i almost put this down on the first page, when i got to the line "the clouds that had gathered near and made of themselves rain all through the night were now intent on going elsewhere." "made of themselves rain"? i was sitting outside and wanted to read, though, and i didn't have another book on me, so i kept at it. there's a lot of pretentious phrasing in here, which kept kicking me out of the story. too many moments of saying "ugh!" out loud. but it wasn't completely horrible, because i got sucked into it a bit. but then it just seemed like the "hero" just wandered around stupidly, letting things happen to him. by part-way through i just wanted it to end. and then, at the end, i wanted to go back to a time before that annoying ending.
( )

The last page is a SERIOUS groaner, but after reading this I'm very, very interested in Jesse Ball's other stuff. Refrencewise, I would stick him in a pretty small category with Barthelme, Kafka, Ben Marcus and maybe even (same ballparkish)George Saunders. And Walser perhaps? Not that he hacks any of these dudes- I'm just trying to map him. This thing is so nuts I won't even try to review it in any way other than this: Samedi the Deafness is a very specific book. ( )

E' veloce, scritto in modo buffo. C'e' qualche buco di consecutio temporis che non è necessariamente onirico, ma solo una idea dell'autore - e la capisce solo lui. Non è necessariamente un thriller come riportato nel risvolto di copertina, non proprio un capolavoro. Ma è interessante: in alcuni punti mi ha ricordato Lost, non so perchè... Forse perche' l'ha scritto un 30enne americano che si nutre di serial tv...? ( )

I will admit to picking this one up simply because I liked the cover. (Someday, somebody should coin a trite little saying warning against that.) I was taken in, also, by the synopsis on the back cover:

One morning in the park James Sim discovers a man, crumpled on the ground, stabbed in the chest. With his last breath, the man whispers one word: Samedi. What follows is a spellbinding game of cat and mouse as James is abducted, brought to an asylum, and seduced by a woman in yellow. Who is lying? What is Samedi? And what will happen on the seventh day?

Sure, throw out the word "spellbinding" as flowery publishing-speak, but the rest of it sounds intriguing. And it was, as far as stories go. It kept me in suspense throughout with the oddity of the characters and setting. Not a bad job, for a first time fiction author. (Jesse Bell apparently has some published poetry under his belt, but I rarely grace that section of the Barnes & Noble.)

I'll give him high marks for style and story, but I found myself not caring at all about any of the characters. I think he was aiming for a post-modern thriller in the vein of Paul Auster's City of Glass, where what is happening is so much more important than who it is happening to, but I don't think anyone will be making a graphic novel of this one. (Was I clear enough? I meant to say, he fell short of his mark.) I'd categorize this with The Raw Shark Texts: a nice try.

A final thought: I'm interested in books that break from the standard layout and format. This one doesn't use indented paragraphs, opting instead for the spaced paragraphs of so many web pages these days (this one for example). And it uses a dash to predicate dialogue instead of quotation marks. Oddly enough, I've found that distracting in the past, but it seemed to work well here. ( )

David Eicke:

I’m at a bit of a loss as to what to say about Samedi the Deafness. I can say that Jesse Ball wrote it. I can say that it’s a book. But I feel that if I attempted to plot-summarize, my blurb would end up running down and covering up someone else’s cartoon, and no one likes it when that happens. I also can’t very well compare it to another book, or even two or three other books. All this Kafka-meets-Cussler-meets-Danielewski business tends to not make any sense. I found it in the Original Voices section when I visited Borders. They certainly got that right.
Not only did this book make me think, but also kept me so engaged that I read it faster than any novel since Angels & Demons four years ago. One can tell that Ball began writing as a poet. His words have a rarely achieved economy to them, and he’s managed to write the most beautiful love-scene I’ve ever come across. (And I’ve “come across” Toni Morrison.) This is a must for anyone looking for an original.