How to use this Page

Describe your latest book. I woke up one day from a sort of daydream with an idea for a book's structure, and for the thread of that book, one predicated upon the protagonist's loss of memory. In many cases, such memory losses are accidental or undesired, but in this case, it is an asked-for amnesia. [...]

This is one of those great novels that blends up truth and imagination so well that the lines between fact and fiction are so blurred you don’t even know where to begin trying to unravel it. It also doubles the intrigue especially the way Jesse Ball structures the story to unfurl piece by piece, layer by layer in such a way you are taken by surprise after surprise.

The story concerns the “Narito Disappearances”. A crime that baffled local authorities in Osaka where eight people had gone missing seemingly without a trace until one day a signed confession is handed in to police. The man who has made the confession is quickly arrested and doesn’t say another word. But this is not a whodunit because as the story goes on we see there is a much bigger and more important question that who.

“I am looking for this mystery. Not the mystery of what happened but the mystery of how”

One one level this is an ingenious crime novel. By telling the story in a different order the facts and “truth” aren’t revealed to us until we get to the beginning of the story. Rather than telling the story in chronological order we follow the path Jesse Ball’s investigation follows like a trail of breadcrumbs. Ball recounts his investigation through interview transcripts and internal notes as well as letters and other documents he is given along the way.  Each interview shines a little more light onto the story and leads Jesse to another piece of the puzzle.

I was so engrossed in this book it wasn’t until finishing it that I truly digested what I had read. In many ways this is a modern parable about the moral fallacies we place on our systems of justice but the skill and subtlety in which Jesse Ball tells the story gives it not just power but also emotional resonance. And by doing so Jesse Ball gets to the absolute core of what a crime story is and what it should mean when we read one.

Buy the book here…

Poet and novelist Ben Lerner has won The Believer Book Award for his novel, Leaving the Atocha Station. Below, we’ve linked to free samples of all the books on the shortlist.

Check it out: “In Lerner’s hilarious and sensitive novel, Leaving the Atocha Station, a young poet named Adam Gordon plays a deeply identifiable (self-doubting, pretentious, plagued-by-his-moment-in-history) fool. Lerner’s three previous books of (marvellous) poetry were no doubt the training ground for his incredible sensitivity to the nuances of thought, for his beautiful and flawless sentences, and for his power to evoke scenes in the mind. The book is short, but so dense and full of life and feeling.”

Heather Christle won The Believer Poetry Award for her collection, The Trees The Trees.

continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

While searching for reviews of a book, it is tough to sort through all the mixed Amazon reviews, publisher sites and mainstream critics. The Book Blogs Search will help you explore the work of hundreds of literary critics online–excluding results from other sites.

Check it out: “Looking for reviews of a book by real-life book bloggers? Tired of sifting through corporate sites in your regular Google search results? That’s why I created the Book Blogs custom search engine – all book bloggers, all the time! Whether you’re looking for other non-commercial reviews of a book you’ve just read, or want real readers’ opinions on a new book you’re considering, this is the place!”

If you want to include your book blog in the search engine, leave a comment at this link. Here is a sample search exploring book blogger content about Jesse Ball‘s heartbreaking fable, Curfew. (Via)

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.