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A review by p_t_b
The Divers' Game by Jesse Ball
3.0
eternal s/o to the tuscaloosa public library for buying new weird-ish fiction
spooky, oblique riff on the dystopian novel. has two handfuls of killer descriptions. clean and dynamic and unexpectedly readable. deliberately flattened and sort of the novelistic equivalent of the international airbnb aesthetic (shellacked concrete) but you know its extra spooky because all the succulents are dead from dystopia. there's a hunger-games-y totalitarian gruesome violence thing laid out, but then ball does the unexpected and doesn't really use as plot fodder - instead its just something that heightens dread and you honeslty sort of half forget about the brutal rules of the unnamed city (which i would wager is part of his point -- that we already live in dystopia). felt a little obvious in places but i slurped it down in a day and am still reflecting on what it meant, so my life has been affected a little by this book and that is why i read books.
spooky, oblique riff on the dystopian novel. has two handfuls of killer descriptions. clean and dynamic and unexpectedly readable. deliberately flattened and sort of the novelistic equivalent of the international airbnb aesthetic (shellacked concrete) but you know its extra spooky because all the succulents are dead from dystopia. there's a hunger-games-y totalitarian gruesome violence thing laid out, but then ball does the unexpected and doesn't really use as plot fodder - instead its just something that heightens dread and you honeslty sort of half forget about the brutal rules of the unnamed city (which i would wager is part of his point -- that we already live in dystopia). felt a little obvious in places but i slurped it down in a day and am still reflecting on what it meant, so my life has been affected a little by this book and that is why i read books.