A Cure for Suicide: A Novel
by Ball, Jesse
- Used
- Very Good
- Hardcover
- first
- Condition
- Very Good/Very Good
- ISBN 10
- 1101870125
- ISBN 13
- 9781101870129
- Seller
-
Woodlawn, Illinois, United States
Payment Methods Accepted
About This Item
New York, New York, U.S.A.: Pantheon Books, 2015. 1st Edition 1st Printing. Hardcover. Very Good/Very Good. 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall. Stated First Edition With The Number Line Indicating A First Printing. The Book Is Bound Within Boards With Blue Paper Over One Quarter Dark Blue Cloth. Silver Lettering On The Spine. The Book Has Bumps On The Lower Edges And Three On The Upper. No Chips, Tears Or Writing. The Unclipped Jacket Has Minor Creasing At The Edges.
Reviews
On Jun 28 2015, CloggieDownunder said:
“Time passed. After some number of days, one particular day arrived, and in the midst of that day, it was midday. The sun was shining so brightly overhead it seemed that every blade of grass could be made out, each from the others. It was a sort of harmony – nothing could be hidden, nothing at all beneath the sky”.
A Cure For Suicide is the fifth novel by prize-winning American author, Jesse Ball. It begins with a nameless man (the claimant) who is living in a house in a village (Gentlest Village) where he is taught the basic activities of daily living by a doctor/guide (the examiner). The claimant is told he almost died, and is now being healed. The Process of Villages is the treatment he will undergo, the cure for suicide. Set somewhere far into the future, or in a parallel universe, Ball’s world, and certainly many of the character names, have a slightly Scandinavian feel to it (perhaps not surprising, given his Icelandic wife).
If the reader can get past the first (somewhat bizarre) two thirds of the novel, then the discussion between the petitioner and the interlocutor forms an explanation of how the nameless man came to be going through the Process of Villages. While the lack of quotation marks for speech can be irritating, it is generally not a barrier to understanding who is speaking, except during the discussion with the interlocutor, when conversations reported at third or fourth remove create quite complicated sentences.
Ball’s style is simple and stark, but his descriptive prose is, nonetheless, evocative: “She sat at a desk with her back to him, writing long into the night as she always did. The light from the fixture in that room was shabby. It fell very bitterly over the room, and some of the light from a lamp in the street contested with it. The effect was: as she sat at her desk she looked like a figure in a woodcut. And she sat as still” and “The manager, a yellowed, rancid sort of man, the type who seldom clip his nails, who believes they need be clipped less often than you and I do….”are two examples.
Ball describes a world where depression and heartbreak appear to be eliminated by amnesiac treatments: what led to the nameless man’s therapy is a moving tale, and perhaps Ball is leading the reader to consider the ethics of medicalising grief. The conclusion will leave the reader wondering about the sincerity (or otherwise) of a key character. An interesting read. 3.5 stars
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Details
- Bookseller
- Granada Bookstore (Member IOBA) (US)
- Bookseller's Inventory #
- 045034
- Title
- A Cure for Suicide: A Novel
- Author
- Ball, Jesse
- Format/Binding
- Hardcover
- Book Condition
- Used - Very Good
- Jacket Condition
- Very Good
- Quantity Available
- 1
- Edition
- 1st Edition 1st Printing
- ISBN 10
- 1101870125
- ISBN 13
- 9781101870129
- Publisher
- Pantheon Books
- Place of Publication
- New York, New York, U.S.A.
- Date Published
- 2015
- Pages
- 239
- Size
- 8vo - over 7¾" - 9&f
- Keywords
- Man-Woman Relationships - Fiction; Romance Fiction. Psychological, Literary, General
Terms of Sale
Granada Bookstore (Member IOBA)
30 day return guarantee, with full refund including original shipping costs for up to 30 days after delivery if an item arrives misdescribed or damaged.
About the Seller
Granada Bookstore (Member IOBA)
Biblio member since 2013
Woodlawn, Illinois
About Granada Bookstore (Member IOBA)
I have a small inventory of about 23,000 titles. I sell from my own property and only on-line. I started selling on line in 1999. This is my Fourth year with Biblio.
Glossary
Some terminology that may be used in this description includes:
- Number Line
- A series of numbers appearing on the copyright page of a book, where the lowest number generally indicates the printing of that...
- Jacket
- Sometimes used as another term for dust jacket, a protective and often decorative wrapper, usually made of paper which wraps...
- Cloth
- "Cloth-bound" generally refers to a hardcover book with cloth covering the outside of the book covers. The cloth is stretched...
- First Edition
- In book collecting, the first edition is the earliest published form of a book. A book may have more than one first edition in...
- Bumps
- Indicates that the affected part of the book has been impacted in such a way so as to cause a flattening, indention, or light...
- Spine
- The outer portion of a book which covers the actual binding. The spine usually faces outward when a book is placed on a shelf....
- Edges
- The collective of the top, fore and bottom edges of the text block of the book, being that part of the edges of the pages of a...