New book review today on WKAR’s Current State. This time I take on the new literary fiction by Jesse Ball, A Cure for Suicide.

You can listen to my new review here: http://wkar.org/post/book-review-jesse-balls-cure-suicide

If you would rather read my review, you can do so below.

Hey, did you know Current State has a podcast? If you subscribe, you can download episodes and segments (and you can find me every other Thursday). Here is a link to find it on iTunes- https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/wkar-fm-current-state/id594609653?mt=2

If you would like to check out A Cure for Suicide (and you should) you can find it on Amazon here. If you want to check out my other book reviews for WKAR’s Current State, you can do so via links on this page.

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Book Review: A Cure for Suicide by Jesse Ball

German writer Jean Paul once said “Art is indeed not the bread, but the wine of life.” And with that I agree. It’s not about sustaining, but enriching life. When I find a book that I consider a work of art, it puts a bounce in my steps. It inspires me. And the new novel by author Jesse Ball is in my opinion a work of art.

A Cure for Suicide is a story about a new kind of therapy, though it’s not clear what ailment it is supposed to be curing. The patients begin like newborns, with no idea of who they are or what is going on around them. They are put in communities called villages where they slowly are brought back into society. Someone called an examiner lives with them and acts as a friend while also taking careful notes of their transition back to normal life. It’s hard not to feel uncomfortable with this creepy scenario. We are given nothing of what life was like for these people before their therapy started. Instead, we have only a strangely sanitized version of their new life devoid of any context or history.

No one in this book has a name, or at least one we can know is real or not. In fact, it’s not clear that any aspect of the environment around them is even real. Could this world be in thec characters’ heads or something acted out like in a play? In many ways, Jesse Ball and his new book reminds me of the novel In Watermelon Sugar by Richard Brautigan, one of my favorite writers. Both exist in an heightened version of our reality where nothing is as it seems.

You might call A Cure for Suicide a mystery novel, but it’s unlike any other whodunnit you’ve ever read. In this book, the crime has already occurred and the story follows the victim as he tries to become someone new. The question of what happened before the villages is always lingering in the background. The problem is that it is not a mystery to be solved.  The whole point of the therapy is to erase any memory of the patient’s past life.  If they remember, then their treatment would have to begin all over again. As a reader, you are dying to know what happened to these people, but you don’t necessarily want the characters to figure it out.

What makes this book a work of art is Ball’s creative prose. The first half of the tale feels like a series of stalled thoughts. Instead of a flowing narrative, the writing is something more like literary hiccups. A conversation here about nothing, a description of the patient, brief moments between characters and little else. The story slowly unfolds in a way that gives just enough information to keep you reading. Later, the structure changes to one of violent expulsion. We get long, nonstop paragraphs with stream of consciousness sentences. The speaker doesn’t take a breath and the readers can’t take one either. It is as if the character and the writer both have a demon inside and they have to say everything to get it out.

I’ll admit that A Cure for Suicide will not be for everyone, just like not all art is for everyone. Where one person sees a thought-provoking abstract painting, others just see scribbles. Some might see this book as arrogant or chaotic, but to me, it was brilliant. It reminds me of something Walt Disney once said, “I don’t know if it’s art, but I know I like it.”

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Goodreads Book Giveaway

Permanent Spring Showers

by Scott D. Southard

Giveaway ends October 28, 2015.

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at Goodreads.

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