Jesse Ball

Sep 26, 2024 | shelf-awareness.com | Richard Powers |Jesse Ball |Julia Park Tracey

In this week's issue, we spotlight Richard Powers's Playground, "a novel of spectacular thematic scope and surreal drama" in which a tiny French Polynesian island becomes the grand setting for the endeavors of a scientist, an artist, a billionaire, and a writer; and Question 7, an "astonishing and uncategorizable" memoir by Richard Flanagan, about the "chain of contingency" connecting his childhood in Tasmania, his father's wartime trauma, physicist Leo Szilard, and author H.G. Wells, among...

Sep 24, 2024 | nytimes.com | Jesse Ball

However, the legal system of this impersonal future deploys a shockingly personal device. The titular "repeat room" is a chamber that allows Abel to experience the story of the defendant. At the halfway point of the novel, Abel enters the repeat room and Ball makes a bold narrative choice: The book you were reading ends, and a new one begins. The second half of "The Repeat Room"presents a shift in character, setting and style.

Feb 15, 2024 | books.catapult.co | Jesse Ball

Hardcover Ebook On Sale: | $27 9781646221400 | Hardcover 5 x 8 | 256 pages On Sale: | $14.99 9781646221417 | Ebook | 256 pages Franz Kafka meets Yorgos Lanthimos in this provocative new novel from one of America’s most brilliant and distinctive writers In a speculative future, Abel, a menial worker, is called to serve in a secretive and fabled jury system. At the heart of this system is the repeat room, where a single juror, selected from hundreds of candidates, is able to inhabit the...