“White Noise” by Don DeLillo reminded me of Woody Allen movies from the start. This novel is mainly dialogue driven and the dialogues are absurd and strange and often philosophical.

The main theme of the book — fear of death and how people succeed or fail to cope with it — emerges later in the book but then really dominates it. There is a drug that’s supposed to obliterate the fear of death, but actually fails. A married couple argues about who of them wants to die first, because they fear to be left alone while also fearing to die. And a teenager plans to spend a long time with snakes in a box. His goal is to make it into the Guinness book of records. Or maybe it’s also to defy death?

As with a Woody Allen movie, when I sometimes don’t know exactly what it actually was about, I enjoyed this novel for the fun action and dialogues and was inspired by its philosophical discourses on the fear of death.