Enter your email Address

ENTROPY
  • About
    • About
    • Masthead
    • Advertising
    • Submission Guidelines
    • Info on Book Reviews
  • Essays
    • All Introspection
      Creative Nonfiction / Essay

      The Animal Form

      January 22, 2021

      Creative Nonfiction / Essay

      On Fantasy and Artifice

      January 19, 2021

      Creative Nonfiction / Essay

      Tales From the End of the Bus Line: Aging Ungraciously

      January 18, 2021

      Creative Nonfiction / Essay

      Salt and Sleep

      January 15, 2021

      Introspection

      The Birds: A Special Providence in the Fall of a Sparrow

      January 2, 2020

      Introspection

      Returning Home with Ross McElwee

      December 13, 2019

      Introspection

      The Birds: In Our Piety

      November 14, 2019

      Introspection

      Variations: Landslide

      June 12, 2019

  • Fiction
    • Fiction

      The Birds: Little Birds

      December 11, 2020

      Fiction

      The Birds: Perdix and a Pear Tree

      December 9, 2020

      Fiction

      The Birds: A Glimmer of Blue

      November 23, 2020

      Fiction

      The Birds: Circling for Home

      November 13, 2020

      Fiction

      The Birds: The Guest

      November 9, 2020

  • Reviews
    • All Collaborative Review Video Review
      Review

      Review: Dear Marshall, Language is Our Only Wilderness by Heather Sweeney

      January 21, 2021

      Review

      Review: Shrapnel Maps by Philip Metres

      January 18, 2021

      Review

      Perceived Realities: A Review of M-Theory by Tiffany Cates

      January 14, 2021

      Review

      Review: Danger Days by Catherine Pierce

      January 11, 2021

      Collaborative Review

      Attention to the Real: A Conversation

      September 3, 2020

      Collaborative Review

      A Street Car Named Whatever

      February 22, 2016

      Collaborative Review

      Black Gum: A Conversational Review

      August 7, 2015

      Collaborative Review

      Lords of Waterdeep in Conversation

      February 25, 2015

      Video Review

      Entropy’s Super Mario Level

      September 15, 2015

      Video Review

      Flash Portraits of Link: Part 7 – In Weakness, Find Strength

      January 2, 2015

      Video Review

      Basal Ganglia by Matthew Revert

      March 31, 2014

      Video Review

      The Desert Places by Amber Sparks and Robert Kloss, Illustrated by Matt Kish

      March 21, 2014

  • Small Press
    • Small Press

      Gordon Hill Press

      December 8, 2020

      Small Press

      Evidence House

      November 24, 2020

      Small Press

      death of workers whilst building skyscrapers

      November 10, 2020

      Small Press

      Slate Roof Press

      September 15, 2020

      Small Press

      Ellipsis Press

      September 1, 2020

  • Where to Submit
  • More
    • Poetry
    • Interviews
    • Games
      • All Board Games Video Games
        Creative Nonfiction / Essay

        How Zelda Saved Me: The Inspiration, Feminism, and Empowerment of Hyrule

        November 2, 2020

        Board Games

        Session Report: Victoriana and Optimism

        December 14, 2019

        Games

        Best of 2019: Video Games

        December 13, 2019

        Games

        Hunt A Killer, Earthbreak, and Empty Faces: Escapism for the Post-Truth Era

        September 21, 2019

        Board Games

        Session Report: Victoriana and Optimism

        December 14, 2019

        Board Games

        Ludic Writing: Lady of the West

        July 27, 2019

        Board Games

        Session Report: Paperback and Anomia

        July 27, 2019

        Board Games

        Ludic Writing: The Real Leeds Part 12 (Once in a Lifetime)

        November 10, 2018

        Video Games

        How Zelda Saved Me: The Inspiration, Feminism, and Empowerment of Hyrule

        November 2, 2020

        Video Games

        Best of 2019: Video Games

        December 13, 2019

        Video Games

        Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is the Spirit of Generosity

        December 31, 2018

        Video Games

        Best of 2018: Video Games

        December 17, 2018

    • Food
    • Small Press Releases
    • Film
    • Music
    • Paranormal
    • Travel
    • Art
    • Graphic Novels
    • Comics
    • Current Events
    • Astrology
    • Random
  • RESOURCES
  • The Accomplices
    • THE ACCOMPLICES
    • Enclave
    • Trumpwatch

ENTROPY

  • About
    • About
    • Masthead
    • Advertising
    • Submission Guidelines
    • Info on Book Reviews
  • Essays
    • All Introspection
      Creative Nonfiction / Essay

      The Animal Form

      January 22, 2021

      Creative Nonfiction / Essay

      On Fantasy and Artifice

      January 19, 2021

      Creative Nonfiction / Essay

      Tales From the End of the Bus Line: Aging Ungraciously

      January 18, 2021

      Creative Nonfiction / Essay

      Salt and Sleep

      January 15, 2021

      Introspection

      The Birds: A Special Providence in the Fall of a Sparrow

      January 2, 2020

      Introspection

      Returning Home with Ross McElwee

      December 13, 2019

      Introspection

      The Birds: In Our Piety

      November 14, 2019

      Introspection

      Variations: Landslide

      June 12, 2019

  • Fiction
    • Fiction

      The Birds: Little Birds

      December 11, 2020

      Fiction

      The Birds: Perdix and a Pear Tree

      December 9, 2020

      Fiction

      The Birds: A Glimmer of Blue

      November 23, 2020

      Fiction

      The Birds: Circling for Home

      November 13, 2020

      Fiction

      The Birds: The Guest

      November 9, 2020

  • Reviews
    • All Collaborative Review Video Review
      Review

      Review: Dear Marshall, Language is Our Only Wilderness by Heather Sweeney

      January 21, 2021

      Review

      Review: Shrapnel Maps by Philip Metres

      January 18, 2021

      Review

      Perceived Realities: A Review of M-Theory by Tiffany Cates

      January 14, 2021

      Review

      Review: Danger Days by Catherine Pierce

      January 11, 2021

      Collaborative Review

      Attention to the Real: A Conversation

      September 3, 2020

      Collaborative Review

      A Street Car Named Whatever

      February 22, 2016

      Collaborative Review

      Black Gum: A Conversational Review

      August 7, 2015

      Collaborative Review

      Lords of Waterdeep in Conversation

      February 25, 2015

      Video Review

      Entropy’s Super Mario Level

      September 15, 2015

      Video Review

      Flash Portraits of Link: Part 7 – In Weakness, Find Strength

      January 2, 2015

      Video Review

      Basal Ganglia by Matthew Revert

      March 31, 2014

      Video Review

      The Desert Places by Amber Sparks and Robert Kloss, Illustrated by Matt Kish

      March 21, 2014

  • Small Press
    • Small Press

      Gordon Hill Press

      December 8, 2020

      Small Press

      Evidence House

      November 24, 2020

      Small Press

      death of workers whilst building skyscrapers

      November 10, 2020

      Small Press

      Slate Roof Press

      September 15, 2020

      Small Press

      Ellipsis Press

      September 1, 2020

  • Where to Submit
  • More
    • Poetry
    • Interviews
    • Games
      • All Board Games Video Games
        Creative Nonfiction / Essay

        How Zelda Saved Me: The Inspiration, Feminism, and Empowerment of Hyrule

        November 2, 2020

        Board Games

        Session Report: Victoriana and Optimism

        December 14, 2019

        Games

        Best of 2019: Video Games

        December 13, 2019

        Games

        Hunt A Killer, Earthbreak, and Empty Faces: Escapism for the Post-Truth Era

        September 21, 2019

        Board Games

        Session Report: Victoriana and Optimism

        December 14, 2019

        Board Games

        Ludic Writing: Lady of the West

        July 27, 2019

        Board Games

        Session Report: Paperback and Anomia

        July 27, 2019

        Board Games

        Ludic Writing: The Real Leeds Part 12 (Once in a Lifetime)

        November 10, 2018

        Video Games

        How Zelda Saved Me: The Inspiration, Feminism, and Empowerment of Hyrule

        November 2, 2020

        Video Games

        Best of 2019: Video Games

        December 13, 2019

        Video Games

        Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is the Spirit of Generosity

        December 31, 2018

        Video Games

        Best of 2018: Video Games

        December 17, 2018

    • Food
    • Small Press Releases
    • Film
    • Music
    • Paranormal
    • Travel
    • Art
    • Graphic Novels
    • Comics
    • Current Events
    • Astrology
    • Random
  • RESOURCES
  • The Accomplices
    • THE ACCOMPLICES
    • Enclave
    • Trumpwatch
Review

Review: The Divers’ Game by Jesse Ball

written by Guest Contributor January 23, 2020

The Divers’ Game by Jesse Ball
Ecco, September 2019
240 pages / Amazon

 

It would be an oversimplification to call Jesse Ball’s latest novel, The Divers’ Game, a work of dystopian fiction. As a novelist, Ball often inhabits in-between spaces, building convincing distorted near-futures to tell a story grounded in emotional or philosophical inquiry that feels contemporary, universal, and entirely human. This was the case with his previous novel, Census, and the National Book Award-nominated A Cure for Suicide. In both of those masterful works, as in The Divers’ Game, Ball presents his version of a reality readers can recognize—twisted enough to be rich with fable; human enough to inspire poignance; and inventive enough to be entirely his own.

Admittedly, Ball’s vision of America in The Divers’ Game hits close to home, as if reality has been lifted from the headlines and filtered through the fabulist’s own earnest and attentive eye.

Here is how the world of The Divers’ Game works: In America, there are Pats and there are Quads. Pats are free to live as they wish, while Quads—a group encompassing the poorest citizens, as well as criminals and refugees—are confined within slums called “quadrants.” Their right thumbs are severed, and their cheeks are marked with—wait for it—the tattoo of a red hat. In this shadow world evoking America’s violence toward immigrants and disdain for the poor, Quads are not legally considered people.

A Pat professor named Mandred explains the ghastly system to his students—and, conveniently, to readers: “There is a philosophical position that came into vogue, it is what we call in philosophy an awakening, a large-scale shift in belief: that things done to those beneath are not properly violence. It was a new definition of violence, and helped to create a vibrant morality, one that infuses our nation to this day.”

Pats travel with a gas mask and several canisters of various torturous or deadly gases (“the yellow killing gas, the green incapacitating gas, the red gas that confuses, the brown gas that sickens, the slow killer”) with which they’re free to attack Quads on sight, with no repercussions.

Ball doesn’t string a single narrative through The Divers’ Game. Instead, he uses a nameless narrator to dip in and out of the lives of both Pats and Quads, offering artfully clipped excerpts of larger stories to illuminate the rampant and unfathomable violence, the rigid hierarchies within both worlds, and the conflict raging within the few members of the ruling class who retain shreds of empathy in a world where resistance is almost wholly flattened by cruelty.

Part I follows two college-aged women, Lethe and Lois, as they accompany Professor Mandred on a train trip to the zoo. (More of a museum, in fact—of all the animals who once lived there, only a single scraggly rabbit clings to life.) Functionally, the trip serves as an opportunity for Ball to explain the environment he’s crafted. The Pats, we learn, are preparing for Olgias’ Day, a sort of lawless festival in which all debts are resolved and all legal partnerships dissolved. Lethe wanders away from her companions and quickly finds herself in strange and potentially dangerous territory, face to face with a group of young Quads.

Meanwhile, the Quads are preparing for the Feast of the Infanta. Part 2 takes readers into Row House, “a terrible slum…the worst of the quads,” through the perspectives of several different characters, including the young girl charged with the dubious honor of playing the role of Infanta, riding in the head float at the raucous and occasionally violent festival, performing the ritual of punishing or absolving the “crimes” and “criminals” presented before her. Then there is the divers’ game, the dangerous—and deeply symbolic—game that Quad children dare each other to play, passing through a tunnel beneath an island, from one side of the lake to the other, at risk of drowning.

Like a poet circling an ineffable central truth, Ball keeps readers at bay, coming in slant and offering slivers of life to illustrate this barbaric caste system—and to communicate an essential truth about what such violence does to the hearts and minds of both the oppressors and the oppressed.

Part 3 is gutting and cumulative, the heart of what Ball wants to say. It is a suicide note, written by a Pat woman who has, on reflex, gassed a Quad in the park.

“We are maintained by a violence so complete, it is like air,” the woman writes. “And because of that, I would rather die than anything, rather die than be alive.”

The Divers’ Game functions as an allegory of cruelty, a world produced by an imagination but well-steeped in the violence of our present day. It’s a world crafted by powerful detail and raw emotion. If there’s something Ball’s characters are good at, it’s living up to the worst of what’s asked of them. Expressing and admitting empathy, forging connections across those hierarchies—Ball’s characters often fail to meet these challenges.

Perhaps, The Divers’ Game seems to suggest, if we were put into a similar scenario, we would fail, too. Perhaps we already are.

 


Justin Brouckaert‘s work has appeared in The Rumpus, Passages North, Catapult, Bat City Review and many other publications. He lives in the greater NYC area.

Review: The Divers’ Game by Jesse Ball was last modified: January 14th, 2020 by Guest Contributor
0 comment
0
Facebook Twitter Google + Pinterest
Avatar
Guest Contributor

Entropy posts are often submitted to us by our fantastic readers & guest contributors. We'd love to receive a contribution from you too. Submission Guidelines.

previous post
The Birds: The Grackle
next post
The Stories We Tell Ourselves: The Power of Narrative and Community Amid Chaos

You may also like

The Punctilious Parent: Etiquette

July 19, 2014

Speaking Sloth: On The Beach Sloth Review

July 15, 2014

There Is No Third Impact: Episode Seven

February 26, 2016

Our Selfies Will Not Save Us: On Shill and Debord’s Separation Perfected

October 31, 2017
Facebook Twitter Instagram

Recent Comments

  • Lei Yu wow so beautifully written!

    Review – : once teeth bones coral : by Kimberly Alidio ·  January 18, 2021

  • Lisa S Thank you so much for your kind words and your feedback. I can only hope my story is able to help someone who needs it.

    WOVEN: This isn’t love ·  January 8, 2021

  • Ann Guy Thank you, Josh. And glad you didn’t get tetanus at band camp on that misguided day.

    A Way Back Home ·  December 24, 2020

Featured Columns & Series

  • The Birds
  • Dinnerview
  • WOVEN
  • Variations on a Theme
  • BLACKCACKLE
  • Literacy Narrative
  • COVID-19
  • Mini-Syllabus
  • Their Days Are Numbered
  • On Weather
  • Disarticulations
  • The Waters
  • Session Report series
  • Birdwolf
  • Comics I've Been Geeking Out On
  • Small Press Releases
  • Books I Hate (and Also Some I Like)
  • The Poetics of Spaces
  • Fog or a Cloud
  • Tales From the End of the Bus Line
  • 30 Years of Ghibli
  • Cooking Origin Stories
  • YOU MAKE ME FEEL
  • Ludic Writing
  • Best of 2019
  • The Talking Cure
  • Stars to Stories
  • Food and Covid-19
  • DRAGONS ARE REAL OR THEY ARE DEAD
  • Foster Care
  • LEAKY CULTURE
  • Jem and the Holographic Feminisms
  • D&D with Entropy

Find Us On Facebook

Entropy
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Instagram

©2014-2020 The Accomplices LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Read our updated Privacy Policy.


Back To Top