{"id":45054,"date":"2018-03-06T17:07:33","date_gmt":"2018-03-06T23:07:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/?p=45054"},"modified":"2018-03-06T17:07:33","modified_gmt":"2018-03-06T23:07:33","slug":"jesse-ball-book-event-at-off-square-books-march-7","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/jesse-ball-book-event-at-off-square-books-march-7\/","title":{"rendered":"Jesse Ball Book Event at Off Square Books March 7"},"content":{"rendered":"

New York author reads and signs his new book Census<\/em> at Off Square Books on Wednesday, March 7 at 5 pm.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Jesse Ball<\/strong> was born in New York. The author of fourteen books, most recently the novel How to Set a Fire and Why<\/em>. His works have been published to acclaim in many parts of t<\/span>he world and translated into more than a dozen languages. He is on the faculty at t<\/span>he School of the Art Institute of Chicago<\/strong>, won the 2008 Paris Review Plimpton Prize<\/strong>, was long-listed for the National Book Award<\/strong>. H<\/span>e was named one of Granta\u2019s Best Young American Novelists<\/strong> and has been a fellow of the NEA<\/strong>, Creative Capital<\/strong>, and the Guggenheim Foundation<\/strong>.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

A powerful and moving new novel from an award-winning, acclaimed author: in the wake of a devastating revelation, a father and son journey north across a tapestry of towns.<\/span><\/p>\n

When a widower receives notice from a doctor that he doesn\u2019t have long left to live, he is struck by the question of who will care for his adult son\u2014a son whom he fiercely loves, a boy with Down syndrome. With no recourse in mind, and with a desire to see the country on one last trip, the man signs up as a census taker for a mysterious governmental bureau and leaves town with his son.<\/span><\/p>\n

Traveling into the country, through towns named only by ascending letters of the alphabet, the man and his son encounter a wide range of human\u00a0<\/span>experience. While some towns<\/span>people welcome them into their homes, others who bear the physical brand of past censuses on their ribs are wary of their presence. When they press toward the edges of civilization, the landscape grows wilder, and the towns grow farther apart and more blighted by industrial decay. As they approach \u201cZ,\u201d the man must confront a series of questions: What is the purpose of the census? Is he complicit in its mission? And just how will he learn to say goodbye to his son?<\/span><\/p>\n

Mysterious and evocative, Census<\/strong><\/em> is a novel about free will, grief, the power of memory, and the ferocity of parental love, from one of our most captivating young writers.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

New York author reads and signs his new book Census at Off Square Books on Wednesday, March 7<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":261,"featured_media":45068,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2239],"tags":[11858,11860,11862,11861,11863,11857,11852,11859,10658],"class_list":["post-45054","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-literary-events","tag-2008-paris-review-plimpton-prize","tag-best-young-american-novelists","tag-creative-capital","tag-granta","tag-guggenheim-foundation","tag-how-to-set-a-fire-and-why","tag-jesse-ball","tag-national-book-award","tag-nea"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/jesseballfeat.jpg?fit=620%2C349&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45054","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/261"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45054"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45054\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45068"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45054"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45054"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45054"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}