The Repeat Room: A Novel

by Jesse Ball Narrated by Erik Bloomquist

Overview

Franz Kafka meets Yorgos Lanthimos in this provocative new novel from one of America's most brilliant and distinctive writers



In a speculative future, Abel, a menial worker, is called to serve in a secretive and fabled jury system. At the heart of this system is the repeat room, where a single juror, selected from hundreds of candidates, is able to inhabit the defendant's lived experience, to see as if through their eyes.



The case to which Abel is assigned is revealed in the novel's shocking second act. We receive a record of a boy's broken and constrained life, a tale that reveals an illicit and passionate psycho-sexual relationship, its end as tragic as the circumstances of its conception.



Artful in its suspense, and sharp in its evocation of a byzantine and cruel bureaucracy, The Repeat Room is an exciting and pointed critique of the nature of knowledge and judgment, and a vivid framing of Ball's absurd and nihilistic philosophy of love.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

06/03/2024

In the loosely sketched dystopian world of Ball’s blistering latest (after the memoir Autoportrait), trials are conducted by ordinary people who gain access to the mind of the accused. Several decades into the future, following the dissolution of an unnamed country’s “primitive” criminal justice system, garbageman Abel Cotter is chosen to act as judge and juror in the trial of a teenage boy for an unspecified capital crime. (One way the totalitarian government remains in control is by keeping its laws secret, so people never know whether they’re breaking them.) In the second of the book’s two parts, Ball switches to the unnamed boy’s point of view, telling the story of his life as it’s witnessed by Abel through a kind of consciousness-melding technology. It would be a spoiler to reveal the details of the boy’s lurid and painful story, which casts him as a victim of his circumstances. Ball’s tragic character study of the accused stands in stark relief to the chilling depiction of the court system and its low estimation of human life (“The more people think people have value, the worse they are at killing them,” an official explains to Abel). This strikes a chord. (Sept.)

From the Publisher

Literary Hub, A Most Anticipated Book of the Year
The Millions, A Most Anticipated Book of Summer

"Ball is one of our most interesting working writers—his novels are always, it seems, trying to do a little bit more than just tell a story." —Emily Temple, Literary Hub

"A Kafkaesque descent into a legal system . . . The contrast between the first and second halves of Ball's mesmerizing novel is stark and effective . . . A fast-paced tilt-a-whirl of a social commentary absurdist novel, with insights that will leave readers feeling complicit." —Shelf Awareness

"[Ball's] style and the unsettling atmosphere deliver a uniquely uncomfortable experience . . . A provocative vision of a world desperately in search of basic human compassion." —Kirkus Reviews

"Blistering . . . Ball’s tragic character study of the accused stands in stark relief to the chilling depiction of the court system and its low estimation of human life . . . This strikes a chord." —Publishers Weekly

"This novel forces tough moral questions on readers, and will make you wonder what it means to be a good person—and, ultimately, if it even matters." —Daniella Fishman, The Millions

Product Details

BN ID:	2940192057988
Publisher:	HighBridge Company
Publication date:	09/24/2024
Edition description:	Unabridged