I had an ambivalent response to Jesse Ball’s latest novel, Census, in part because of my closeness to its implied subject matter: being the caretaker of a child with a disability. In my review of the book, available now at Splice, I try to articulate this ambivalence with some reference to my own experiences:
There’s a gentle poignancy to Census which makes the book at once enlivening and yet strangely disappointing. Both its conceptual foundations and the assuredness of its style are the work of a rare creative intellect, but for some reason it doesn’t strive for the more ambitious, more profound things inherent in its premise. This isn’t a criticism meant to dismiss offhand the novel’s poignancy. It’s to wonder why Ball is content to do no more than prolong the poignancy, once it has been evoked, in a way that feels like a plateauing of the aspirations of a novel that has the potential to evoke so many other things. As beautiful and bewitching as it is, Census has been constructed atop a vast reservoir of promise which, beyond a certain point, remains untapped. Perhaps its sense of having been curtailed comes, bluntly, from opportunities overlooked or squandered, but there’s also the possibility that this sense has been created purposefully, that it is a structural expression of the narrator’s inwardness and reserve. Both of those scenarios seem equally plausible to me. I’m genuinely unable to draw a conclusion either way.
I should mention, however, that I’ve arrived at this ambivalent view of Census even though I suspect I’m closer to its base elements than many readers will be. In saying this, I mean to be on guard against the accusation that I’ve responded to the novel as an aesthete when I should be more attuned to its sentimental provocations: the helplessness of the child and the father’s unflagging dedication to his son, even or especially when confronted with the hostilities of others. But I, too, am the father of a child with a disability that affects every aspect of daily life. While my daughter does not have the same cognitive dimensions as Down’s Syndrome, it certainly does erect a wall between her and the world at large, and a large portion of my days — my years — have been spent chipping away at the invisible bricks and mortar around her.
Infinite Patience 