This page lists the known reviews of Don DeLillo's 1976 novel, Ratner's Star.
America: August 7, 1976 - review of Ratner's Star by Gerald M. Knoll.
Atlantic: August, 1976 - review of Ratner's Star by Amanda Heller.
Los Angeles Times Book Review: July 11, 1976 - "Ratner's star just fails to twinkle" review of Ratner's Star by Nelson Algren.
Newsweek: June 7, 1976 - "Mandarin's Apprentice" review of Ratner's Star by Peter S. Prescott.
New Yorker: July 12, 1976 - briefly noted, unsigned review of Ratner's Star
New York Times: May 27, 1976 - "Kafka and Einstein Meet" review of Ratner's Star by C. Lehmann-Haupt.
New York Times Book Review: June 20, 1976 - page seven review of Ratner's Star by George Stade.
Ratner's Star is not only interesting, but funny (in a nervous kind of way). From it comes an unambiguous signal that DeLillo has arrived, bearing many gifts. He is smart, observant, fluent, a brilliant mimic and an ingenious architect. Too often, however, the razzle-dazzle seems that of a child prodigy, the conspicuous originality somewhat derivative, the dolar unearned, the desperation routine. And the flashbacks to Billy Twillig's family life seem vestigial remains, non-functioning traces of the novel this Menippean satire overgrew. All of DeLillo's books are in an anxious sweat for direct confrontations of the Zeitgeist - which, however, is like a nebula most clearly seen when you look past it or to its side. In Americana, the narrator tells us that "one of my main faults was a tendency to get blinded by the neon of an idea, never reaching truly inside it." and there is some of that in Ratner's Star. But the flashy neon seems pale amid the deep incandescence of this red giant of a book.
Washington Post Book World: June 13, 1976 - "Your Number is Up" review of Ratner's Star by J.D. O'Hara.