This was an enjoyable read and I would recommend it. thanks for letting me have an advance copy. I'm new to this author.

I love dystopian books but for some reason this book just didn't do it for me. I perhaps read it at the wrong time as a few of my book review buddies have told me it's a great book and I should try it again! Who knows, maybe I will. But for now, I have to file it under meh, just ok.

Jesse Ball enters the dystopian fray with his latest book The Divers’ Game. The book is essentially a series of vaguely connected short stories set in a dystopian future. In order to set these up, there is a lengthy info dump, in the form of a lecture in the first chapter. After that, Ball frees himself to explore the world that he has created.
The world that Ball creates is one of absolute haves and have nots. It is a world in which fairness is no longer a yardstick:

"As much as we like to think there can be fairness, it is really a foolish idea, one we ought to have done away with long ago. Instead of fairness there is just order and its consequences."

As part of this order, all refugees were tattooed and sent to live in walled communities. At some point, the government decided to do away with prisons and sent all prisoners to live in the same communities. This followed a change in philosophy such that nothing done to those “beneath” is considered to be violence:

"It was a new definition of violence, and helped create a vibrant morality… But if what we do ceases to be violence, let us say it is the same, but is no longer violence: then we are not violent, we are no longer doers of violence."

The logical endpoint of this is that the “haves” carry gas masks and cans of poison gas. They are trained from birth that when in danger they can put on the gas mask and use their gas canister to kill whoever is threatening them. That this is not violence, but part of the natural order.
In this world, Ball then tells a number of related by distinct stories mainly about children and teenagers– of a visit to a zoo in which all of the animals except one have now died, of a privileged girl lost in a bad part of town, of a little girl who will be the figurehead in a bacchanalian parade and a boy who participated in the dangerous divers’ game. Ball ends with a lengthy suicide note, reflecting on the human cost of this new social order.
While Ball has created a dystopia, it is more along the lines of a thought experiment. He is less interested in the political structures and more about the potential extremes of human behaviour when the fundamental underpinnings of society is taken away. None of these pieces resolve, they all leave the reader hanging uncomfortably, imagining what might come next. This just serves to increase their power.
By focussing on young people, he shows his world through the eyes of characters who do not question its validity. They have been brought up in it and so intrinsically understand it. Only in the last story does he give the perspective of a character who sees things from a remove, who questions the status quo. Although even this questioning does not seem to have impacted the person to whom the letter is addressed and his unwavering belief in the system.
In The Divers’ Game, Ball has delivered another gem. Ball does not set out to reinvent the dystopian genre but uses the genre to deliver short, disturbing pieces of fiction, that cut to the heart of our humanity.

I think it's time for me to concede that while I admire the ideas and wider themes of Jesse Ball's novels they don't ever seem to quite work out for me.

The Lois/Lethe storyline grabbed me - there was more world building in this section, and I loved the section in the zoo - but it was over way too soon and unfortunately the other three stories failed to hold my interest, being a bit vague for my liking. If you're a fan of dystopia and this sounds up your street then I think it's worth checking out, but it wasn't my cup of tea.

The Diver’s Game by Jesse Ball

Wow! People need to urgently read this book. It is a stunning, breathtaking novel that is both haunting and beautifully written. I won’t forget it easily. I wish I had half of the author’s imagination and ability to weave serious political issues with such an otherworldly, dreamlike setting. I’ve never read this author before but I will certainly be reading more in the future.

The book is set in a dystopian future, but not too far away away from our own. The issues that make our headline news have exploded to create a society where attitudes to xenophobia have spawned lethal solutions. Violence is commonplace and empathy is lacking. In different sections the author introduces us to loosely connected characters who all live within this dark world. These are young people whose responses to their society seem cruel and heartless. However, this is all they have ever known and the violence is their normal. The population is split into two groups: quads and pats. The pats are native to this world and have certain privileges whereas the quads are refugees and are branded and have a thumb removed to make them recognisable. The pats have to carry gas canisters around for protection and can use them to kill a quad without sanction if they feel bothered or threatened.

This dog eat dog society feels to me like the nightmarish result of current upheaval such as Brexit, the politics of Trump and other right wing politicians, plus the divide in society that has widened even further between those with money and those without. In the section that inspires the title, Ball writes an allegory where children put their lives on the line to change their position in society. This fable concerns a tunnel where two ponds connect and to escape to the other pond involves a brutal free dive through the underground tunnel. The child has to use all their strength and pass through dizziness, vision problems and almost passing out to kick their way to the surface. It could have filled me with despair, but for the last section where a woman who has killed a quad starts to feel remorse for her actions. It gave me hope that the society could possibly change.

The book is horrifying because it takes today’s society and holds up a mirror to tell us this is where we could be, if we don’t check ourselves. The current rise of far right politics, putting refugee children in cages and Trump’s racist rhetoric make it seem even more possible. I applaud the author for creating such a terrifying, clever and relevant novel that brings home to us what happens in a society where people are not considered equal. We clearly haven’t learned from history so maybe we might learn through literature.

Thank you to NetGalley for this preview copy. This review will feature on my blog later this week. https://thelotusreaders.blogspot.com/

"There is a permanent sickness in my stomach. It is a revulsion and it is a disgust, and it is a disgust at who I am and have been— who you are— who we are together— who everyone together becomes in this day and age."

Bell manages to avoid a lot of the problems and pitfalls of the dystopian genre concerning the creation of a society that seems real and provides an intense allegory with rich imagery that linger on the reader's mind. Ball jumps around in this book, moving to different parts of the world, leaving stories unfinished, giving you more of a feeling than a strict structure, a clear and wide picture; most of the protagonists are young characters who do not fully comprehend the world they live in, who can be callous about its horrors because it is all they have known. The naivete and openness of children and young people makes "The Diver's Game" all the more gut-punching when it delivers its hits and when it crescendos.

I've seen reviews which discuss this as a future dystopia but for me it's a veiled fable about now. Ball offers up a world divided and ghetto'ised, where the 'haves' can kill at will, where the 'have nots' (specifically refugees and criminals released from prison) are non-persons without legal rights. It's a world that lacks compassion and empathy, where language has been redefined so that the culture can embrace violence while still calling itself non-violent, where fear and insult are common currency. It's no coincidence that a character is named Lethe, the river in the classical underworld from which the newly-dead drink to forget what living was like. How far is this, conceptually, from Trump's U.S. or Brexit Britain where statesmen have normalised bullying, bluster, and boasting, where sexual assault or disabilities can be mocked publicly, where hatred has become legitimized whether for reasons of race, gender, sexuality, class or any other divisive marker? There's a horrible recognition at the heart of Ball's world.

For all that, the final and most powerful section for me is both despairing and hopeful as a woman who has killed finds that she is sickened by her own action, by what she has done, by what she is and how society has shaped her. Her resistance is both annihilating and, I think, redemptive, if only in a minor, individual way.

Stark prose, pressing politics and a desire to shock us into moral confrontation makes this an unnerving read.

With simple, direct prose, The Divers' Game reads like a dark fable, or perhaps a folktale beamed backwards through time from a distant future. It's a dystopian, other-worldly setting, in which our present civilisation has passed out of living memory; where "zoos" are more like museums of extinction, and citizens arm themselves with canisters of brightly coloured gas to be deployed with lethal force against the immigrant classes, at the slightest affront.

The novel comprises four short set pieces — somewhere between short story and novella length — each with a different set of characters. Linked through their shared invented world, as well as in smaller, subtler ways, these pieces have a fever dream strangeness and a brooding tension. Ball has written a striking parable of xenophobia, our capacity for violence, the human instinct to form in-groups and 'others', whether it be on a grand scale or a minute one, and what happens when that instinct goes unchecked. With economy of style and clarity of purpose, The Divers' Game is a thoughtful

The Divers' Game is the latest novel from Jesse Ball, the 4th of his I have read, and someone who is fast emerging as one of our most interesting modern-day writers.

It looks like it’s about a very violent society that pretends it isn’t violent at all.

It smells like licorice left in a hole.
Source: A hyena who searched Jesse Ball's house in 2018 and found the draft of this novel
(https://therumpus.net/2018/03/the-rumpus-book-club-chat-with-jesse-ball/)

He said, we can welcome them, as long as we can tell them apart. As long as we can tell them apart. Many of them, wherever they were from, they had red hats, a kind of long knit hat, a red hat, no one remembers why, and so Garing said, This will be their symbol. We’ll tattoo the red hat on their cheeks, and then we’ll know who is who. Then we can welcome them.

This novel gives us a a dystopian set-up but one that draws, as Graham's review points out, on Nazi-era ghettos, with immigrants (and increasingly also criminals) in theory, allowed to live in the host country, but in practice physically branded, and legally non-persons, such that violence towards them from ordinary citizens is not considered legally, and increasingly not even morally, wrong:

Our morality is what we do. Do you all understand that? But if what we do ceases to be violence , let us say it is the same, but it is no longer violence: then we are not violent; we are no longer doers of violence.

Despite the more historical set-up this reference to the pernicious effect of normalisation of behaviour is highly pertinent to our times (gun crime in the US would be one parallel).

The initial set-up is (over-)explained in a rather clunky set-up, literally in a lecture. But the novel comes in to its own after the characters escape the lecture hall and we experience other key elements of the society, both the rather terrifying Day of the Infanta amongst the non-people, and amongst the citizens, Ogias' Day, declared, seemingly at very short notice only a fee days earlier, for the first time in over 50 years, a sort of comprehensive Jubilee, although no-one quite seems to know what will happen:

He said he heard on the last Ogias’ Day a lot of people died. Everything turns upside down. Freedom surprises people—they don’t know what to do with it. People who have been paying back debts for decades—and then the debt is just gone! It makes them crazy, especially if they know other people who did fuck all with their debts. And everyone’s in the same boat? What is that? You could see why people would be mad.

Are you saying you think it’s a bad idea?

No, no. I mean, I owe some. I’ve run it up pretty badly. You know, this job doesn’t pay much. I’m glad for it to stop.

I don’t owe anything, she said. I still live at home ... I heard, she said, that it isn’t just debt. It’s all bonds. So after tomorrow, no one is married. You’d have to get remarried. You have to reacquire your job. Everything’s started over. It’s a complete restart. They have to explain all this. That’s why everyone has to go to the announcement points.

Can’t be true. I never heard any of that. My brother says, he says Ogias’ Day isn’t for us anyway. It’s more for people like you, people who own things. It’s a holiday to keep you owning the things you own.

(interesting parallels to the political discussion on both sides of the Atlantic about writing off student debt, but also to whether radical reform is really about the preservation of the existing system)

The last section gives the novel a powerful close as we get the suicide note of the lecturer's wife (we learned in the first section that she killed herself using the gas citizens are given to defend themselves against non-persons), her actions triggered by what she, and her society, had become:

There is a permanent sickness in my stomach. It is a revulsion and it is a disgust, and it is a disgust at who I am and have been— who you are— who we are together— who everyone together becomes in this day and age.

Recommended (although not Ball's best work) - and how The Wall made the Booker longlist, and this didn't is a mystery.

Thanks to the publisher via Netgalley for the ARC.

This book tends to be reviewed as set in a near-future dystopia, one which imagines a societal approach to mass immigration (and to undesirables) that seems only a logical extension of current trends.

I would add though that it is really also a very lightly imagined variation on past practices – and lacks the real imagination of say an Exit West, even John Lanchester’s “The Wall” (to which book it is in every other way superior and whose Booker longlisting looks even more bizarre if one assumes that this book was eligible and submitted).

Ball imagines a country which deals with mass immigration by admitting them marking them with a tattoo of a red hat to make their status as legal non-persons – a legal status change which became enforced as a philosophical one: that violence perpetuated on the refugees was not just not illegal but was not even immoral. In time the refugees were also marked by amputation of their thumbs, and given special areas (quadrants) outside of cities where they had a degree of safety (in that citizens too forfeited their rights in what was deemed a pre-civilised space. Outside these guarded areas the citizens (Pats) are drilled in the deployment of gas masks and the use of poisonous gases to protect themselves against the dehumanised refugees (Quads). Over time the Quads are used to house other undesirables – in particular criminals and the Quads themselves have rough justice enforced by bosses who have reached an understanding with the guards.

Immediately of course the rather obvious historical parallels are clear: yellow stars, non-persons (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonperson – “"Nonperson" status was required because it removed the moral and social obstacles for committing otherwise objectionable acts of violence, crime, abuse, and murder), ghettos, Kapos.

The above information is covered (in the weakest part of the book) by a rhetorical revision lecture on the history of immigration given by Professor Mandred and attended by two citizen girls – Lois and Lethe.

The remainder of the first part follows Lois and (particularly) Lethe on a trip with the Professor to a zoo – to see the last remaining animals in the country. We witness the arbitrary way in which they all treat the Quads they encounter and the Zoo itself is full of symbolism – with a divide between dead and living animals, with the almost eradication of animals a reminder of their cruel and arbitrary treatment (often neither considered illegal or immoral) in our society. Later Lethe is accosted but unharmed by a group of Quad children near some lakes. The society is approaching Ogias’ Day – a Jubilee style day where things are turned upside down and which is therefore unsettling to a society with the creed

"A world of tiers.
Know your place upon it
By looking down"

The second part is set in a particularly rough Quad – and is largely based around a raucous festival there – the Day of the Infanta – where a small child is chosen, given the power to issue orders obeyed without question and required to administer arbitrary justice in a series of real as well as symbolic cases, before being herself subject to the judgement of the mob. In contrast to the unsettling effect of Ogias’s Day – this day is greeted wildly by Quads, allowing them to enact their frustration at their status and the cruel justice to which they are normally subject. Within this part we learn that the son of the Quad boss has disappeared – we later find playing the Divers’ Game, a seeming analogy for the courage required to travel between two otherwise separate socieites (as well as a link to an incident in the first part).

Both the post-lecture first part and the second part are written in the wonderful style I recognise from Ball’s previous novel “Census” – sparse and yet full of imagery, enigmatic and yet full of meaning.

The third part is another change of style to a rather preachy style in which Ball’s character makes sure we have understood the moral of the book: that in dehumanising others we dehumanise ourselves.

It is told in a series of short letters from a Pat woman (one we already know) to her husband – feeling threatened by a Quad she killed him with gas – and immediately cannot come to terms with her actions and contemplates suicide.

"OR PERHAPS THEY DO KNOW WHY. MY REVULSION AT this place of our lives—this society of which we are a part—seems not to immediately admit an obvious truth: the people who are ground to bits by our horrific thoughtlessness, selfishness, greed, though they may not know in each case why it has happened, they do not need to know. These things have happened so often that it becomes clear: a man like this did not die because of what he did but because of what he was. We are the ones who have the privilege of having things happen to us because of what we do. Not everyone is so lucky."

Overall this book – while barely more than a novella and easily read in a single sitting is a quietly powerful and affecting plea to examine what the exclusion of the other is doing to the moral fabric of our societies.

The best dystopian novels pick the themes of their time, extend them into the future and present the reader with an all too plausible nightmare society.

Imagine a society with a refugee crisis. Then imagine a society that responds to that refugee crisis not by rejecting the refugees but by allowing them to stay as long as they are physically marked so that everyone knows who belongs and who does not. Imagine then that these “others” in society are stigmatised and often subject to violence. Imagine that the solution to that is not to stop the violence but to redefine the word “violence” so that it does not include acts performed against the “quads” as they are known (because they live in special lawless and walled in areas called quads and only leave at their own risk). The “pats” as the residents of the land are called carry canisters of gas and gas masks so that they are equipped to deal with any quad who approaches and looks vaguely threatening (with no threat of repercussions).

Welcome to Jesse Ball’s future world.

But Jesse Ball is not one to tell a straightforward story. That would be far too simple. Ball presents us with three stories and he works by “impressionism” rather than by telling. It is for the reader to puzzle over the underlying themes and links.

Two girls attend a school where they are taught about their society (they are pats) and then taken to a zoo by a teacher with a drink problem. One girl goes in, the other stays outside. Both experience an adventure. This part of society is heading towards Ogias’ Day. If you know your Christian Old Testament, Ogias’ Day is like the Jubilee without the godly parts - cancellation of debts, establishment of equality and more.

Then a young girl is selected to be the centre of a communal ceremony in one of the quads. She is given free rein - whatever she commands will happen as she tours the area and the mob mentality rises. Where the ceremony of the first part sought equality, and was feared by many because of that, here the ceremony creates a complete inequality - a young girl has absolute power - and is feared by many because of that. We learn about the titular Divers’ Game which explores the connection between two local lakes and, as it does so, explores what it means to belong and the lengths people will go to in order to feel part of the in crowd.

Finally, a woman writes a letter to her husband. It is for the reader to work out who the woman is and I won’t spoil the book by saying what the letter is about, but the woman is concerned about the consequences of cruelty for the life of the person being cruel.

This, then, is a book to discuss with others. What are the connections? Are there connections? Are the connections underneath rather than visible on the surface (the title and the game might be a clue)? Are the connections thematic rather than plot (hint: there is no overall plot, really). I write this at the stage where I have only just begin to make those connections and I know I have work ahead of me (which I hope will be assisted by other readers as I get chance to discuss the book).

I love that Jesse Ball doesn’t write about a dystopia where refugees have been rejected and walls have been built to keep them out. I love that he turns things on their head and writes about a dystopia where the refugees are allowed to remain and his logical extension is to a society that marks those who don’t belong and removes penalties for harm done to them.mI love that he then presents us with several different stories about this dystopian world but doesn’t feel the need to explain it all. This is similar to my favourite kind of artwork that presents the viewer with an abstract, impressionistic image, or several images, but leaves it for the viewer to interpret.

You have to be Jesse Ball to be able to imagine the world he creates. You probably have to be Jesse Ball to understand how it all links together, but there is sufficient thematic connection made to mean that the reader puts the book down knowing that they will be thinking about it for many days to come. Like the subterranean connections within the novel, this book lays the groundwork for some subconscious connections in the readers’ mind, the kind of thing that is likely to wake you up in the night thinking about it as pieces join together.

As an aside, having just finished a re-read of Deborah Levy’s The Man Who Saw Everything, how awesome would an evening called “Deborah Levy and Jesse Ball: In Conversation” be?

3.5 stars


A little bit of an unsettling read. Set who knows where,and who knows when,it could easily be in the non too distant future,where people are branded and mutilated and kept to certain areas to stop mixing.
Voiced by a few different characters,each carries some tension,and threat of violence,as never knowing what might be coming.
Short,but definitely not sweet.