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Published Mar 2018
272 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
A powerful and moving new novel from an award-winning, acclaimed author: in the wake of a devastating revelation, a father and son journey north across a tapestry of towns.
When a widower receives notice from a doctor that he doesn't have long left to live, he is struck by the question of who will care for his adult son - a son whom he fiercely loves, a boy 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.
Traveling into the country, through towns named only by ascending letters of the alphabet, the man and his son encounter a wide range of human experience. While some townspeople welcome them into their homes, others who bear the physical brand of past censuses on their ribs are wary of their presence. When they press toward the edges of civilization, the landscape grows wilder, and the towns grow farther apart and more blighted by industrial decay. As they approach "Z," the man must confront a series of questions: What is the purpose of the census? Is he complicit in its mission? And just how will he learn to say good-bye to his son?
Mysterious and evocative, Census is a novel about free will, grief, the power of memory, and the ferocity of parental love, from one of our most captivating young writers.
BookBrowse Review
"Unfortunately, I abandoned Jesse Ball's Census before completion. I read and enjoyed his previous novel, How to Set a Fire and Why. This one is very different, though – perhaps closer to his usual style, based on accounts I've read from others: strange, dreamy, philosophical; altogether hard to latch onto. The author opens by saying this is a tribute to his brother, who had Down's syndrome and died 20 years ago. But in the portion I read, the character with Down's syndrome has little apparent presence or personality. People who like dystopian allegories, such as those by José Saramago, may well enjoy this, but it wasn't for me." - Rebecca Foster
Other Reviews
"Starred Review. Ball's latest is an intensely moving and dazzlingly imagined journey...This novel is a devastatingly powerful call for understanding and compassion." - Publishers Weekly
"Starred Review. Ball's mind-bending, gorgeously well told, and profoundly moving fable celebrates a father's love for his son, whose quintessence is to inspire people to be their better selves." - Booklist
"Starred Review. Focusing on how to protect our own after we are gone in the face of ignorance, cruelty, and disregard, this work combines a travel adventure with a meditation on human kindness to create a deeply perceptive work of essential truths. Highly recommended for all readers." - Library Journal
This information about Census was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Photo: Joe Lieske
Jesse Ball was born in New York in 1978. The author of fourteen books, most recently, the novel How To Set a Fire and Why. His works have been published to acclaim in many parts of the world and translated into more than a dozen languages. He is on the faculty at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, won the 2008 Plimpton Prize, was longlisted for the National Book Award, and has been a fellow of the NEA, Creative Capital, and Guggenheim Foundation.
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