City of Belmont - Ruth Faulkner Public Library

‘Jesse Ball [is] among our most compelling and daring writers today.’ LA Review of Books When a widower receives notice from a doctor that he doesn’t have long to live, he is struck by the question of who will care for his adult son—a son whom he fiercely loves, a son with Down syndrome. With no recourse in mind, and with a desire to see the country on one last trip, the man signs up as a census-taker for a mysterious governmental bureau and leaves town with his son. Jesse Ball (1978–). Novelist, absurdist. Born in New York. His many and varied works are beloved in a dozen languages. ‘Ball indulges our natural curiosity about what’s real and simultaneously repudiates the idea that it matters. This is a writer too interested in the transformative power of language to come down on one banal side or the other.’ Age ‘Census is a vital testament to selfless love; a psalm to commonplace miracles; and a mysterious evolving metaphor. So kind, it aches.’ David Mitchell, author of Cloud Atlas ‘A young genius who hits all of the right notes.’ Chicago Tribune ‘A poet by trade, Ball understands the economy of language better than most fiction writers today.’ Huffington Post ‘Strange, brief, beguiling…Ball’s talents, both as a storyteller and a writer of prose, tend to burst the borders of his structures.’ James Wood, New Yorker, on Silence Once Begun

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Census