Reviews with content warning for Animal cruelty - High-Rise

Reviews tagging 'Animal cruelty'

bookbelle5_17's review

dark emotional funny mysterious reflective tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

Review of High Rise

By: J.G. Ballard

Robert Laing, a professor of medicine seeks solace after his divorce in this infamous high-rise built by architect, Anthony Royal, but finds himself getting lost in the madness as things start to go horribly wrong in the High-Rise. Richard Wilder is a documentary filmmaker determine to ascend to the top of the high rise and expose its gritty underbelly. Anthony Royal, the architect of the building, studies the residents and how they respond to the building’s malfunctions as if they were animals in a zoo.

This is a bizarre and dark story about humans giving into their more savage and primitive natures. The characters are metaphorically trapped in this high-rise and even when there is an opportunity to go out into the real world, they make excuses not to. The first main character we’re introduced to, Robert Laing refuses to see the reality around him and even when there is no electricity, and he can’t use the water he doesn’t care. His odor represents the wild nature of the high-rise and he’s pleased with it. It’s as if he’s in a drugged state of mind. Richard Wilder, notices Laing has distanced himself and he observes, “Or was there some other impulse at work—a need to shut away, most of all from oneself, any realization of what was actually happening in the high-rise, so that events there could follow their own logic and get even more out of hang?” Laing when watching people from his balcony leaving for work, finds the “civilized behavior” as “unsettling”. Behavior we see as routine and normal is weird and unnatural to him. Richard Wilder, on the other hand, has become more savage and giving into his more primitive nature. Like the other residents, who are determined to protect their floor as if it’s territory, he will kill anyone perceived as a threat. He doesn’t even see that he needs to get his wife and sons out of high-rise as they’re suffering. He stops caring about them seeing them as a nuisance to his desire to climb the ladder of the high-rise. Anthony Royal is the most interesting of the characters as he watches over the residents, fascinated by them. He’s a scientist exploring humanity at its worst. Some of his thoughts are “The five years of his marriage to Anne had given him a new set of prejudices. Reluctantly, he knew that he despised his fellow residents for the way in which they fitted so willingly into their appointed slots in the apartment building, for their over-developed sense of responsibility, and lack of flamboyance.” He sees himself as superior to the other residents and like Robert Laing craves to be by himself. He also resents the people in the high-rise, “In a sense, the vanguard of a well-to-do and well-educated proletariat of the future, boxed up in these expensive apartments with their elegant furniture and intelligent sensibilities, and no possibility of escape”. When we get to his point of view, he and his wife are packing to leave, but even his wife, Anne, knows Royal can’t bring himself to leave. This shows a group of humans losing themselves in their more primitive pleasures and living in the bubble where reality ceases to exist. The only reality is the high-rise. This reminds me of The Circle by David Eggers. Both stories explore getting trapped in your own fantasy reality and not seeing your identity disappear. It’s basically a cult using pleasure to lure you in. Ballard writes beautifully how savage humans can be and how unhealthy it is to isolate yourself from reality. It is disturbing to read, and some parts made me sick, but it’s a brilliant examination of human nature.

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mprov80's review

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Well written, at first compelling but, despite being a short book, I lost interest. Didn't find any of the characters or their situation relatable or insightful in the slightest. Story itself was disappointingly dull, despite the slow build-up of depravity. Didn't care for the scenes of animal torture.

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v_v_v's review

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dark tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

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richardw2024's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

I'm not really sure what I just read or if I enjoyed it. This book is incredibly clever and well written, it describes the residents of a new luxury tower block and the "high rise" was an allegory for society in general. Like "Lord Of The Flies", it describes the descent of humans that are confined in an artificial society.

This felt like the kind of book that needs to be studied. I think you could study every page of this book and draw conclusions about everything - the choice of words, the imagery... Even from the main characters being called Wilder (who lives on the lower levels) and Royal (who lives on the top) - I think there is so much you could explore within this book if you wanted to.

There were a lot of parts of this book I didn't enjoy though and often found it heavy going. Some of it is quite disturbing. One relief is that the book itself is quite short.

It's a book I respect, and I think it achieved what the author wanted it to achieve, but I don't think that I would say I particularly enjoyed it. I wouldn't recommend it if you are looking for a light read though.

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annihilatrix's review

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challenging dark sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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emmathebookworm's review against another edition

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To be honest, I only started this book because Tom Hiddleston narrated it.
I loved the concept, it just didn´t work for me. It was quite good in the beginning, but everything went downhill from there. Even Tom ‘sexy British accent’ Hiddleston couldn’t help me through it.
This is one of the very few times the movie is better than the book.

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wcked's review against another edition

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dark reflective tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No

4.0

The audiobook was great. The changes that the people in the building go through is unsettling, especially as the author gives us access to the minds of the three male leads. What most disturbed me was the way the women changed, because it really showed how the values of this new society differed from ours, and how easy it would be for us to become numb to depravity.

I was hoping for no animal violence, but alas.

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tankie_girl_boy's review

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challenging dark fast-paced

JG Ballard is one of those authors that circled on the periphery of recommended lists for books I like, but whose critical 1960s and 70s work I'd never read and so when my selection for book club came up, I decided to rectify this gap and dig in to the architectural fantasies of brutal violence of High Rise. Even though I have my critiques, I'm glad I did, the over the top to the point of it being funny shock violence combined with the sharp observation that this tendency to brutality lurks 2cm under the skin of the genteel bourgeiosie make it worth the short and quickly paced descent.

I actually thought there would be more in this book about the way the design of the building launches the intra-upper middle class class war but Ballard keeps this bubling away in the background only letting it buble up through Anthony Royal's narration and the occasional aside by the others. This feels somewhat unsatisfying but I don't use that as an insult, there could be some comfort to seek in letting the engineering overdominate the causality of violence that Ballard does not allow you.

His use of sexual violence in the book is somewhat suspect, not in an of itself but in the other brutalities he strays away from or leaves to implication, especially considering the lack of access we are given to the internal lives of the women in the book that are afforded to the men commiting this sexual violence. This is not to suggest that sexual violence is off limits or that it would not be a feature in the internal logic of the work, but it seems to me that same sex sexual violence and canibalism would also fit this internal logic and the latter is only hinted at and the former glares as an omission.

Of the three narrators, I found Wilder the most compelling and his job as a documentary film maker is part of the key to why this is. Before he starts his murder rampage odessy to the top floor, my interpretation is that his use of the camera was as a crutch that allowed him to follow his desire toward lurid violence. In The Pervert's Guide to Ideology, Zizek mentions the Catholic institution of confession being the ideological and psycological permission for one to follow their desires and I think the documentary camera is used by Wilder in the same way. This is why he is willing to discard it as he becomes fully imeshed, the crutch is no longer nessesary and also the ambiguity around Ballard's use of language with terms like him "weilding" the camera.

The dog murder in the book was a particuarly nice touch, as it reminded me of the amount of dogs you'd hear in the hallway of one of those new build "luxury" flats when I lived in one. The combined pamering and cruelty towards dogs in this bourgois context was interesting and is played to its extreme in the book with the upper floors group treating them as the lower floors treated their children before they start to eat them.

Theories of the tyranny of the crowd and mob mentality emerged out of a deep fear of the working class at the end of the 19th century so it was interesting to lay these dynamics on the class that came up with the idea rather than the class they were trying to describe.

I reccomend this book, it was interesting and harsh in the way such a book as this should be.

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