Census
Ratings4
Average rating3.3
15
Ratings4
Average rating3.3
NAMED A RECOMMENDED BOOK OF 2018 BY The New York Times • The Chicago Reader • Nylon • The Boston Globe • The Huffington Post • The Rumpus • The AV Club • Southern Living • The Millions • Buzzfeed • Esquire • Publishers Weekly A powerful and moving new novel from an award-winning, acclaimed author: in the wake of a devastating revelation, a father and son journey north across a tapestry of towns When a widower receives notice from a doctor that he doesn’t have long left to live, he is struck by the question of who will care for his adult son—a son whom he fiercely loves, a boy with Down syndrome. With no recourse in mind, and with a desire to see the country on one last trip, the man signs up as a census taker for a mysterious governmental bureau and leaves town with his son. Traveling into the country, through towns named only by ascending letters of the alphabet, the man and his son encounter a wide range of human experience. While some townspeople welcome them into their homes, others who bear the physical brand of past censuses on their ribs are wary of their presence. When they press toward the edges of civilization, the landscape grows wilder, and the towns grow farther apart and more blighted by industrial decay. As they approach “Z,” the man must confront a series of questions: What is the purpose of the census? Is he complicit in its mission? And just how will he learn to say good-bye to his son? Mysterious and evocative, Census is a novel about free will, grief, the power of memory, and the ferocity of parental love, from one of our most captivating young writers.
Reviews with the most likes.
A mysterious and philosophical novel. A widower finds out that he has a fatal condition that will bring his life to an end soon, so he closes his medical practice, signs on to be a census taker, and travels the country with his son who has Down Syndrome. The unnamed country has the practice of marking people who have participated in the census with a tattoo on a specific rib. The towns and cities are referred to with letters of the alphabet, and the census taker and his son travel from town to town, encountering all kinds of people and gathering information for the census. In addition to hearing the stories of the people he meets, the widower reflects on the life of his son, what the occupation of census taker is, and the life of his dead wife (who was a famous clown and attended something called The Shape School).
The world of this novel is intriguing and rich, but I felt frustrated that I was only given the bare outlines of it. What is this world, and why are things the way they are there? Why do they perform the census this way? Is the widower performing the census correctly, or is he really fouling it up? And while the widower tells us that he took on this job so he and his son could see the country, I have my doubts that this is really for the benefit of his son. I wanted more background, more detail, something to latch onto in the heavy mists of this book. I enjoyed reading it, but I could have enjoyed it more.
