Scan barcode
A review by amyamac
High-Rise by J.G. Ballard
2.0
The premise of this book doesn’t quite work.
The high rise is meant to influence the behaviours of the occupants: to drive them towards brutality and debauchery. It’s true that corrupt cultures can influence people to behave negatively - there’s been a few case studies in prisons for instance - but I wasn’t convinced by the analysis that Ballard voices through his characters in response to their moral decline.
For this reason, the book ended up being about little more than a group of people - especially the men - behaving incredibly badly for apparently very little reason. To make the violence at all compelling there needs to be a stronger context and the writer needs to convey the characters’ motives in a subtler way than paragraphs of justification.
Also, I was frustrated by the passivity of the female characters. Not much seemed to distinguish them from one another.
The high rise is meant to influence the behaviours of the occupants: to drive them towards brutality and debauchery. It’s true that corrupt cultures can influence people to behave negatively - there’s been a few case studies in prisons for instance - but I wasn’t convinced by the analysis that Ballard voices through his characters in response to their moral decline.
For this reason, the book ended up being about little more than a group of people - especially the men - behaving incredibly badly for apparently very little reason. To make the violence at all compelling there needs to be a stronger context and the writer needs to convey the characters’ motives in a subtler way than paragraphs of justification.
Also, I was frustrated by the passivity of the female characters. Not much seemed to distinguish them from one another.