Eric Packer is a 28-year-old billionaire asset manager with the power to upset global markets, yet in the third-floor rotating bedroom of his penthouse suite, sleep eludes him.

A master of data and information, the protagonist may understand the hidden patterns of financial markets, but he has little understanding of himself. As his turn-of-the-millennium invincibility begins to crack, so his vision of the world as the mere embodiment of data and theory begins to crumble.

The "stir of restless identities" that keeps him awake at night creeps into his daylight perceptions, infusing them with uncertainty.

Combining the surreal poetic vision of The Body Artist with the historical acuity of Underworld, Don DeLillo spins an urban fairy tale of the information empire fighting its first battle with reality in Cosmopolis. The question is whether he succeeds in offering new insight into this cultural moment or whether his 13th novel is just the eloquent documentation of a familiar cliché: the bubble that had to burst.

The events of Cosmopolis occur during one day in April 2000. With DeLillo at the wheel, this drive across town involves not merely the quest for a haircut but Packer's catastrophic underestimation of the yen and consequent loss of millions of dollars, a presidential motorcade, a political protest, the emotional funeral march in honor of his favorite rap star and a movie in the making.

He entertains a string of visitors in his white stretch limousine, from business associates to his doctor, who performs a rubber-glove prostate exam while Packer flirts with his female chief of finance. Occasionally, he leaves the vehicle to spend time with his poetess wife of 22 days whom he barely knows, or to have sex with a longtime lover.

At times, the detached narrative spins from analysis into fantasy, blurring the already-implausible sequence of events. DeLillo's luminous prose soars unblinkingly through absurd juxtapositions: "He rode to the marble lobby in the elevator that played Satie. His prostate was asymmetrical. He went outside and crossed the avenue, then turned and faced the building where he lived. He felt contiguous with it. It was eighty-nine stories, a prime number, in an undistinguished sheath of hazy bronze glass. They shared an edge or boundary, skyscraper and man."

The narrative revolves around classic themes of time, history and death. But DeLillo is also dealing with something unique to our era: Through Packer's frustration with outdated language, he highlights the often-clumsy incorporation of new technology into culture, and the tensions between a "new and fluid reality" and the "habits of gravity and time".

From the window of his limousine, for example, he notices someone familiar standing next to an ATM. He can't place the man, and his mind drifts:

"He was thinking about automated teller machines. The term was aged and burdened by its own historical memory. It worked at cross-purposes, unable to escape the inference of fuddled human personnel and jerky moving parts. The term was part of the process that the device was meant to replace. It was anti-futuristic, so cumbrous and mechanical that even the acronym seemed dated."

Despite his frustration that culture isn't keeping up, Packer clings to vestiges of the past. He insists, for example, on going to the barbershop across town where his father used to take him. As the power of theory fails him, his need to find deeper meaning in his life is increased.

It's almost inevitable, then, that mortality homes in on Eric Packer as he crosses town in his limousine. His gross miscalculation of the yen has caused his financial downfall, but when his security guard warns him of a "credible threat" on his life, it seems that the currency of life and death steps in to fill the void. He shifts from barely accepting the possibility of his own death to anticipating and even engineering it. Rather than provoking fear, the threat "moved and quickened him. Now he could begin the business of living."

Packer is humbled into some moments of self-realization, but ultimately his transformation is half-hearted: He doesn't find meaning in his life, he doesn't embrace the mysteries of his soul. He's left staring into space, trying to rationalize death as he began the day trying to rationalize sleep.

The significance of the novel's final moment is elusive because Packer realizes he has lost his "sheer and reeling need to be," yet that "need to be" was never really there to be lost.

Fans of DeLillo will enjoy his artful prose and abruptly acute observations of contemporary existence. His style, as always, is unique and insightful, but for all he packs into that one day in April, he fails to show us anything we haven't seen before.

If you're looking for a deeper understanding of all that this short new millennium has brought us, this fairy tale is just an elegant dance across the surface.

Jessica Slater is the technology editor at the Rocky Mountain News.