Jesse Ball's A Cure for Suicide: A Novel, is an interesting and challenging work. But its challenges, in the end, especially at the end, make this novel largely, negatively, enigmatic; and as such, I can’t recommend or offer unqualified praise for this work.
Ball creates a world where men’s memories are wiped clean for unknown reasons. It is implied that they suffered from mental breakdowns, or were perhaps otherwise dangerous (yet there is a female character under the same circumstances, so perhaps this is wrong). These men are sent to Villages to recover, gaining back, ever so slowly, their connection to human life. A female assistant monitors these men, helping them and taking notes on their progress. The whole process is surreal and uncanny.
This part of the novel is taut and interesting. Then Ball decides, at the end, to structure a long coda that is largely inexplicable (to me). I am not sure what his intentions are and why he decided to write this section that all but invites skimming. In the end, it killed the momentum of the previous section. One ends the book disappointed and deflated.
Ball creates a world where men’s memories are wiped clean for unknown reasons. It is implied that they suffered from mental breakdowns, or were perhaps otherwise dangerous (yet there is a female character under the same circumstances, so perhaps this is wrong). These men are sent to Villages to recover, gaining back, ever so slowly, their connection to human life. A female assistant monitors these men, helping them and taking notes on their progress. The whole process is surreal and uncanny.
This part of the novel is taut and interesting. Then Ball decides, at the end, to structure a long coda that is largely inexplicable (to me). I am not sure what his intentions are and why he decided to write this section that all but invites skimming. In the end, it killed the momentum of the previous section. One ends the book disappointed and deflated.
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