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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 out of print or unavailable edition of this title.Review
‘Ballard’s finest novel…A triumph’ The Times
‘Another eerie glimpse into the future. A fast-moving, spine-tingling fable of the concrete jungle’ Daily Express
‘A gripping read, particularly if you like your thrills chilly, bloody and with claims to social relevance’ Time Out
‘Harsh and ingenious…High-Rise is an intense and vivid bestiary, which lingers unsettlingly in the mind’ Martin Amis, New Statesman
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
20 of 22 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I have just finished reading High Rise, JG Ballard's surreal and chilling study of social degeneration within the walls of a 40 storey apartment block populated by an ascendant order of professional classes. The novel makes for compulsive reading as Ballard propels his complicit characters through an apocalyptic gallop towards their primordial origins. The author fills the margins of his fiction with the accumalitive waste of modern existence, and its encroachment is so powerful that the reader can almost smell the rotting garbage and faecal climate of this surrealist tower block. The intoxicating violence and the strange allure of a human community radically re-ordering itself somewhere outside of the technological frontier make this a must for committed Ballard fans and new readers alike.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
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.
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.
7 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is really prime Ballard. He has produced great works like The Atrocity Exhibition and Crash but as usual it is his 'urban-disasters' that prove to be the more involving reads and High-rise is my personal favourite.
The formula isnt any different to that of 'The Drowned Wolrd' or, more recently, 'Millennium People' but it still works effective in working a range of genres like social and political with good old excitement (with a dab of the black ballard humour). High Rise is my favourite because it is very accessible but doesnt lose out because of it. The atmosphere built is think and intense, reminiscient of 'Lord of the Flies' or the crawling paranoia of 'Apocalypse Now'. Characters are typically undeveloped but what they get up to and the clarity of their surroundings more than makes up for it.
Keep in mind that youve gotta let your imagination fly with this one more than others. Its top stuff.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
high rise that works on many levels
This was my first full length JG Ballard novel after reading volume 1 of his short story collection. Read more
Published 2 months ago by spacetrader
Doom-laden futuristic chiller
J.G.Ballard was one of the great Sci-fi writers of the Twentieth century; along with the likes of Philip K Dick and Ray Bradbury he produced paranoid and twisted dystopian... Read more
Published 10 months ago by Scaroth, Last of the Jagaroth
WE-1984-
That kind of novel that potrays the middle classes in turmoil as oppossed to the state controling the masses..a metaphor for today in 2011..did't work for me.
Published 12 months ago by tvpunter
gratuitous
i knew this book was supposed to be alarming, thought provoking etc., but i didn't bank on the feeling of impatience and horror. Read more
Published 18 months ago by biskit
Not so High Rise!
This was an interesting read, on the lines of Lord of the Flies. Worth a read but not overly exciting!
Published 18 months ago by Dazzy.B
Ahead of its time
A new world in the sky, a forty storey tower block, is the focus of Ballard's most acclaimed book. Within the block there is everything the residents could need, on the 10th floor... Read more
Published 19 months ago by Jo Bennie
A favourite J G Ballard book
A book I have re-read and re-read, a SF masterpiece. Most of JG Ballard's books are masterpieces, but High-Rise is one I often pull from my book pile. Read more
Published 21 months ago by Mr. A. Buckle
Where Eagles Dare
Ballard's prescience = eerie, publishing a book in 1975 predicting middle classes ascendance to high rise escalation. Read more
Published on 24 May 2010 by Dr. Delvis Memphistopheles
A good read
While the the sequence of incidents in the high rise itself isn't exactly entirely convincing, it's certainly a good read and microcosm for society etc.
Published on 16 April 2010 by A. Wall
Not top-class Ballard
I bought this as a Metro newspaper offer. I've read and been intrigued by Ballard before, and High-Rise touches on themes I'd been investigating for a story of my own. Read more
Published on 9 Jan 2010 by Elizabeth Sever
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