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The Repeat Room
Franz Kafka meets Yorgos Lanthimos in this provocative new novel from one of America’s most brilliant and distinctive writers
In a speculative future, Abel, a menial worker, is called to serve in a secretive and fabled jury system. At the heart of this system is the repeat room, where a single juror, selected from hundreds of candidates, is able to inhabit the defendant’s lived experience, to see as if through their eyes.
The case to which Abel is assigned is revealed in the novel’s shocking second act. We receive a record of a boy’s broken and constrained life, a tale that reveals an illicit and passionate psycho-sexual relationship, its end as tragic as the circumstances of its conception.
Artful in its suspense, and sharp in its evocation of a byzantine and cruel bureaucracy, The Repeat Room is an exciting and pointed critique of the nature of knowledge and judgment, and a vivid framing of Ball’s absurd and nihilistic philosophy of love.
In a speculative future, Abel, a menial worker, is called to serve in a secretive and fabled jury system. At the heart of this system is the repeat room, where a single juror, selected from hundreds of candidates, is able to inhabit the defendant’s lived experience, to see as if through their eyes.
The case to which Abel is assigned is revealed in the novel’s shocking second act. We receive a record of a boy’s broken and constrained life, a tale that reveals an illicit and passionate psycho-sexual relationship, its end as tragic as the circumstances of its conception.
Artful in its suspense, and sharp in its evocation of a byzantine and cruel bureaucracy, The Repeat Room is an exciting and pointed critique of the nature of knowledge and judgment, and a vivid framing of Ball’s absurd and nihilistic philosophy of love.
256 pages, Hardcover
First published September 24, 2024
150 people are currently reading
15108 people want to read
About the author
Jesse Ball
32 books918 followersJesse Ball (1978-) Born in New York. The author of fourteen books, most recently, the novel How To Set a Fire and Why. His prizewinning works of absurdity have been published to acclaim in many parts of the world and translated into more than a dozen languages. The recipient of the Paris Review's Plimpton Prize, as well as fellowships from the NEA, the Heinz foundation, and others, he is on the faculty at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 423 reviews
June 17, 2025
An incredible reading experience.
The audiobook narration by Erik Bloomquist is so extraordinary that I’m not embarrassed to use the term ‘tour de force.’
The book itself is risky and wild and dives into the incomprehensible and then, reaches poetry.
The first half, I’m in total agreement with the publisher calling an amazing mosh of Kafka and Lanthimos.
The second half read to me like how “The Little Girl Who Was Too Fond of Matches” by Gaétan Soucy would read, if it had been written by Gertrude Stein.
If these descriptions move you or make you curious then this is a book for you.
The audiobook narration by Erik Bloomquist is so extraordinary that I’m not embarrassed to use the term ‘tour de force.’
The book itself is risky and wild and dives into the incomprehensible and then, reaches poetry.
The first half, I’m in total agreement with the publisher calling an amazing mosh of Kafka and Lanthimos.
The second half read to me like how “The Little Girl Who Was Too Fond of Matches” by Gaétan Soucy would read, if it had been written by Gertrude Stein.
If these descriptions move you or make you curious then this is a book for you.
October 13, 2024
Creepy, thought provoking and sad: Jesse Ball delivers a surreal read with jurors being judged in a kind of Hunger Games meets Kafka’s The Trial meets Minority Report
When the cat scratches the sofa you must question whether it’s the right cat for you. Wrong cats do not stay in the house for long.
Wow, in only a bit more than 200 pages we are not just transported into a dystopia but also a bit of writing that is as disturbing as the worst done to Jude in A Little Life.
In The Repeat Room Jesse Ball continues his streak of being one of the most consistently interesting and disturbing authors I know of!
Like Silence Once Begun and The Divers' Game, including their level of brutality and disregard for individual humans.
Part 1
To find out who people are, to understand them, you have to defeat them.
Why is that, do you think?
We meet Abel Carter, 46, divorced, heavy machine operator/garbageman/suspect individual in this new society Ball paints. He is summoned for jury duty, but this entails a lot more than in our current system.
Because Abel needs to compete with 1.000 others. And his verdict would mean death or absolution.
The world is lightly sketched and feels grey and impersonal. He is coached by aphorisms like: The more people think people have value, the worse they are at killing them.
Government officials, part of the New Society Initiative, impart on him the importance of getting ahead, to be in the final group of considered jurors, because it is not judgement for the incarcerated person, but also a sifting through of the 1.000 people and their affinity with the new society. Equanimity is the key filtered upon, which could bring one's status from D3A to 2314J designations.
What this represents is left vague, and I definitely feel that the Franz Kafka The Trial comparisons are warranted. Only here there is more body horror in a sense, with scalding and intense showers and medical solutions being injected intravenously, reminding me uncomfortable of chemotherapy, but then maybe rather for the mind. The world is populated by holograms, projections, ubiquitous, like living Rorschach splotches.
All of this is leads Abel to the near mythical Repeat Room, where the experiences of the defendant are not just shown but lived by him (You are in their head), forming the input to the judgement of how suitable the person is going forward for the new society. The section in the titular The Repeat Room feels like a bad trip, and in part 2 of the book Ball expands what the defendant actually lived through.
Part 2
When he was leaving he would stop at the door and say the same thing, always the same thing.
If you run away your sister will be beaten to death. Or, if you run away we’ll strangle your brother in a bag. The two of you are useful, interesting only together. There would be no reason to keep only one of you.
We believed him completely, I know that he meant it.
Part 2 narrates the story of the defendant. It is extremely intense and sad, on par with the worst things Hanya Yanagihara makes Jude go through in A Little Life, and I am sure that it will upset many readers. Violence, starvation, electroshocks, force feeding, incest, taking on psychological personas to flee from reality, forced sterilisation and simulated animal cruelty.
It is an experiment of dehumanisation on a household level, much more viscerally impactful than any of these experiments on a societal level, as presented to us in part 1 of the book, but definitely echoing each other.
In the end we are left unsure on what the verdict or ends of the characters are, and we have a lot of questions of complicity to mull over. An impressive, uncomfortable slim work, making clear once more to me that I should read more Jesse Ball and that is an injustice how he seems perpetually ignored for literary prices.
Quotes:
He couldn’t possibly be the centre of anything, and neither could you
The line of them walking there, they looked like something out of Goya
Declared unfit for the community
We are choosing a new society. That’s the thing. We are going through the population, one by one and thousand by thousand, to find the seeds for an actual civilisation.
Who am I if I am not the things that are done to me?
You must carry your own help, like food in a bag.
We lived like an unanswered burning
Anything hurtful must be seen
It’s nonsense, my father would say, to believe you can be a person.
A child made the way a character was written.
This was a kind of therapy, so my mother told us.
You have been sterilised as a kind of help.
Your aspirations should be that of a stone, a plant, a housefly, your comfort is knowing your business.
The effort to be a person is a wasted effort
We were not allowed any privacy
I made the meaning of my life from the things denied me
They saw me as I was, disposable
When the cat scratches the sofa you must question whether it’s the right cat for you. Wrong cats do not stay in the house for long.
Wow, in only a bit more than 200 pages we are not just transported into a dystopia but also a bit of writing that is as disturbing as the worst done to Jude in A Little Life.
In The Repeat Room Jesse Ball continues his streak of being one of the most consistently interesting and disturbing authors I know of!
Like Silence Once Begun and The Divers' Game, including their level of brutality and disregard for individual humans.
Part 1
To find out who people are, to understand them, you have to defeat them.
Why is that, do you think?
We meet Abel Carter, 46, divorced, heavy machine operator/garbageman/suspect individual in this new society Ball paints. He is summoned for jury duty, but this entails a lot more than in our current system.
Because Abel needs to compete with 1.000 others. And his verdict would mean death or absolution.
The world is lightly sketched and feels grey and impersonal. He is coached by aphorisms like: The more people think people have value, the worse they are at killing them.
Government officials, part of the New Society Initiative, impart on him the importance of getting ahead, to be in the final group of considered jurors, because it is not judgement for the incarcerated person, but also a sifting through of the 1.000 people and their affinity with the new society. Equanimity is the key filtered upon, which could bring one's status from D3A to 2314J designations.
What this represents is left vague, and I definitely feel that the Franz Kafka The Trial comparisons are warranted. Only here there is more body horror in a sense, with scalding and intense showers and medical solutions being injected intravenously, reminding me uncomfortable of chemotherapy, but then maybe rather for the mind. The world is populated by holograms, projections, ubiquitous, like living Rorschach splotches.
All of this is leads Abel to the near mythical Repeat Room, where the experiences of the defendant are not just shown but lived by him (You are in their head), forming the input to the judgement of how suitable the person is going forward for the new society. The section in the titular The Repeat Room feels like a bad trip, and in part 2 of the book Ball expands what the defendant actually lived through.
Part 2
When he was leaving he would stop at the door and say the same thing, always the same thing.
If you run away your sister will be beaten to death. Or, if you run away we’ll strangle your brother in a bag. The two of you are useful, interesting only together. There would be no reason to keep only one of you.
We believed him completely, I know that he meant it.
Part 2 narrates the story of the defendant. It is extremely intense and sad, on par with the worst things Hanya Yanagihara makes Jude go through in A Little Life, and I am sure that it will upset many readers. Violence, starvation, electroshocks, force feeding, incest, taking on psychological personas to flee from reality, forced sterilisation and simulated animal cruelty.
It is an experiment of dehumanisation on a household level, much more viscerally impactful than any of these experiments on a societal level, as presented to us in part 1 of the book, but definitely echoing each other.
In the end we are left unsure on what the verdict or ends of the characters are, and we have a lot of questions of complicity to mull over. An impressive, uncomfortable slim work, making clear once more to me that I should read more Jesse Ball and that is an injustice how he seems perpetually ignored for literary prices.
Quotes:
He couldn’t possibly be the centre of anything, and neither could you
The line of them walking there, they looked like something out of Goya
Declared unfit for the community
We are choosing a new society. That’s the thing. We are going through the population, one by one and thousand by thousand, to find the seeds for an actual civilisation.
Who am I if I am not the things that are done to me?
You must carry your own help, like food in a bag.
We lived like an unanswered burning
Anything hurtful must be seen
It’s nonsense, my father would say, to believe you can be a person.
A child made the way a character was written.
This was a kind of therapy, so my mother told us.
You have been sterilised as a kind of help.
Your aspirations should be that of a stone, a plant, a housefly, your comfort is knowing your business.
The effort to be a person is a wasted effort
We were not allowed any privacy
I made the meaning of my life from the things denied me
They saw me as I was, disposable
February 13, 2024
A searing and harrowing portrait of the criminal justice system of a dystopian future. Utterly enthralling and thought-provoking.
The Repeat Room features the most starkly contrasting halves of a novel that I can remember. The first half details the criminal justice system of a dystopian future, one where an ordinary citizen decides whether a perpetrator deserves to live or die after visiting “the repeat room” – a new technological advance that allows a juror to walk a mile in the perpetrator’s shoes – seeing moments of their life from before their alleged crime occurred. The second half is what Abel, our main character, actually sees when he goes to the repeat room…a harrowing and vivid account of the life of the accused. Ball spends the first act setting the stage before delivering the knockout gut-punch in the second half and never letting you get back up.
Although this left me with more questions than answers, I was utterly enthralled the entire time. I’m excited to hear what others think about this book as the story is certainly not for the faint of heart, but raises interesting questions about the state of our current justice system, capital punishment, and how our singular perspective limits our perception of those around us.
My thanks to Edelweiss and the publisher for an advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review.
Blog: The Speculative Shelf
Twitter: @specshelf
Instagram: @thespeculativeshelf
The Repeat Room features the most starkly contrasting halves of a novel that I can remember. The first half details the criminal justice system of a dystopian future, one where an ordinary citizen decides whether a perpetrator deserves to live or die after visiting “the repeat room” – a new technological advance that allows a juror to walk a mile in the perpetrator’s shoes – seeing moments of their life from before their alleged crime occurred. The second half is what Abel, our main character, actually sees when he goes to the repeat room…a harrowing and vivid account of the life of the accused. Ball spends the first act setting the stage before delivering the knockout gut-punch in the second half and never letting you get back up.
Although this left me with more questions than answers, I was utterly enthralled the entire time. I’m excited to hear what others think about this book as the story is certainly not for the faint of heart, but raises interesting questions about the state of our current justice system, capital punishment, and how our singular perspective limits our perception of those around us.
My thanks to Edelweiss and the publisher for an advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review.
Blog: The Speculative Shelf
Twitter: @specshelf
Instagram: @thespeculativeshelf
November 6, 2024
Today I woke up so early, you could say obscenely so, and lay there beneath a cloud of dread, waiting for the radio to turn on and speak to me. And when it finally did, the cloud sank and separated, spreading its vapor over my body, encasing it in a glacial veneer of despair. Last night I dreamed of a loss so profound that it effaced all traces of the one who lost from the earth. I dreamed of certain feelings in this book, but in a different way from how they arise in the book.
Sometimes in dreams, I was taken to places I never went. We watched films and what I saw there gave me places to go, and when I went there I wondered what else there would be for me. Waking, I was never sure I couldn’t be at some time in the future, somewhere else, something different, entirely different from what I was and knew. Many people are persuaded by reality. I was persuaded by my dreams, but not ever to become who they promised me. Rather to know and feel the weight of what I had lost, even before I had lost it. I made the meaning of my life from the things that were denied me, by experiencing the delight of them in my imagination.Obliquely, I thought of the film 10 Cloverfield Lane. I thought of that Palace Brothers song ‘Riding’ and all of the weight carried between its lines. I thought of what it would be like to live without the context of the outside world. How people can operate from within a faulty framework. How much pain that operation can inflict. How even love cannot suppress an urge to die. There is an idea of justice in this book entwined with a process of weeding out. Flaws in the system abound. There are the old sayings, ‘if you could walk a mile in my shoes…’ and ‘the road to hell is paved with good intentions’. But these days, it seems to me that few are willing to walk in any other shoes but their own, and people are doing just what they always intended, while dragging us to hell with them. And so I am at a loss. I am at a loss. I am at a loss. I have never been at such a loss...
October 8, 2024
first 60% was great, was really feeling the Sci-Fi/crime vibe, then the incest started, and that was all the rest of the book offered. if you do the audio at 3x speed, the narrator really sounds like he's in a manic state trying to explain away the crimes
October 16, 2024
(immediately after finishing I'd rated 3.5/5, rounded up. now, I feel like this deserves the full 4/4 because of how cohesively it's stuck w me (I usually forget the majority of a book within a few days ngl), there's very little I'm unable to recall from this one)
This could have taken 87265 other turns, but the one Jesse Ball picked will likely be what makes or breaks this book for readers.
The second act is HEAVY. I was prepared for a mindfk after reading the description, but what I got was waaay more than that - maybe more than what some people will be bargaining for with this book. I disagree with the label 'psychosexual relationship', this has far far far surpassed that. I really can't say much more without giving the remaining acts away.
In the first act, I was impressed by how quickly Jesse Ball had me immersed in a future so strange - yet believable. Think: The Stanford Prison Experiment meets the movie Spiderhead meets the idea that someone will judge how/where you spend your remaining time after you die (e.g. God:heaven vs hell) meets... the Nazis a little bit? Honestly the direction taken isn't my favorite, I think there is a better "test" out there that I would have enjoyed to see play out more; My reason for -.5 from a solid 4/5, at times it felt like we were just being messed with, like going overboard on the taboo in such a way it took away from the strength of some of the critique, vs the taboo lending to the story. But seeing as I didn't think of this book and couldn't even think of another "test" that would be wild - I'm just going to commend the author for how far he takes the idea, after having already laid the foundation for it so, so well.
Specific to the audiobook, I really really really enjoyed the narrator. At 2x I finished in less than 3 hours, even having to rewind quite a few times - the perfect length for a commute.
I still do highly recommend this book, but with caution. Use whatever the site is that will give you all of the trigger warnings if you'd feel more comfy, and be prepared for v taboo things to be v spelled out for you.
{Thank you bunches to NetGalley, Jesse Ball and publisher for an ALC in exchange for my honest review!}
This could have taken 87265 other turns, but the one Jesse Ball picked will likely be what makes or breaks this book for readers.
The second act is HEAVY. I was prepared for a mindfk after reading the description, but what I got was waaay more than that - maybe more than what some people will be bargaining for with this book. I disagree with the label 'psychosexual relationship', this has far far far surpassed that. I really can't say much more without giving the remaining acts away.
In the first act, I was impressed by how quickly Jesse Ball had me immersed in a future so strange - yet believable. Think: The Stanford Prison Experiment meets the movie Spiderhead meets the idea that someone will judge how/where you spend your remaining time after you die (e.g. God:heaven vs hell) meets... the Nazis a little bit? Honestly the direction taken isn't my favorite, I think there is a better "test" out there that I would have enjoyed to see play out more; My reason for -.5 from a solid 4/5, at times it felt like we were just being messed with, like going overboard on the taboo in such a way it took away from the strength of some of the critique, vs the taboo lending to the story. But seeing as I didn't think of this book and couldn't even think of another "test" that would be wild - I'm just going to commend the author for how far he takes the idea, after having already laid the foundation for it so, so well.
Specific to the audiobook, I really really really enjoyed the narrator. At 2x I finished in less than 3 hours, even having to rewind quite a few times - the perfect length for a commute.
I still do highly recommend this book, but with caution. Use whatever the site is that will give you all of the trigger warnings if you'd feel more comfy, and be prepared for v taboo things to be v spelled out for you.
{Thank you bunches to NetGalley, Jesse Ball and publisher for an ALC in exchange for my honest review!}
October 8, 2024
That got disturbing
October 24, 2024
Great premise, but ultimately felt disjointed and unfinished
February 3, 2025
Jesse Ball is a must-read author for me. His writing is so sparce and strange and beautiful and unsettling and everything I've ever read from him just haunts me endlessly. He has a unique way of viewing humanity and creates worlds that I would be terrified to live in.
Take The Repeat Room for example. In this horrific future, a man is called in for jury duty. He is in a room packed elbow to elbow with hundreds of other potential jurors. They will spend the next two days going through rigorous testing and examinations. They will be whittled down to one person, and that one person will be given the opportunity to sit beside the repeat room and experience the accused's life in order to make a determination on whether they get to rejoin society or be put to death.
The first half of the book follows Abel as he moves through the selection process. The second half of the book is through the eyes of the accused. And neither part is going to give you the answers you are seeking so you can forget all about that but holy crap what a journey this book is.
If you haven't read Jesse before, this might be the perfect book for you start with. If you enjoy books that never quite let you in, leaving you feeling slightly lost and uncomfortable, you are going to love this.
Take The Repeat Room for example. In this horrific future, a man is called in for jury duty. He is in a room packed elbow to elbow with hundreds of other potential jurors. They will spend the next two days going through rigorous testing and examinations. They will be whittled down to one person, and that one person will be given the opportunity to sit beside the repeat room and experience the accused's life in order to make a determination on whether they get to rejoin society or be put to death.
The first half of the book follows Abel as he moves through the selection process. The second half of the book is through the eyes of the accused. And neither part is going to give you the answers you are seeking so you can forget all about that but holy crap what a journey this book is.
If you haven't read Jesse before, this might be the perfect book for you start with. If you enjoy books that never quite let you in, leaving you feeling slightly lost and uncomfortable, you are going to love this.
February 21, 2025
Days before I started this, I went through the jury selection process. The question we prospective jurors were asked repeatedly: can we be fair? But the questions I had were how could I be fair with such a complex situation? Presented with such incomplete information, how could I predict whether I could maintain some notion of objectivity? And how could I advocate for a particular verdict when I was instructed to ignore the possible outcomes of such? I was dismissed, though I'm still glad that trial by jury is (still, for the time being) an option where I live.
So my experience of this novel is rather complicated, even ignoring the dark turn the world seems to have taken recently. Ball's books also seem to have darkened significantly in the last few years. As usual, he is not didactic, but the world-building is so chilling. I could only read small chunks of the 2nd half at a time. It's so harsh, and I keep stopping to reflect on what it says about roles and agency and personal decisions in our sad times. I had reservations with "The Repeat Room" as a novel, but this was a brutal and unforgettable reading experience.
So my experience of this novel is rather complicated, even ignoring the dark turn the world seems to have taken recently. Ball's books also seem to have darkened significantly in the last few years. As usual, he is not didactic, but the world-building is so chilling. I could only read small chunks of the 2nd half at a time. It's so harsh, and I keep stopping to reflect on what it says about roles and agency and personal decisions in our sad times. I had reservations with "The Repeat Room" as a novel, but this was a brutal and unforgettable reading experience.
October 16, 2024
DNF @65%. Life is too short to read books that don’t grab you and this was a struggle. I held on until Abel made it to the repeat room and getting through the prose of what he saw was painful. Have you ever tried to make sense of a 10 page run on sentence? It can’t be done.
February 20, 2025
I cannot in good conscience recommend this to anyone, if you read it, you didn’t hear about it from me.
Mix of Black Mirror and the most gritty and disturbing Yorgos Lanthimos film.
Fucking yikes
…5 stars
Mix of Black Mirror and the most gritty and disturbing Yorgos Lanthimos film.
Fucking yikes
…5 stars
February 16, 2025
I have no idea what I just read. Perhaps absurdist texts simply are not for me.
The first 50% of this book is interesting. The writing style is incredibly opaque and seemingly purposefully confusing. I read several sentences a few times and still could not parse the meaning and then just went with it. I thought it was An interesting concept to have a juror selected in this way and have them experience the crime to formulate a judgment.
The next part of the book is just bonkers. I'm well beyond the point where surprise incest provokes much shock value but honestly, the rest of the book recounts a life of abuse and incest from a sibling pair up to the "crime", i.e. the death of one of the pair by their own hands. Honestly, I couldn't see the point of this part of the book, especially since we do not return to our selected Juror afterwards.
Not for me, I'm afraid.
The first 50% of this book is interesting. The writing style is incredibly opaque and seemingly purposefully confusing. I read several sentences a few times and still could not parse the meaning and then just went with it. I thought it was An interesting concept to have a juror selected in this way and have them experience the crime to formulate a judgment.
The next part of the book is just bonkers. I'm well beyond the point where surprise incest provokes much shock value but honestly, the rest of the book recounts a life of abuse and incest from a sibling pair up to the "crime", i.e. the death of one of the pair by their own hands. Honestly, I couldn't see the point of this part of the book, especially since we do not return to our selected Juror afterwards.
Not for me, I'm afraid.
January 30, 2025
sometimes you gotta say yikes and move on
October 5, 2024
What if, rather than punish the perpetrators, we simply predict who can act well, who will act well – and remove those who we believe cannot? What if, in effect, we pick the ones who deserve to live? Now let’s take it one step further: what if, in choosing who deserves to live, we first get to see life directly through the eyes of the accused?
It’s an audacious premise, but any reader who has ever read Jesse Ball knows that his imagination knows no limit. The book is almost a fable in its examination of these assumptions and yet, like the juror who wears a helmet to protect himself from the intensity what he must do, we, the readers, feel similarly enclosed and culpable.
The first half of the book focuses on the culling process of jurors. The process is harrowing and even appears dangerous for the jurors who are forced to undergo the culling. We feel at arm’s length – but then the second part brings it all up close and personal.
We meet the accused, who was part of a brutal experiment by his theater director parents to eradicate from him any sense of self. He and his sister must act in the roles their parents demand they hide within each day. The parents try to “make us such forthright non-people through the operations of constant theater (as it were).” In this playing out of curiosity and the collision of cynicism and bleakness, death becomes freedom and relief.
The book tackles the very nature of knowledge and judgment, crime and punishment, identity and erasure. It’s a fine addition to this author’s already remarkable oeuvre.
It’s an audacious premise, but any reader who has ever read Jesse Ball knows that his imagination knows no limit. The book is almost a fable in its examination of these assumptions and yet, like the juror who wears a helmet to protect himself from the intensity what he must do, we, the readers, feel similarly enclosed and culpable.
The first half of the book focuses on the culling process of jurors. The process is harrowing and even appears dangerous for the jurors who are forced to undergo the culling. We feel at arm’s length – but then the second part brings it all up close and personal.
We meet the accused, who was part of a brutal experiment by his theater director parents to eradicate from him any sense of self. He and his sister must act in the roles their parents demand they hide within each day. The parents try to “make us such forthright non-people through the operations of constant theater (as it were).” In this playing out of curiosity and the collision of cynicism and bleakness, death becomes freedom and relief.
The book tackles the very nature of knowledge and judgment, crime and punishment, identity and erasure. It’s a fine addition to this author’s already remarkable oeuvre.
December 21, 2024
Dystopian fiction set in the future, after a new government has taken control and revamped the justice system. A single selected juror is charged with deciding the fate of one accused person after viewing the pertinent part of their life, as if viewing a film. This experience is facilitated through technology and drugs. We follow Abel through the jury selection process and then find out what he saw in the repeat room. The setup and first half captivated my attention. It covers the experience of potential jurors during the selection process, the new justice system, and the new government’s views on criminality. I found this novel extremely creative. I knew that something dark and disturbing would be coming, and it was even more horrifying than expected. I understand the point, and it is a good one, but this type of content is not for me (). I very much enjoyed the first half and rather disliked the second.
3.5
3.5
October 7, 2024
Was not a fan of this one. Very interesting take on the jury system concept, I will give it that. I did not love the writing style, it was very confusingly worded and structured in some sentences. Even after re-reading a sentence 3 or 4 times it still made no sense to me!
November 1, 2024
This was a little over 5 hours of literary nonsense. What complete and utter twaddle. I'm actually mad that I thought this might be good. I don't know who Jesse Ball is but he needs help. This book was disgusting, disjointed, discombobulating drivel.
June 20, 2025
4.5/5
“Who am I if I am not the things that were done to me?”
“We lived like an unanswered burning.”
This book’s unlike anything you’ve read before. It’s written in two parts that initially feel jarringly different. So much so, that for a moment I wondered if I had accidentally skipped to a different audiobook. Ultimately it feels cohesive and the two parts complement each other perfectly.
This is dystopian, dark, disturbing, strangely surreal and an absolute brainworm. I listened to it all in one sitting and immediately listened to part two a second time. I then began looking for my next Jesse Ball book because I’m intrigued. His writing is new to me, thanks to a Goodreads review by Lark that piqued my interest.
“Who am I if I am not the things that were done to me?”
“We lived like an unanswered burning.”
This book’s unlike anything you’ve read before. It’s written in two parts that initially feel jarringly different. So much so, that for a moment I wondered if I had accidentally skipped to a different audiobook. Ultimately it feels cohesive and the two parts complement each other perfectly.
This is dystopian, dark, disturbing, strangely surreal and an absolute brainworm. I listened to it all in one sitting and immediately listened to part two a second time. I then began looking for my next Jesse Ball book because I’m intrigued. His writing is new to me, thanks to a Goodreads review by Lark that piqued my interest.
October 31, 2024
Sometime in the future, juries work differently. From a large selection pool, the jury is whittled down to one person in a 3-day process. People may themselves me taken away for crimes that are found during this process, or their status may be down-or up-graded depending on how they do and how long they last in the process. The chosen jury person then gets to see the crime from the accused's perspective--in the repeat room, and to sentence them to death or let them go. It is all on that one person.
First we follow Abel through the jury selection process. Then we learn what he saw in the repeat room.
This book is excellent. I have a few questions, but just asking them would be spoilers. A fascinating look at a potential future of social status, job assignment, and jurisprudence in a society with dreams of perfection and the technology to do this.
I wasn't sure about the narration at first--it felt very AI-ish (not unlike google maps). But then I decided it actually fits this story so well.
First we follow Abel through the jury selection process. Then we learn what he saw in the repeat room.
This book is excellent. I have a few questions, but just asking them would be spoilers. A fascinating look at a potential future of social status, job assignment, and jurisprudence in a society with dreams of perfection and the technology to do this.
I wasn't sure about the narration at first--it felt very AI-ish (not unlike google maps). But then I decided it actually fits this story so well.
December 16, 2024
The Repeat Room is a dystopian novel that paints a picture of the criminal justice system of the future. Citizens are put through a variety of tests to see if they are fit to be a juror. This selected juror then is able to inhabit the defendant’s lived experience, to see as if through their eyes, before making their decision.
The first and second parts of this book are vastly different. The first 60% was an interesting take on the jury system concept, similar to an idea you would find in a Black Mirror episode. But then some really disturbing shit started and it all went downhill. I usually have a very high tolerance for this, but it definitely felt like it detracted from the overall theme and message. It pulled me out of the story rather than advancing the concept.
Overall, I hated the writing style, even more so in the second half. It left me very confused and lost and zoning out. Have you ever tried to make sense of a 116-page stream-of-consciousness run-on sentence? It simply cannot be done. Even after re-reading a sentence 3 or 4 times, it still made no sense to me!
If the book ended at the halfway point, I probably would have given it 2.5-3 stars, even while hating the writing style. But the second half was so entirely manic and vile, I felt like I was gaining absolutely nothing from a literary perspective.
The first and second parts of this book are vastly different. The first 60% was an interesting take on the jury system concept, similar to an idea you would find in a Black Mirror episode. But then some really disturbing shit started and it all went downhill. I usually have a very high tolerance for this, but it definitely felt like it detracted from the overall theme and message. It pulled me out of the story rather than advancing the concept.
Overall, I hated the writing style, even more so in the second half. It left me very confused and lost and zoning out. Have you ever tried to make sense of a 116-page stream-of-consciousness run-on sentence? It simply cannot be done. Even after re-reading a sentence 3 or 4 times, it still made no sense to me!
If the book ended at the halfway point, I probably would have given it 2.5-3 stars, even while hating the writing style. But the second half was so entirely manic and vile, I felt like I was gaining absolutely nothing from a literary perspective.
December 31, 2024
I grabbed this one off the local library shelves and went into it blind, not having heard of it before. While I love the concept of the plot, the writing style was a bit of a miss for me. It was intriguing, but I definitely had to push myself through the last quarter, where the writing switches heavily into a rambling train of thought. I would love to see this plot repeated with a different style. Five stars for creativity, minus two for overall execution. This is definitely a case of "maybe it's just me," though — it's a book that requires a little work, while I was looking simply for entertainment.
December 26, 2024
I hate authors that can’t be bothered to finish writing the book. Nobody is asking for wrapped up, tied up ending, but for goodness sake at least have a last paragraph so that the whole first half of the book is not completely pointless
January 9, 2025
started out real good and had so much potential and then went banana bonkers fucking sideways
January 31, 2025
The back cover of this book describes itself as “Franz Kafka meets Yorgos Lanthimos” and given how viscerally I disliked Kinds of Kindness, I was so intrigued to see how that description would play out for me.
Ultimately this novel had a super interesting premise (society with a jury system where they select a single juror to go to “the repeat room” where they get to live the defendant’s experience through their eyes) but I finished this book feeling ??? because of how many loose ends and unresolved storylines there were. I was waiting for an ah ha moment to be like “wow this is how everything connects” but alas the moment never came.
With respect to the likening to Lanthimos, I can see why they make the comparison. The content in the second half is very heavy and hard to digest but you can’t seem to look away and you find yourself wondering why the author chose to do certain things, which is a question I asked myself many times while watching KoK (that director is most definitely on a wavelength I am not).
Ultimately this novel had a super interesting premise (society with a jury system where they select a single juror to go to “the repeat room” where they get to live the defendant’s experience through their eyes) but I finished this book feeling ??? because of how many loose ends and unresolved storylines there were. I was waiting for an ah ha moment to be like “wow this is how everything connects” but alas the moment never came.
With respect to the likening to Lanthimos, I can see why they make the comparison. The content in the second half is very heavy and hard to digest but you can’t seem to look away and you find yourself wondering why the author chose to do certain things, which is a question I asked myself many times while watching KoK (that director is most definitely on a wavelength I am not).
December 25, 2024
My 4th of Ball's books and each has been better than the last. Ball fits on my rare shelf of writers for whom I love very book I've read (Ali Smith, Toni Morrison, Roberto Bolaño, Cormac McCarthy, Yuri Herrera, Shea Serrano, and a few others). Though I'm not exactly sure what he was doing with the second half of The Repeat Room, I am sure that it was not as straight-forward as the narrative would suggest. I am slightly let down with the conclusion of this story but I am also certain that I will go over it in my mind many times before I'm through with it so, I cannot complain. Jesse Ball gets a lot of credit for his uniqueness and his dystopian-adjacent stories but he rarely gets credit for his sentence level brilliance, which is considerable
He's a master... but honesty stipulates - he's a master without a masterpiece. The Repeat Room is the best of what I've read of his, but he's never quite made it there, he's never quite fully realized his immense talent. Here's hoping he gets there one day. For now, I'll settle for grabbing every new book on the first day of release
He's a master... but honesty stipulates - he's a master without a masterpiece. The Repeat Room is the best of what I've read of his, but he's never quite made it there, he's never quite fully realized his immense talent. Here's hoping he gets there one day. For now, I'll settle for grabbing every new book on the first day of release
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August 24, 2025The premise was intriguing but the writing style didn’t work with my brain very well. It was hard for me to visualize what I was reading and it was a little too bizarre for me. Not what I expected.
November 8, 2024
3,5
Weird (in a good way) but also very disturbing.
Weird (in a good way) but also very disturbing.
October 4, 2024
A double-dose of psychodystopia. Deeply disturbing; no way out.
”Mechanization and algorithmic control mean freedom to just participate in the act of being human. More and more we see that what that means is deciding who gets to be human.“
”Mechanization and algorithmic control mean freedom to just participate in the act of being human. More and more we see that what that means is deciding who gets to be human.“
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September 19, 2024For some reason, I thought I’d read more Jesse Ball, only to realise that this is just my second dip into his oeuvre (I love that word). I did read Census and had conflicting thoughts about it. You can read those on Goodreads or this blog (assuming you’re not reading this on Facebook).
I loved The Repeat Room, though. It’s a dystopian novel, but one where Ball doesn’t care much about fleshing out his dystopia. He falls back on the sort of dystopian cliches—everyone has a designation, a value of their worth—that Orwell would recognise (I did chuckle at the fact that holograms have taken over most jobs). The central conceit is the one splash of originality. After a complex and byzantine selection process, a single juror judges an alleged criminal. To do so, they sit next to The Repeat Room (which houses the defendant), and while injected with drugs and wearing a weird helmet, they experience the crime through the criminal’s eyes.
If that’s all this novel was: a dystopian take on crime and punishment, I’d be a bit meh. But… well… the second half has a young man accused of murder recounting his crime. It’s astonishing for various reasons that I go into ecstatic detail in my Locus review—but, simply put, it’s the sort of literary ambition that gives me hope for contemporary fiction.
I know this type of storytelling isn’t for everyone. There’s not much plot, the subject matter is challenging, the morality opaque. But if you’re willing to open yourself up to something different, something disquieting and strange, put Repeat Room on your To Be Read pile.
I loved The Repeat Room, though. It’s a dystopian novel, but one where Ball doesn’t care much about fleshing out his dystopia. He falls back on the sort of dystopian cliches—everyone has a designation, a value of their worth—that Orwell would recognise (I did chuckle at the fact that holograms have taken over most jobs). The central conceit is the one splash of originality. After a complex and byzantine selection process, a single juror judges an alleged criminal. To do so, they sit next to The Repeat Room (which houses the defendant), and while injected with drugs and wearing a weird helmet, they experience the crime through the criminal’s eyes.
If that’s all this novel was: a dystopian take on crime and punishment, I’d be a bit meh. But… well… the second half has a young man accused of murder recounting his crime. It’s astonishing for various reasons that I go into ecstatic detail in my Locus review—but, simply put, it’s the sort of literary ambition that gives me hope for contemporary fiction.
I know this type of storytelling isn’t for everyone. There’s not much plot, the subject matter is challenging, the morality opaque. But if you’re willing to open yourself up to something different, something disquieting and strange, put Repeat Room on your To Be Read pile.
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