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A Cure for Suicide

Written by: Jesse Ball
Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell, Kirby Heyborne
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Publisher's Summary

Long-Listed for the National Book Award

From the author of Silence Once Begun, a beguiling new novel about a man starting over at the most basic level and the strange woman who insinuates herself into his life and memory.

A man and a woman have moved into a small house in a small village. The woman is an "examiner", the man her "claimant". The examiner is both doctor and guide, charged with teaching the claimant a series of simple functions: This is a chair, this is a fork, this is how you meet people. She makes notes in her journal about his progress: He is showing improvement, yet his dreams are troubling. One day the examiner brings the claimant to a party, where he meets Hilda, a charismatic but volatile woman whose surprising assertions throw everything the claimant has learned into question. What is this village? Why is he here? And who is Hilda?

A fascinating novel of love, illness, despair, and betrayal, A Cure for Suicide is the most captivating novel yet from one of our most audacious and original young writers.

©2015 Jesse Ball (P)2015 Random House Audio

What the critics say

"Elegant, spellbinding.... With the simplicity of a fable and the drama of a psychological thriller, Ball tells a story about starting over from nothing, reconstructing life from its most basic elements. These acts of narrative deconstruction highlight his strengths as a deeply questioning writer at home in fact as much as abstraction.... Ball deftly explores questions with the eye of a poet and the logic of a philosopher, revealing new facets with perfect timing and acuity. At each unforeseeable turn, A Cure for Suicide is a story Ball ensures we understand and, because it is subtle and breathtaking, we are happy to be told." (Sarah Gerard, The New York Times Book Review)

"War doesn't exist anymore, and neither do prisons, in the seemingly not-so-distant future where Jesse Ball's magnetic, suspenseful, occasionally heart-rending fifth novel, A Cure for Suicide, unfolds.... There are echoes of the Peter Weir movie The Truman Show and the Tom McCarthy novel Remainder.... Seeded with humor…. Ball also weaves in romance - the sweet triumph of a resilient heart.... Hypnotic." (Laura Collins-Hughes, The Boston Globe )
"Ball...craft[s] a full, satiating story.... A rich, tragic love story.... The heart of the claimant's motivations - a dense kernel buried and reshaped by the Process of the Villages - is revealed, richly adorned with sensuous scenes.... Ball is commenting on the texture of our strongest memories - jagged rocks that jut out amid the steady tide of daily life.... An enthralling thought experiment that considers the value of memory versus the pain of grief." (Maddie Crum, The Huffington Post)

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