Jesse Ball. (2018). Census: A Novel. HarperCollins.

Jesse Ball. 2018. Census: A Novel. HarperCollins.

Jesse Ball, Census: A Novel. HarperCollins, 2018.

Jesse Ball. Census: A Novel. HarperCollins, 2018.

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     Jesse Ball is the author of fifteen books, and his works have been translated into more than a dozen languages. He is on the faculty at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, a winner of The Paris Review's Plimpton Prize for Fiction and the Gordon Burn Prize, and was long-listed for the National Book Award.

   • name: Jesse Ball

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Census

fullDescription

After a devastating revelation, a father and son journey across a tapestry of towns in award–winning author Jesse Ball's thought-provoking novel Census.
When a widower learns he doesn't have long left to live, he wonders who will care for his adult son whom he fiercely loves—a son with Down syndrome. With no recourse in mind and a desire to see the country, the man becomes a census taker for a mysterious governmental bureau and takes his son on the trip.
Traveling into the country, through towns named only by ascending letters of the alphabet, father and son encounter a wide range of human experience. While some townspeople welcome them into their homes, others who bear the physical brand of past censuses on their ribs are wary of their presence. Pressing toward the edges of civilization, the landscape grows wilder, and the towns grow farther apart and more blighted by industrial decay. As they approach "Z," the man confronts a series of questions: What is the purpose of the census? Is he complicit in its mission? And just how will he learn to say good-bye to his son?
Mysterious and evocative, Census is a novel about free will, grief, the power of memory, and the ferocity of parental love.
"A vital testament to selfless love; a psalm to commonplace miracles; and a mysterious evolving metaphor. So kind, it aches." —David Mitchell
"[Jesse Ball] has combined Kafka's paranoia with Whitman's earnest American grain to found a fictional kingdom of genial doom and melancholia." —New York Times
"Truly otherworldly writing in the best ways that Borges and Calvino have shown to be possible." —Forbes

reviews

1. • premium: False
   • source: New York Times
   • content:

     "[Ball's] most personal and best to date... [A] point — about the beautiful varieties of perception, of experience — made without sentimentality, burns at the core of the book, and of much of Ball's work, which rails against the tedium of consensus, the cruelty of conformity." — New York Times

     "Census is a vital testament to selfless love; a psalm to commonplace miracles; and a mysterious evolving metaphor. So kind, it aches." — David Mitchell, author of Cloud Atlas

     "If there's a refrain running through [Ball's] large body of work, it's that compassion, kindness and empathy trump rules and authority of any kind...this damning but achingly tender novel holds open a space for human redemption, never mind that we have built our systems against it." — Los Angeles Times

     "With echoes of Paul Auster and Cormac McCarthy, Jesse Ball's road novel is anything but traditional. The prolific, award-winning author tells the story of a father and his son who has Down syndrome, bringing out their connection in luminous and unexpected ways." — Entertainment Weekly

     "Strange and wonderful ... A melancholy and grief-filled book, Census also serves a healthy helping of compassion. I highly recommend it for fans of Paul Auster and Samantha Hunt." — LitHub

     "Ball is too smart... to rely on cheap tricks of sentimentality...the result is an understated feat." — Washington Post

     "Ball writes dystopia and fabulism with a hushed, poetic grace; as with his other work, Census promises to be beautifully and precisely wrought." — AV Club

     "Emotionally riveting and shot through with the most pressing issues of our time, Ball's exploration of humanity in modern America is not to be missed." — Popsugar

     "[Ball is] a writer of an elegantly poetic bent... Explore with Ball, fall into his quirky rhythms, and you'll discover a burning plea for empathy. It will break your heart." — Entertainment Weekly

     "Ball's poignant dedication to his late older brother Adam, who had Down syndrome, adds yet another layer of complexity to this surreal and powerful story....grounded by the most enduring theme of familial love."
     — Esquire

     "Each new book from Jesse Ball reveals a new facet of his abilities as a writer; each one takes bold structural risks even as it ventures into heart-rending territories." — Vol 1Brooklyn

     "Heart-breaking." — BBC.com

     "What there's no question about is Ball's alternately fierce and tender portrayal of parental love, of how we grieve for the things we haven't yet lost...This is a book that will give you an expanded sense of what it means to have compassion, and what it means to love." — Nylon Magazine

     "This is a novel about how compassion and love move far beyond familial duty...Ball does an excellent job of revealing his [narrator's] experience of life's aches and joys...Ball provides a finish suitably heartbreaking and redeeming...An odd, poignant, vitalizing novel well worth the journey. — Los Angeles Review of Books

     "Stirring...the book's singular brilliance lies in its blending of fiction and memoir...Enchanting....This wise, category-defying book eloquently argues that we must also resist categorizing one another." — O, the Oprah Magazine

     "Opens onto startling depths, posing a profound inquiry into the nature and the stakes of both observation and...

2. • premium: True
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     Starred review from November 6, 2017
     Ball’s latest (after How to Set a Fire and Why) is an intensely moving and dazzlingly imagined journey of a dying father and his disabled adult son as they make their way through a sometimes recognizable yet ultimately mysterious terrain. The unnamed father, a widower, narrates the novel as he travels with his son as a census taker for an obscure governmental agency, entering the homes of strangers and marking them with a tattoo on their ribs to indicate that they have been counted. For the narrator, the census is both a reckoning with the human world that he is about to leave behind and a way of saying goodbye to his son by finally taking the trip across the country that he and his late wife had often spoken of. As they head toward Z, the ultimate destination, their encounters with others along the way reveal the beautiful yet brutal range of human experience. A brief preface to the novel reveals that Ball’s older brother, who had Down syndrome, died at a young age, and the novel is an effort to create a portrait of the person he had been through the eyes of his caretaker, a role the young Ball imagined eventually inhabiting. This novel is a devastatingly powerful call for understanding and compassion.

3. • premium: True
   • source:
   • content:

     November 1, 2017
     

     A Granta Best of Young American Novelists and NYPL Young Lion whose A Cure for Suicide was long-listed for the National Book Award, Ball is getting in-house raves for this affecting story. A widower with only a short time to live worries about the son he loves deeply, who has Down syndrome, and hopes he can give them more time together by signing up as a census taker for a mysterious governmental bureau. The road trip that results leaves him with as many questions as answers. With a 75,000-copy first printing.

     Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

4. • premium: True
   • source:
   • content:

     January 15, 2018
     A terminally ill widower and his son set off on a final journey to see the country.After a jarring but welcome stylistic break in his last novel (How to Set a Fire and Why, 2016), Ball returns to his spare philosophical style, employed here to portray a man with Down syndrome in tribute to the author's late brother. The narrator is this man's father, a widowed doctor who has recently learned that he has a heart condition that will be fatal. In lieu of simply succumbing to his illness, the doctor accepts a job as a census taker for a mysterious government entity that has him interviewing and subsequently tattooing its country's citizens, spread across regions designated from A to Z. It's a peculiar mission with equally outlandish instructions like "A census taker must above all attempt, even long for, blankness," and "Never expect help from anyone. There is no help for you." Along the way, the two men encounter strangers of all sorts, some fearful, some odd, and some with deep compassion for the census taker and his charge. About halfway to Z, the census taker abdicates his responsibility and creates his own mission: "I, who have in some ways always misbehaved, even as a surgeon, would misbehave going forward, I decided. I would go into each house and home, each town and village, and try to discover what was worthy of note." Written in stark, unembellished prose, the story is permeated by an undeniable sense of loss. We learn about the doctor's late wife, an avant-garde performing artist, and we learn about the man himself, even as he prepares to leave this life. But the boy is largely absent. As Ball notes in an opening statement, it's a "hollow" story with a lost boy at the center of it, the tale wrapped around him like a protective cloak.An ethereal meditation on love, the duty of a caretaker, and mortality.

     COPYRIGHT(2018) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

5. • premium: True
   • source:
   • content:

     January 1, 2018
     

     Ball (How To Set a Fire and Why) here offers a quietly epic work. The narrator, a widower aware that he is dying from a heart condition, decides to travel through an unnamed country with his adult son to help take the census. From reading the preface, we understand the son has Down syndrome, though this isn't explicitly stated. The father's plan is that he will die along the way and send his son home by train to a friend he trusts. The census-taking involves tattooing each person counted on a particular rib, and as the story moves along, each visit to a new location is replete with human insights and additional details about the narrator's life. (E.g., he was a surgeon, and his wife was a famous mime.) With the narrator's health continuing to decline, more truths are revealed until ultimately the son must leave the narrator to face death alone. VERDICT Focusing on how to protect our own after we are gone in the face of ignorance, cruelty, and disregard, this work combines a travel adventure with a meditation on human kindness to create a deeply perceptive work of essential truths. Highly recommended for all readers. [See Prepub Alert, 10/9/17.]--Henry Bankhead, San Rafael P.L., CA

     Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

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After a devastating revelation, a father and son journey across a tapestry of towns in award–winning author Jesse Ball's thought-provoking novel Census.
When a widower learns he doesn't have long left to live, he wonders who will care for his adult son whom he fiercely loves—a son with Down syndrome. With no recourse in mind and a desire to see the country, the man becomes a census taker for a mysterious governmental bureau and takes his son on the trip.
Traveling into the country, through towns named only by ascending letters of the alphabet, father and son encounter a wide range of human experience. While some townspeople welcome them into their homes, others who bear the physical brand of past censuses on their ribs are wary of their presence. Pressing toward the edges of civilization, the landscape grows wilder, and the towns grow farther apart and more blighted by industrial decay. As they approach "Z," the man confronts a series of questions: What is...

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