Silence once begun

Review by New York Times Review

IN JESSE BALL'S absorbing, finely wrought fourth novel, "Silence Once Begun," a journalist also named Jesse Ball tells the story of a thread salesman who makes a wager with two people in a bar. Upon losing that wager, he signs an extremely detailed confession to a crime he didn't commit - the kidnapping of eight people from a Japanese town called Narito over the course of four months. The kidnappings, known to the populace as the "Narito Disappearances," have spurred a moral panic that demands a scapegoat. A man who would offer himself up as that scapegoat is taking the most desperate of chances, asking all his fellow men for some proof that he should continue to live. "Many people knew him," Ball writes of the salesman, Oda Sotatsu, "but few could say they had any sense of what he was really like. They had not suspected that he was really like anything. It seemed he merely was what he did: a quiet daily routine of work and sleep." The narrator is sympathetic to this quiet man's rebellion against "the stretching on seemingly pointlessly, of life, day after day with no one to call it off." Sotatsu raises the stakes even higher by refusing to defend or explain himself, marking time in silence "in a jail where the sun came south through the window on an avenue all its own where it was forced to stoop and stoop again until when it arrived at its little house it was hardly the sun at all, just a shabby old woman." The character Jesse Ball knows a little about voluntary silence and the uncanny distance it effects, replacing a known personality with a puzzle; the narrator's interest in Sotatsu's silence stems from the breakdown of his marriage following his wife's abrupt decision to stop speaking to him. Sotatsu's refusal to speak breaks bonds too. His brother's recollections of him conflict with those of his sister, and both siblings' memories are wildly at odds with those of their parents. In the absence of the verbal continuity between past and present selves that speaking provides, the various strands of his life have separated. Sotatsu's mother repeatedly tells him a happy story of his childhood, and he listens. Two prison guards talk to him about his future, describing his forthcoming execution, and he listens. The most pressing questions put to Sotatsu concern the whereabouts of the people he's believed to have kidnapped, and whether they can still be saved. But even if Sotatsu wanted to add his voice to those of the journalists, prison guards and members of his family, talking wouldn't do any good. Mrs. Oda, the prisoner's mother, offers a telling glimpse of Sotatsu as a schoolboy. Having botched an important geometry presentation with the mayor in attendance, he tried to explain his error but was nonetheless awarded a medal, "since it had already been made." His silence is interpreted in various ways. Some officials see it as a tactic. "If you think being silent is going to help you," one interrogator warns, menacingly leaving the sentence unfinished. To others Sotatsu's withdrawal makes it impossible to place any faith in his innocence: "Here is an animal. Here is a person who wants nothing to do with being human." Because he doesn't speak he's denied blankets to sleep on, and it's impossible to ascertain whether he's on hunger strike or simply starving himself. To Jito Joo, the woman who loves Sotatsu (and who had a hand in his destruction - she delivered his confession to the police), his silence proves his magnificence: "A great lover has a life that prepares him for his love He sleeps inside of his own heart." In this book Ball the poet and novelist joins forces with "Ball" the lovelorn journalist to relate a piercing tragedy in a language that combines subtlety and simplicity in such a way that it causes a reader to go carefully, not wanting to miss a word. HELEN OYEYEMI'S new novel, "Boy, Snow, Bird," has just been published.

Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [March 23, 2014]

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Review by Booklist Review

Ball is alarmed, entranced, haunted, and enlightened by silence. A key element in his previous novel, The Curfew (2011), it plays a more harrowing role in this meditative investigation into a tragedy of injustice. After his beloved wife suddenly turns silent, a writer named Jesse Ball becomes obsessed with a 1977 criminal case in Japan involving the disappearance of 11 villagers. A confession signed by Oda Sotatsu, a quiet, dutifully employed 29-year-old man, was delivered to the police station. Sotatsu was arrested and incarcerated and soon stopped speaking. He remained silent during his trial and was promptly executed. Three decades later, Ball travels to Japan to interview Sotatsu's family and find the mystery woman who often visited the doomed man. Ball's spare, meditative, Rashomon-like novel, a work of exceptional control and exquisite nuance, consists of contradictory transcripts, poetic letters, a striking fable, and melancholy musings. Enigmatic black-and-white photographs add to the subtly cinematic mode. With echoes of Franz Kafka, Paul Auster, and Kobo Abe, Ball creates an elegantly chilling and provocatively metaphysical tale.--Seaman, Donna Copyright 2010 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

The enigmatic silence of a wrongfully accused suspect is at the core of the new novel from Ball (The Curfew). In 1977 Japan, Oda Sotatsu is a mild-mannered thread salesman who falls in with a couple of wild characters-the charismatic Sato Kakuzo and the beautiful Jito Joo. After losing a wager to Kakuzo, Oda signs a document claiming responsibility for a series of mysterious disappearances that have baffled authorities in the region. Later, while on trial and in prison, rather than profess his innocence or defend himself, Oda stops speaking. Years later, a journalist, also named Jesse Ball, becomes fascinated with the case and attempts to track down and interview Oda's family and friends. Most of the novel is written as transcripts of these interviews, which layer together, Rashomon-like, to form an increasingly mysterious and conflicted portrait of Oda and his alleged crime. This methodical presentation makes for coolly suspenseful reading, but it's soon clear there is more underlying Ball's investigation than meets the eye. For example, when he tracks down Joo, the normally dispassionate interviewer is overcome with emotion and makes a lengthy and unexpected personal confession. Even so, the truth remains elusive until the final pages. The novel is intriguing and offers a riveting portrait of the Japanese criminal justice system (a guard's description of the execution procedure is particularly chilling); but how readers react to it will largely depend on whether they feel some of the final twists deepen or cheapen the material. (Jan.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

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Review by Library Journal Review

Paris Review Plimpton Prize-winning novelist Ball's enigmatic book purports to be based in part on fact. Set in Japan during the 1970s, the story, narrated by journalist Jesse Ball, tells of Oda Sotatsu, who, disillusioned with life, signs a false confession based on a wager. He claims responsibility for the disappearance of more than a dozen elderly people. Oda is sent to jail but refuses to speak and is convicted and executed. The novel describes the events through a series of interviews with Oda's family; with Sato Kakuzo, the man who induced Oda to sign the confession; and with Oda's accomplice, a woman named Jito Joo. The effect of the confession on the local community is dramatic; Oda's family is shunned, his father beaten and refused medical treatment. It's not until the end of the novel that we come to understand the nature of the confession-and of the crime as well. VERDICT This multifaceted narration of a seemingly inexplicable miscarriage of justice cloaked as a political statement creates a kind of Brechtian drama; the detached perspective is chilling, though strangely intriguing. [See Prepub Alert, 7/8/13.]-Henry Bankhead, Los Gatos Lib., CA (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

"Jesse Ball" investigates a series of disappearances, a wrongful conviction and a love story in modern-day Osaka, Japan. "I am trying to relate to you a tragedy." So begins the fourth novel from Ball (The Curfew, 2011, etc.), who makes readers' heads spin yet again with a darker but more tempered version of his strange, almost whimsical multimedia creations. It's worth remembering that the author started as a poet, and he is as interested in visual mediums as he is in narrative ones. It's also worth remembering, even as the author says this work of fiction is partially based on fact, that Ball has been known to teach classes on the art of lying. This somewhat noirish thriller has more in common with Ball's uncommon thriller Samedi the Deafness (2007) than his more recent experimentations. It starts with a lost bet over a card game. A young man named Oda Sotatsu makes his living buying and selling thread in the village near Sakai. But young Sotatsu fell in with a bad character, Sato Kakuzo, and a girl named Jito Joo. In premise, it sounds simple. "He and Kakuzo made a wager," Ball writes. "The wager was that the loser, whoever he was, would sign a confession. Kakuzo had brought the confession. He set it out on the table. The loser would sign it, and Joo would bring it to the police station." For this mistake, Sotatsu is convicted of the "Narito Disappearances," the alleged murders of eight elderly people. Ball projects himself into the story as a journalist, which allows him to build his novel from a whirling collage of court transcripts, family interviews, photographs, and confessions both false and true. Through it all, Sotatsu keeps his silence, while Ball delves into the mystery of Jita Joo's role in this tragedy. Ball may or may not explain himself in the end, but there's no denying the fascination his aberrant storytelling inspires.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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A First Telling of the Story Oda Sotatsu was a young man in October of 1977. He was in the twenty-ninth year of his life. He worked in an office, an import/export business owned by his uncle. They principally sold thread. To do this, they bought thread also. Mostly for Sotatsu it was buying and selling thread. He did not like it very much, but went about it without complaint. He lived alone, had no girlfriend, no pets. He had a basic education and a small circle of acquaintances. He appears to have been well thought of. He liked jazz and had a record player. He wore simple, muted clothing, ate most meals at home. The more passionately he felt about a subject, the less likely he would be to join a discussion. Many people knew him, and lived beside him, near him--but few could say they had any sense of what he was really like. They had not suspected that he was really like anything. It seemed he merely was what he did: a quiet daily routine of work and sleep. The story of Oda Sotatsu begins with a confession that he signed. He had fallen in with a man named Kakuzo and a girl named Jito Joo. These were somewhat wild characters, particularly Sato Kakuzo. He was in trouble, or had been. People knew it. Now this is what happened: somehow Kakuzo met Oda Sotatsu, and somehow he convinced him to sign a confession for a crime that he had not committed. That he should sign a confession for a crime that he did not commit is strange. It is hard to believe. Yet, he did in fact sign it. When I learned of these events, and when I researched them, I found that there was a reason he did so, and that reason is--he was compelled to by a wager. There were several accounts of how that evening went. One was the version that had been in the newspapers. Another was a version told by Oda Sotatsu's family. Still a third was the version held to by Sato Kakuzo. This final version is stronger than the others for the reason that Kakuzo taped the proceedings and showed the tape to me. I have listened to it many times, and each time, I hear things that I have not heard before. One has the impression that one can know life, actual life, from its simulacrums by the fact that actual life constantly deceives and reveals, and is consistent in doing so. I will describe for you the events of that evening. The Wager When I listened to the tape, the conversation was, in places, difficult to make out. The music was loud. As the night wore on, the party drank and spoke quite rapidly. In general, the atmosphere was that of a bar. Someone (Joo?) repeatedly gets up, leaves, returns, scraping her chair loudly against the wooden floor. They spoke inconsequentially for about forty minutes, and then they reached the matter of the wager. Kakuzo led into it quietly. He spoke fluidly and described a sort of comradeship that they shared, the three of them. He acted as though they were all fed up with life. Joo and he, he said, had been doing things to try to escape this feeling. One of those things was to wager on cards, in a private game between the two of them. He said when he would lose, he would cut himself. Or Joo would cut herself, if she should lose. He said they went from that to other things, to forcing each other to do things, in order to feel alive again. But it all revolved around the wagering, around letting life hang in a balance. Did Sotatsu not think that was fascinating? Was he in no way stirred to try it? All night, they were at him, Joo and Kakuzo, and finally, they convinced him. In fact, they had chosen him because he had appeared to them as someone who might be convinced, who could be convinced of such a thing. And indeed, it proved true; they were able to make him join their game. He and Kakuzo made a wager. The wager was that the loser, whoever he was, would sign a confession. Kakuzo had brought the confession. He set it out on the table. The loser would sign it, and Joo would bring it to the police station. All that one could feel in life would be gathered up into this single moment when the wager went forward and one's entire life hung on the flip of a card. Kakuzo had brought the cards as well, and they sat there on the table beside the confession. The music in the bar was loud. Oda Sotatsu's life was difficult and had not yielded to him the things he had hoped for. He liked and respected both Kakuzo and Joo and they were bent entirely on him, and on his doing of this thing. This is how it turned out: Oda Sotatsu wagered with Sato Kakuzo. He lost the wager. He took a pen and he signed the confession, there on the table. Joo took it with her and she and Kakuzo left the bar. Oda went home to his small apartment. Whether he slept or not, we do not know. Excerpted from Silence Once Begun: A Novel by Jesse Ball All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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