Description: "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) "Census is a vital testament to selfless love; a psalm to commonplace miracles; and a mysterious evolving metaphor. So kind, it aches." - David Mitchell, author of Cloud Atlas "This is a novel about how compassion and love move far beyond familial duty...Ball does an excellent job of revealing his [narrator''s] experience of life''s aches and joys...Ball provides a finish suitably heartbreaking and redeeming...An odd, poignant, vitalizing novel well worth the journey. - Los Angeles Review of Books "Extraordinary...A thrilling, imaginative work that explores both the limits and powers of language and empathy." - The National Book Review "Opens onto startling depths, posing a profound inquiry into the nature and the stakes of both observation and representation...Absorbing, reflective and deeply moving, Census is the most necessary kind of book--one that urges us to see and feel with all the wonder that the world deserves." - The Outline "Stirring...the book''s singular brilliance lies in its blending of fiction and memoir...Enchanting....This wise, category-defying book eloquently argues that we must also resist categorizing one another." - O, the Oprah Magazine "[Ball''s] most personal and best to date... [A] point -- about the beautiful varieties of perception, of experience -- made without sentimentality, burns at the core of the book, and of much of Ball''s work, which rails against the tedium of consensus, the cruelty of conformity." - New York Times "[Ball is] a writer of an elegantly poetic bent... Explore with Ball, fall into his quirky rhythms, and you''ll discover a burning plea for empathy. It will break your heart." - Entertainment Weekly "Some books resonate more deeply than others; they don''t merely reflect the world we''re presented with, but instead they refashioned it, even warp it, revealing essential truths. Ball''s poignant dedication to his late older brother Adam, who had Down syndrome, adds yet another layer of complexity to this surreal and powerful story....grounded by the most enduring theme of familial love." - Esquire "Ball''s poignant dedication to his late older brother Adam, who had Down syndrome, adds yet another layer of complexity to this surreal and powerful story....grounded by the most enduring theme of familial love." - Esquire "What there''s no question about is Ball''s alternately fierce and tender portrayal of parental love, of how we grieve for the things we haven''t yet lost...This is a book that will give you an expanded sense of what it means to have compassion, and what it means to love." - Nylon Magazine "With echoes of Paul Auster and Cormac McCarthy, Jesse Ball''s road novel is anything but traditional. The prolific, award-winning author tells the story of a father and his son who has Down syndrome, bringing out their connection in luminous and unexpected ways." - Entertainment Weekly "Strange and wonderful ... A melancholy and grief-filled book, Census also serves a healthy helping of compassion. I highly recommend it for fans of Paul Auster and Samantha Hunt." - LitHub "Emotionally riveting and shot through with the most pressing issues of our time, Ball''s exploration of humanity in modern America is not to be missed." - Popsugar "Heart-breaking." - BBC.com "Each new book from Jesse Ball reveals a new facet of his abilities as a writer; each one takes bold structural risks even as it ventures into heart-rending territories." - Vol 1Brooklyn "[Ball''s] most personal and best to date... [A] point -- about the beautiful varieties of perception, of experience -- made without sentimentality, burns at the core of the book, and of much of Ball''s work, which rails against the tedium of consensus, the cruelty of conformity. In one home, the father and son come across a couple whose daughter had Down syndrome. "I can see from the way you are with him that you see -- you see what we saw, that they experience the world just as we do, and maybe even, maybe even in a clearer light," the woman says. I can think of no higher praise for this novel than to echo what this woman tells the father for traveling with his son, for letting the world experience his gift: "I think you cannot know the good you do."" - New York Times "An ethereal meditation on love, the duty of a caretaker, and mortality." - Kirkus Reviews "If there''s a refrain running through [Ball''s] large body of work, it''s that compassion, kindness and empathy trump rules and authority of any kind...this damning but achingly tender novel holds open a space for human redemption, never mind that we have built our systems against it." - Los Angeles Times "Ball writes dystopia and fabulism with a hushed, poetic grace; as with his other work, Census promises to be beautifully and precisely wrought." - AV Club "In sync with Italo Calvino, Paul Auster, and Howard Norman, Ball takes a matter-of-fact approach to surreal situations, which he deepens with finely rendered and realistic thoughts and emotions. His latest mysterious, mesmerizing, and insightful fairy tale... [is] mind-bending, gorgeously well told, and profoundly moving." - Booklist (starred review) "Ball is too smart... to rely on cheap tricks of sentimentality...the result is an understated feat." - Washington Post

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