Cripes. This book really struck a chord with me. There's something fascinating about the brevity of the prose style, the method in which a familiar setting is rendered alien, and the depiction of a bunch of seemingly ordinary and (in literary terms, I suppose) boring characters, turning into a fascinating gestalt of suppressed primal urges. The animalistic behaviour that 'society' irons out of us is allowed to reassert itself, and nobody seems to want to stop it. Individuals become a mob on their own doorsteps.
This book feels like it could have been written in the 21st century. There is a big focus on luxury developments of flats within the story. Since 1995, it has felt like wherever an estate agent's leaflet has been dropped, that's where a new 'development' (not tower block!) has sprung up.
Living in a luxury penthouse flat is often held up as the pinnacle of success. I love the way that Ballard explores the ramifications of geographically divorcing one's self from society, based on a sense of superiority. I've always been fascinated by books that show how fragile our society is - how it can so easily breakdown. (Another favourite is The Day of the Triffids (Penguin Modern Classics)). In the recent England riots, one of the suggested causes for people running rampant and looting was that they were somehow 'disengaged from society'. In a similar way, the High Rise is a microcosm of that very effect.
I have heard real life experiences of people living in modern, tall, luxury apartment buildings. Everything is fine until, one day, the lifts break down; or the people on the 8th floor are clearly chavs because they don't have balconies and they drop cigarette butts onto ours; or next door do karaoke until 3am on a school night; or they've drowned my dog in the luxury swimming pool. (OK, so the last bit was one of Ballard's).
Fantastic book. Thought provoking, disturbing, entertaining and still relevant. And feels like it could happen in a luxury development of flats near you.
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POINTLESS
I was motivated to buy this book because the recent Spectator review of the film was so damning I couldn't resist it. I say "pointless" rather than "rubbish" because that's what it is; the violence (the only real attraction of a book like this) is badly and briefly described but that's not the main issue I have. The basic premise that, left to their own devices, people will destroy their own - expensive - property for no other reason than boredom, drunkenness and pack aggression is fundamentally flawed. Obviously tempers can and do flare occasionally in communal living projects but to expect the reader to willingly imagine that, left to their own devices, residents of - say - Albany or the Shard would metamorphosise into a cross between American Physco and Lord of the Flies is fantastical if not farcical. I'm glad I read it, if only to avoid the film.
