{"id":834,"date":"2015-08-22T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-01-21T03:04:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/?p=834"},"modified":"2025-01-02T12:08:58","modified_gmt":"2025-01-01T23:08:58","slug":"a-cure-for-suicide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/2015\/08\/22\/a-cure-for-suicide\/","title":{"rendered":"A Cure for Suicide"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Jesse Ball<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Text<\/em> Publishing<\/em><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Otago Daily Times, August 22nd 2015<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou are here because you have been very sick. You almost died. But, you realised that you were sick and you went to get help\u2026it is my job to make you better\u2026There is much for you to learn.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

These few, simple words uttered within the first few pages of A Cure for Suicide<\/em>, capture the essence of Jesse Ball\u2019s strange and beautiful tale. It is set in an indefinite future where last and greatest challenge facing society is isolation and where those who feel they cannot continue may request permission to start over completely. If the claimant\u2019s petition is accepted, he or she will awaken as a tabula rasa<\/em>, with no name or memory, shorn of all knowledge of their past and who they used to be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Guided by an examiner whose job it is to create a new identity for them they are guided through a series of carefully choreographed tests and challenges that will, if successful, allow the claimant to re-enter society. However the process is reliant on both the successful erasure of all memory of the claimant\u2019s past life and their ignorance of the cure itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some may reintegrate fully and often going on to become examiners themselves, but others, particularly those for whom multiple erasures are required to fully eliminate the past, will remain in the artificial world of the cure, blissfully unaware of their own confinement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In today\u2019s autonomy-focussed culture this seems almost unthinkable; what would constitute informed consent for such a procedure, which results in death of the patient in all but the physical sense and gives prospective permission for ongoing \u2013 and undisclosed \u2013 treatment of the \u2018new\u2019 person thus created. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ball skilfully guides us through the ethical and philosophical difficulties from the perspective of one such unnamed claimant as he undergoes two courses of treatment, each overseen by different examiners. The first of these fails soon after his awakening as he becomes increasingly troubled by nightmares and troubling recollections. The second progresses well until he is introduced to a young woman who suggests that he is subject to a conspiracy that, even if benignly intended, mean his entire life is built upon a lie. Is she telling the truth, a troubled fellow claimant, or another player in the very fiction she claims he is subject to? And what does it mean for his recovery?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These events constitute first half of the book and are written in sparse, widely-spaced text that reflect the punctuated nature of the central character\u2019s consciousness. It is followed by a dense, unbroken account of the claimant\u2019s initial assessment in which we learn of the events he has opted to leave behind, before providing an epilogue that raises as many questions as it answers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was left feeling that, on balance, the potential benefits of the cure outweigh its risks but troubled by the sense that somewhere in the process the claimant has chosen to sacrifice himself in some fundamental level. I am already looking forward to rereading it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/www.odt.co.nz\/entertainment\/books\/isolation-society-backdrop-strange-and-haunting-story<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jesse Ball
\n
\nOtago Daily Times review August 22nd 2015<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[221,370,241,18,407],"class_list":["post-834","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-reviews","tag-221","tag-fiction","tag-jesse-ball","tag-odt","tag-speculative-sci-fi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/834","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=834"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/834\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1996,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/834\/revisions\/1996"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=834"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=834"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=834"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}