High-Rise: A Novel Author: Visit Amazon's J. G. Ballard Page | Language: English | ISBN:
0871404028 | Format: EPUB
High-Rise: A Novel Description
Review
'Ballard's finest novel... Vibrant with irony and images, a triumph of artistry and feeling.' The Times 'Ingenious... High-Rise is an intense and vivid bestiary, which lingers unsettlingly in the mind.' Martin Amis 'A gripping read, particularly if you like your thrills chilly, bloody and with claims to social relevance.' Time Out 'An eerie glimpse into the future. A fast-moving, spine-tingling fable of the concrete jungle.' Daily Express 'Chilling... Ballard is a prophetic writer' Sunday Times
--This text refers to an alternate
Paperback
edition.
About the Author
J.G. Ballard was born in Shanghai in 1930 and lived in England from 1946 until his death in London in 2009. He is the author of nineteen novels, including Empire of the Sun, The Drought, and Crash, with many of them made into major films.
- Paperback: 208 pages
- Publisher: Liveright (April 16, 2012)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0871404028
- ISBN-13: 978-0871404022
- Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.4 x 0.6 inches
- Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
J.G. Ballard's 1975 novel "High Rise" contains all of the qualities we have come to expect from this author: alarming psychological insights, a study of the profoundly disturbing connections between technology and the human condition, and an intriguing plot masterfully executed. Ballard, who wrote the tremendously troubling "Crash," really knows how to dig deep into our troubling times in order to expose our tentative grasp of modernity. Some compare this book to William Golding's "Lord of the Flies," and there are definite characteristics the two novels share. I would argue, however, that "High Rise" is more eloquent and more relevant than Golding's book. Unfortunately, this Ballard novel is out of print. Try and locate a copy at your local library because the payoff is well worth the effort.
"High Rise" centers around four major characters: Dr. Robert Laing, an instructor at a local medical school, Richard Wilder, a television documentary producer, Anthony Royal, an architect, and the high rise building all three live in with 2,000 other people. Throughout the story, Ballard switches back and forth between these three people, recording their thoughts and actions as they live their lives in the new high-rise apartment building. Ballard made sure to pick three separate people living on different floors of the forty floor building: Laing lives on the twenty fifth floor, Wilder lives on the second floor, and Royal lives in a penthouse on the fortieth floor (befitting his status as the designer of the building). Where you live in this structure will soon take on an importance beyond life itself.
At the beginning of the story, most of the people living in the building get along quite well.
J. G. Ballard's High-Rise (1975) is a fascinating yet relentlessly mono-thematic novel inspired by the effects of overpopulation on society explored in earlier sci-fi masterpieces such as John Brunner's Stand on Zanzibar (1969) and Silverberg's The World Inside (1971) (both of which I prefer to High-Rise).
The appeal lies more in Ballard's literary qualities and stylistic choices rather than the novel's ideas which are dominated (albeit, I'm being overly simplistic) by a virulent strain of "Lord of the Flies syndrome" afflicting adults, instead of children, crammed into an "island-like" building. Wine war paint instead of pig blood... Chowing on Alsatian dog instead of feral pig... etc.
Plot Summary (limited spoilers)
"Later, as he sat on his balcony eating the dog, Dr Robert Laing reflected on the unusual events that had taken place within his huge apartment building during the previous three months."
And so begins our protagonist's (antagonist?) relentlessly dark (and relentlessly predictable) apartment wanderings -- a crumbling society plagued (in increasing degrees) by flickering electricity, disturbed naked drunken rampages along dog pee filled elevators, rape, suicide, the self-destruction of the upper class.
Laing is one of two thousand occupants of an ultra-modern apartment building for the wealthy which contains entertainment facilities, grocery stores, an endless supply of alcohol (a liquor store), swimming pools, and schools. A few minor inconveniences (a weak electricity supply, malfunctioning elevators) leads to the escalation of tension between the occupants.
Although all the occupants are wealthy, those that live higher up band together against the lower floors and a "class struggle" breaks out.
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