The novel intertwines death and creation, centering on the making of a commercial glorifying a serial killer's last days.

Bert, the commercial's director, must also deal with two terminally ill patients, first his stepfather Albert, then his mother-in-law Joyce.

Prominent film makers and critics, including Robert Bresson and Manny Farber, are also referred to.

The novel begins (with deceptively straightforward text) by introducing Bert and Belle, "a truly happy pair", a married couple living in a suburb near Manhattan.

Bert returns to a work conference, attended by Samuels and one of his dedicated lieutenants, GreenHurstWood (usually referred to as GHW).

Bert explains what the meaning of acting is, partly in terms of anecdotes about his "old pal, Marty Heidigger (sic)".

At the next rehearsal, which took place in a spacious duplex facing Union Square, Gottfriedina and Flowers are both present.

Bert talks, at length, about the killing and the killer's attempted escape and the media circus waiting for his arrest.

Brodsky has his immense gifts under control, and real madness is allowed to shine forthWhile the stylistic excesses force the reader into a peculiarly tenacious reading zone, We Can Report Them is finally agreeable as it is a novel that resonates.

[E]ven when the story is intelligible... it doesn't much matter, except as a sounding board for various abstract concepts.Brodsky belongs to the avant-garde school of novelists who dispense with plot in favor of the referential possibilities of language.

... Critical opinion is divided on Brodsky's 10 previous works of fiction, and the writer has alternately been read as a brilliant prose stylist and an off-putting obscurantist.