Be forewarned: buying this book supports literary terrorism.
Rating:
Summary: The Unholy Trinity - Amorality, Existentialism, Nihilism
Review: This book is just...pititful, an unmitigated disaster in the areas of dialogue, plot, setting and especially character. It reminds one of Proust's streams of consciousness except that there is zero/zilch/nada literary quality present.The main character is a multi-billionaire introspect with a retinue of worshipful aides (though why this narcissistic non-entity should command so much as a second glance is beyond me). His mental gyrations are presented as having import when they are simply the inklings of a madman. Our hero lives in a 48 room modern palace and is bored with everything - career, marriage, relationships, sex, life. It's 2001, the brink of financial Armageddon, and Eric wants a haircut after investing the whole wad in the currency futures market - you figure out the connection. He spots his wife of 22 days in another car, pops over for a chat and implies that their marriage has yet to be consumated. A presidential visit creates a traffic jam and we hear the ravings of the anti-industrial crowd protesting global capitalism. Interspersed in this drivel are the ruminations of a lone soul who seems as confused as the main character except he is not a multi-bilionaire. Our hero proceeds (in no certain order) to have sex with someone (female), undergo a physical while chatting semi-erotically with a female aide who for some reason is present, murders his bodyguard (he felt like it), laughs at the stabbing death of a bigwig, tells his wife he married her for money then meets his stalker, the confused man mentioned above. The ending is simultaneously confusing and boring - death by ennui. The "writing" reminds one of a middle-school paper - absolutely no subtlety or literary grace, just word after word to fill up space. Towards the end you think that this is nothing more than paragraphs, then it is reduced to sentences, then words and finally one suddenly realizes it is the alphabet, clumsily arranged so as to resemble a book. I wish there were a negative score for this horrendous thing.
Rating:
Summary: Puffed Up Trash
Review: A terrible read. DeLillo at his worst, I think, writing in a pastiche of his old sharp style. Sentences are gratuitous, cheap, labored. It appears he visited NYC with a notebook and tried to get down his fleeting scenes. While the plot is OK, it's nothing to crow about. But those sentences give no stunning surprise, no postmodern meaning, no delectable wordplay. Don't get me wrong, I loved Underworld, I liked many of his works, but this one is just plain bad. Head to Will Self's best or Independence Day by Richard Ford -- a great novel.
Rating: 
Summary: Delillo Delivers
Review: Dellilo's New York limo ride flows well enough through the first half of the book. The premise allows itself to open an array of bizzare situations: a billionaire twenty-something want to ride in his suped-up stretch limo to get a haircut. On the way he has encounters with lovers, ex-lovers, and advisors in matters of technology, finance, security, and theory. Dellilo's prose is highly restrained with limited, but rich descriptions of neighborhoods that unfold through the eyes of billionaire Eric. There are some truly original hilarious subversive instances where Eric displays his detatchment from society such as when he makes sexual advances to a female executive while getting a prostate exam in his back seat (No pun intended). As allegory, it holds up; the plot itself fails to hold up at times though because of the limited style he chooses with certain situations. The female characters blend into non-memorable hybrids of slut-artist-vixen-heiress-mystic. In a style very reminiscent of Chuck Palahnuik ('Fight Club') Eric's journey unfolds as his own deathmarch which Eric is all too willing to accept. The social critique is clear enough: the market culture is tainting our humanity and the democracy as corporate-kleptocracy will test what is left of it. Delillo delivers in 'Cosmopolis'. I only wish that his characterization was as substantial as every thing else in his novel.
Rating:
Summary: Great ending, strong prose, poor characters.
Review: In "Cosmopolis," DeLillo's language is more controlled and self-assured than most of his novels. There is a stream of consciousness here that his other novels do not have. As usual, DeLillo's descriptions are often excellent (he even composes a few rap lyrics midway in the book). But at other times, he falls into over-analyzing objects, ideas, people, that have no real significance and ultimately test the reader's patience. In doing this, DeLillo "waters down" an excellent novel. Some editing here and there would have helped. Usually, DeLillo's characters are cardboard props used as mouth pieces for his own ideas. In "Cosmopolis" DeLillo attempts to make them more vivid, especially in the main character of Eric Packer and his stalker. Packer's other acquaintances, even his wife, however, are not developed well and are rather forgettable. Packer's journey through New York is rather interesting. Along the way, he learns the President is in town; a famous rapper's funeral is proceeding through the streets; and he is being stalked. The last 60+ pages of "Cosmopolis" are worth the price of the book and provide the reader with a vivid and impressive climax. Recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Almost, but not even close
Review: DeLillo is such a great stylist, any one of his books are worth picking up. But this one, like the limo in the story, is a long white...driving the reader around to nowhere. It's so damn predictable I felt like I had already read it. Again, the prose is grand, but that Brutha Fez stuff shows a lot of seams. DeLillo seems so out of touch and...old. It's outright ridiculous in parts. There was so much potential here. He flexed his toes when he could have tap-danced. He'll never top Libra.
Rating:
Summary: Enjoyable, sharp, and among his best
Review: Much like Nietzsche's, Delillo's writing hits hard, blunt truths which may not resonate as you first read them, but seem to subltly speak to something beyond. This is not to say that Delillo is a flagrant cynicist or ironist. I find him way too dry for that. Not that that is a negative statement, in my opinion. Nevertheless, this book promises more than many reviewers gave it credit for. The territory may not be brand-spanking new, but the story is compelling, rather intriguing and has some nice twists in it. Minor characters don't get their due, but the main character provides enough reason to read on and the antagonist (in the looser sense of the word) also serves as a nice tangent from the main vein of the narrative. What continues to compell me about Delillo is his need to depict, as if by camera, what is happening in his novels, through his crisp sentences. His prose is almost geometric, the way it sets up angles and perspective. Almost every sentence is like a cross-section of the culture we live in. Because his novesl are embedded in history, I believe we may be looking back at Delillo in 40, 50, 75 years from now, trying to see "what it was really like" back then. Like a timecapsule in a book.
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