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A Cure for Suicide
- A Novel
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell, Kirby Heyborne
- Length: 7 hrs and 48 mins
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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.
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)