Ball’s stripped-down surrealism gives way to stream-of-consciousness prose poetry from the point of view of the accused ... Both halves are expertly written, and the second is visceral and moving. But do the halves form a whole? ... Ball certainly caught something here. The Repeat Room is compelling, eerie and dreamlike, even if, like a dream, the parts don’t fully cohere.
This is a speculative fiction with the brevity and depth of a fable ... A compelling fable about the nature of fiction, including the fiction that is memoir: about what it can and cannot tell us, and what we must decide to do with that imperfect knowledge.
Ball’s vision is chilling, his writing flawless in this stark, grueling tale of humans bereft of care and compassion, of love denied, sanity endangered, and judgement weaponized.
With his enigmatic approach, it’s hard to say that a surrealist like Ball is back on brand ... Ball puts down broad brush strokes here about bureaucratic justice versus human frailty, but the devil is in the details; his disorienting style and the unsettling atmosphere deliver a uniquely uncomfortable experience. A provocative vision of a world desperately in search of basic human compassion.
