Synopses & Reviews
***LONG-LISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD***
A man and a woman have moved into a small house in a small village. The woman is an “examiner,” charged with teaching the man a series of simple functions — this is a chair, this is a fork, this is how you meet people. Still, the man is haunted by strange dreams, and when he meets a charismatic, volatile young woman named Hilda at a party, it throws everything he has learned into question. What is this village? And why is he here?
A fascinating novel of love, illness, despair, and betrayal, A Cure for Suicide is the most captivating novel yet from one of our most audacious and original young writers.
Review
“Spellbinding...[Has] the simplicity of a fable and the drama of a psychological thriller.” The New York Times Book Review
Review
“One of the finest things Ball has ever written, a magical, gripping burst of emotional history.” Chicago Tribune
Review
“War doesn’t exist anymore, and neither do prisons, in the seemingly not-so-distant future where Jesse Ball’s magnetic, suspenseful, occasionally heart-rending fifth novel, A Cure for Suicide, unfolds....Hypnotic.” The Boston Globe
Review
“[A Cure for Suicide’s] tone and soft, murky edges make me think of the Gilead of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale — a place where it’s the quiet that haunts you, the incredibly short distances between the real and the fictional.” Jason Sheehan, NPR
About the Author
Jesse Ball was born in New York. The author of 14 books, most recently the novel How to Set a Fire and Why. His works have been published to acclaim in many parts of the world and translated into more than a dozen languages. He is on the faculty at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, won the 2008 Paris Review Plimpton Prize, was longlisted for the National Book Award, and has been a fellow of the NEA, Creative Capital, and the Guggenheim Foundation.
Jesse Ball on PowellsBooks.Blog
Jesse Ball has had a fervent, if initially small, following since the publication of his first novel,
Samedi the Deafness; and before that, an avid fan base for his poetry.
The Chicago Tribune called him a "young genius,” he's won the Plimpton Prize, and been longlisted for the National Book Award. His work stretches the boundaries of what fiction can do...
Read More»