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Kingdom Come [Paperback]

J. G. Ballard (Author)
2.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
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Book Description

Publication Date: 2 July 2007

A masterpiece of fiction from J. G. Ballard, which asks could Consumerism turn into Facism?

A gunman opens fire in a shopping mall. Not a terrorist, apparently, but a madman with a rifle. Or not, as he is mysteriously (and quickly) set free without charge.

One of the victims is the father of Richard Pearson, unemployed advertising executive and life-long rebel. Now he is driving out to Brooklands, the apparently peaceful town on the M25 which has at its heart the very shiny shoppers’ paradise where the shooting happened – the Metro-Centre.

Then the main suspect is released – thanks to the testimony of self-styled pillars of the community like the doctor who treated Richard’s father on his deathbed. Richard, determined to unravel the mystery, starts to believe that something deeply sinister lurks behind the pristine facades of the labyrinthine mall, its 24-hour cable TV and sports club…

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Product details

  • Paperback: 304 pages
  • Publisher: Harper Perennial (2 July 2007)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0007232470
  • ISBN-13: 978-0007232475
  • Product Dimensions: 13 x 2.3 x 19.7 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 2.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 156,250 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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J. G. Ballard
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Review

‘Dystopias are Ballard's stock-in-trade and, when on song, he animates them better than anyone else…It takes a master novelist to pick out the small details…Fascinating’ Sunday Telegraph

'It is his ability to summon a deteriorated but recognisable modern world into being that makes him among the finest dystopians at work' Sunday Times

'We're in Ballard-land, his old archetypes at war in a familiar-yet-strange terrain, and that should be compelling enough for any reader…Ballard, paradoxically, with all his characters gripped by obsession and necessity, is one of the great novelists of freedom' Financial Times

‘Kingdom Come looks like a report on the state of modern Britain, but it's really a report on the state of J.G. Ballard's head, and the good news is that it's as fertile as ever…Kingdom Come is impressively packed with brilliant apercus.’ Observer

About the Author

J.G. Ballard was born in 1930 in Shanghai. After internment in a civilian prison camp, his family returned to England in 1946. His 1984 bestseller Empire of the Sun won the Guardian Fiction Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. His controversial novel Crash was made into a film by David Cronenberg. His autobiography Miracles of Life was published in 2008, and a collection of interviews with the author, Extreme Metaphors, will be published in 2012. J.G. Ballard passed away in 2009.

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars A Fresh Taste of Dystopia 2 Jan 2013
By Iamisbejuanchi
Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase
If you enjoy dystopian novels- Ballard might be the one for you! At times, the point he was trying to make about the value we place on the material seemed over exemplified (especially at the beginning of the book), but it was a great read nonetheless.
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4 of 5 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars Maybe not the best Ballard, yet... 27 Nov 2008
By Vittorio Caffè
Format:Paperback
Weren't those reviewers a bit stingy? I can understand that this is not Crash, or Empire of the Sun, or The Kindness of Women, or the Drowned World... yet, I can't see why the score is so low. It is--like everything written by Ballard--a provocative surrealist story. You can't read it as a realistic novel, and you can't even read it as a story with a realistic starting point which becomes science-fictional in the end... it's surrealistic right from the start, not in the vein of Magritte or Dali, but in the tradition of Luis Bunuel. Everything seems normal, but there are strange things happening everywhere. All in all, Ballard doesn't give a damn about sociological verisimilitude: he grabs whatever ideas, facts, figures, places may fire his imagination, and then builds a sociological nightmare. If you're looking for a sociological survey, well, this is the wrong place to come. Ballard delivers surrealist fiction, disguised as a crime novel. With a great finale, one should add...
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11 of 14 people found the following review helpful
1.0 out of 5 stars Pale Imitation 21 May 2007
By Smellgrovia
Format:Hardcover
I am a huge Ballard fan and so am sorry to say that I really did not enjoy this. I agree with other reviewers in feeling that Ballard has done this so much better in other novels such as Cocaine Nights. I thought the shopping mall run riot was silly at best, and I just could not get involved with the characters or plot. By the end I was skim reading just to finish the damn thing - never a good sign.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars Prophetic
I don't disagree with the many low raters pronouncements that 'its no cocaine nights or super-cannes' -- yeah ok it isn't... Read more
Published 8 days ago by charalambos_charalambos
2.0 out of 5 stars Get over it...
I have read several Ballard books including Cocaine Nights and Super-Cannes and the Dystopia lying beneath the so-called ordinary world is brilliantly portrayed in these novels and... Read more
Published 5 months ago by steam_simon
1.0 out of 5 stars None
one dimensional characters, predictable dialogue uvarying from one character to another, heavy handed symbolism and a deeply silly plot - typical of the most overrated british... Read more
Published 13 months ago by Mr. M. Young
3.0 out of 5 stars all over the shop(s)
Bad Ballard is better than good [insert name of any 2nd rate modern dystopian novelist], but the fact remains that this is a bad Ballard novel. Read more
Published on 14 Dec 2009 by L. Williams
3.0 out of 5 stars No exaggeration
Ballard's Kingdom Come might be viewed as an exaggerated take on 21st century UK, but consumerism as a sort of deity, isolationsism, xenophobia, hooliganism, violence, the cult of... Read more
Published on 23 Aug 2009 by S. ALLMAN
4.0 out of 5 stars Suburban shopping hell
If you liked Cocaine Nights, Super Cannes, Millenium People and other of Ballards dystyopias, you will appreciate this tale of consumerism.
Published on 3 Jun 2009 by Birgit Luxhoj
2.0 out of 5 stars Laying it on with a trowel
I did finish the book in spite of myself, just to find out what end Ballard would spin to it this time. But I read it in a very irritated mood. Read more
Published on 4 Jan 2009 by Mrs. A. M. J. Wigmore
2.0 out of 5 stars Powerful message undermined by a hopeless plot.
Whilst it probably wasn't the best to read this as my first introduction to Ballard I still felt extremely disappointed after hearing so many good things about him. Read more
Published on 21 Jun 2008 by Hanglemez Pallaccini
2.0 out of 5 stars A good idea that doesn't work
Kingdom Come by J. G. Ballard is not a successful book. Richard Brown is an advertising executive who has been estranged from his father for some time. Read more
Published on 27 April 2008 by Philip Spires
1.0 out of 5 stars A seriously bad book!
To say that this is disappointing would be a massive understatement!
You realize that something's wrong early on, when the first-person narrator, an advertising executive, has... Read more
Published on 6 Dec 2007 by N. Housley
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