Over at The Daily Beast, I wrote about Jesse Ball and reviewed his new novel, The Curfew. I think this is his best novel, but I also think there was a faddish irrational exuberance around his first two books, which could be charming but also too oblique, deliberately confusing in a way that didn’t serve the books very well. But I like the direction he’s going in, telling real narratives that still drawing from his avant-gardist toolkit. If he took all this and gave us a 300-page novel, rather than the thinner works he’s turning out now, I think he could surprise people.
My review starts:
Like mercury Jesse Ball’s first two novels, Samedi the Deafness and The Way Through Doors, shimmer and appear strangely alive, but his stories have a tendency to jolt or dash in unexpected directions, leaving the reader adrift. They also engage in so many clever tricks—fractured narratives, dreamlike flashbacks, puzzles, surreal folk tales, doppelgangers, odd symbols—that interpretations are fungible. That is, his books can be “about” almost whatever you decide they are.
The rest is here (scroll down).
5 Notes