"[A] brilliant work of speculative fiction that calls to mind Kafka's
The Trial, Nabokov's
Invitation to a Beheading and, most prominently, Bradbury's
Fahrenheit 451." –
New City Chicago "Few authors have the guts or the skill to pull off a book like this." –
Time Out Chicago "There is a hushed and elegiac quality to this nocturne of a novel. . . . Ball possesses a remarkably mythic sensibility, achieving a spare yet merciful mode that brings Borges, Calvino, and Simic to mind. Solemn beauty, beguiling invention, and unnerving insights into insidious tyranny and terror and depthless sorrow make for a haunting dystopian tale." –
Booklist "[A] delicately etched nightmare." –
Kirkus Reviews "Jesse Ball once again manages to deliver a devastating blow with a deceptively small package. In his third novel, father and daughter William and Molly live as happy a life as they can under a shady, authoritarian regime. The horrors are only hinted at in Ball's poetic and economic style, but the love among family shines through it all." –
AM New York "Written in clipped and brutal prose . . . [the] narrative is buoyed by nuanced characters. . . . Ball's ideas and heart make this a very compelling read." –
Publisher's Weekly