Reader Score
79%
79% of readers
recommend this book
Then a lethal black chemical cloud floats over their lives, an "airborne toxic event" unleashed by an industrial accident. The menacing cloud is a more urgent and visible version of the "white noise" engulfing the Gladney family--radio transmissions, sirens, microwaves, ultrasonic appliances, and TV murmurings--pulsing with life, yet suggesting something ominous.
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Winner of the National Book Award for Fiction
"When I reread White Noise, I was struck by how hilarious it still is, how accurate to its moment and yet, like all great books, how it also speaks to this moment; the same absurdities and ironies still apply. . . You now understand what people mean when they notice something in real life and describe it as DeLillo-esque. And things have only become more DeLillo-esque."
--Dana Spiotta, The New York Times Book Review
"In White Noise, DeLillo nailed a structure of feeling that shapes our present consciousness. What White Noise does well is render visible aspects of social and political life that have been normalized into near invisibility . . . Things still seem to be just like White Noise because of DeLillo's gift for observing the world as if he had just been dropped into it."
--Jordan Kisner, The Atlantic
"One of the most ironic, intelligent, grimly funny voices to comment on life in present-day America . . . [White Noise] poses inescapable questions with consummate skill."
--Jayne Anne Phillips, The New York Times Book Review
"Don DeLillo's novels have evolved with society, ringing true even when they could or should feel outdated, but none are more prescient than White Noise . . . In the 1980s, DeLillo could never have dreamed where the world would end up, but his universal truths still hold. As we're bombarded with emails, texts, and social media posts, the book is as relevant, if not more, than it ever was. All of us search for meaning as we experience daily FOMO on our phones, wishing for another life, one promised to us by advertising agencies and politicians. For that, the book is a perfect satire of the world we still live in."
--Kevin Koczwara, Esquire
"DeLillo's eighth novel should win him wide recognition as one of the best American noveslists. . . . the homey comedy of White Noise invites us into a world we're glad to enter. Then the sinister buzz of implication makes the book unforgettably disturbing."
--Newsweek
"A stunning book . . . it is a novel of hairline prophecy, showing a desolate and all-too-believable future in the evidence of an all-too-recognizable present. . . . Through tenderness, wit, and a powerful irony, DeLillo has made every aspect of White Noise a moving picture of a disquiet we seem to share more and more."
--Los Angeles Times
"White Noise captures the quality of daily existence in media-saturated, hyper-capitalistic postmodern America so precisely, you don't know whether to laugh or whimper."
--TIME
"DeLillo is a prodigiously gifted writer. His cool but evocative prose is witty, biting, surprising, precise . . . White Noise [is] arguably [his] best novel."
--The Washington Post
"Its brilliance is dark and sheathed. And probing. In White Noise, Don DeLillo takes a Geiger-counter reading of the American family, and comes up with ominous clicks."
--Vanity Fair
"A stunning performance from one of our most intelligent novelists . . . Tremendously funny."
--The New Republic
"DeLillo's love and flair for language unite to tell us [...] something discomforting about mortality and something profound about the way we deal with it. It may be a novel superabounding with words, but none of them are wasted."
--The Guardian