Earlier this evening, I finished a very odd and entertaining book called Samedi the Deafness by a young author by the name of Jesse Ball.
It only took me two days to read this book. I wasn’t fifty pages into it before I was online at my local library’s site placing a hold on Ball’s next novel, The Way Through Doors.
Many reviewers, paid and otherwise, have been looking for just the right description for Ball’s writing style in Samedi the Deafness. I don’t think anyone, myself included has been really successful in that search.
My best attempt at pinning Ball’s writing style down would be to say it 
was a cross between Cormac McCarthy in his novel The Road and Virginia Woolf’s “stream of consciousness” style from To the Lighthouse. There might even be a dash of Rod Serling in there somewhere. What a trifecta, huh? It’s all meant to be highly complimentary, I assure you.
Ball’s story of James Sim, a mnemonist, is dark yet pleasingly thought-provoking. There is a moral to the story in there also. I’ll have to re-read the book a couple times to fully develop that thought, though.
From Publishers Weekly:
Unspecified cataclysm threatens in this unconventional debut spy fable from poet Ball. As mysterious suicides are staged daily on the White House lawn, James Sim, a loner and professional mnemonist (someone who can memorize large amounts of data), comes upon a man stabbed in a park. The man’s dying words cast light on garbled notes left by the White House suicides that threaten something very big and very bad in seven days’ time.
Bell is writing a novel here, but his poetic side does show through. I enjoyed this book. I think you might also. Go out and grab yourself a copy and give it a go.
Later…
~Eric
Check out Addall to grab yourself a cheap copy online.
