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The Unlimited Dream Company (Paladin Books) [Paperback]

J. G. Ballard
3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
RRP: £8.99
Price: £6.74 & this item Delivered FREE in the UK with Super Saver Delivery. See details and conditions
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Book Description

4 Feb 2008 Paladin Books

From the author of The Sunday Times bestseller Cocaine Nights the story of suburban London transformed into an exotic dreamworld.

When a light aircraft crashes into the Thames at Shepperton, the young pilot who struggles to the surface minutes later seems to have come back from the dead. Within hours everything in the dormitory suburb is surreally transformed into a reality more akin to a dreamscape. Vultures invade the rooftops, luxuriant tropical vegetation overruns the quiet avenues, and the local inhabitants are propelled by the young man’s urgent visions through ecstatic sexual celebrations towards an apocalyptic climax.

In this characteristically inventive novel Ballard displays to devastating effect the extraordinary imagination that established him as one of Britain’s most highly acclaimed writers.


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Product details

  • Paperback: 224 pages
  • Publisher: Harper Perennial; (Reissue) edition (4 Feb 2008)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0586089950
  • ISBN-13: 978-0586089958
  • Product Dimensions: 12.8 x 19.2 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 108,493 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Product Description

Review

‘A remarkable piece of invention, a flight from the world of the familiar and the real into the exotic universe of dream and desire…Dense and erotic and magical, a pleasure to read’
Malcolm Bradbury, New York Times

‘Extraordinary…There is no doubt of the intensity and originality of the imagination that conceived the scenes of Shepperton transformed into a paradise…Far beyond the scope of most novelists’ Spectator

‘A remarkable fantasist…Ballard’s eloquence is as lush as the flowering vines he hangs from his multi-storey garages’
Observer

From the Publisher

Reviews
"A remarkable piece of invention, a flight from the world of the familair and the real into the exotic universe of dream and desire... dense and erotic and magical, a pleasure to read." Malcolm Bradbury, NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW

"Extraordinary...there is no doubt of the intensity and originality of the imagination that conceived the scenes of Shepperton transformed into a paradise...far beyond the scope of most novelists." SPECTATOR

"One of the most startling and original novelists. Extremely witty, Ballard's most optimistic book contains some of his strongest, most vivid prose...exuberant fantasy." TIME OUT

"A remarkable fantastist...rich, seductive...Ballard's eloquence is as lush as the flowering vines he hangs from his multi-storey garages." OBSERVER


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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars outstanding 10 July 2006
As with the majority of J G Ballard's novels, 'The Unlimited Dream Company' gleans it's real power by the final sentence. Drawing on the avant garde approach of the surrealist movement as well as neo-Freudian symbolism, the novel takes the reader on a journey of gloriously unfolding imagery and psychological discovery. It uses the often bizarre, but always dazzling aspects of magic realism to create a complete story of self-sacrifice and discovery. An addage to the pheonix rising from the flames, it ends with a fantastic take on human endeavour and emancipation from the chains of ordinary existence that echoes James Joyce's closing sentences from 'The Dead'.

A work of profound beauty and creative existentialism.

A masterpiece.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Sexual Religious Myth 5 Nov 2000
Format:Paperback
This book is for everyone who likes the magnificent style of Ballard. We have a man in center, who starts of trying to kill his girlfriend, then escapes in a stolen plane. It crashes in a small community. He should have died, but didn't, or did he? It changes him into a pure sexual being. A sexual being that is closer to God, than man. He can now fly, and flying is something man has craved for ever since, he saw birds freedom for the first time. The community want him, and he wants them. Fantastic.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars A Pagan Passion 20 May 2012
By Pensato
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
The most glorious of Ballard's books and the fourth time I've read. It is emotionally moving and profound in a way atypical of Ballard's style where there usually is a certain sang-froid in his approach.

This is a Pagan Passion, exulting in the power of creativity, to usher in new paradigms. The refrain that the vices of the present are seen as metaphors for the virtues of the future repeat and resonate through the book's pages. Old ways of thinking about religion need to be discarded. A pantheistic, pan-sexual, poly-sexual approach advocated.

On another level the book is a metaphor for the dangers of ego-inflation and the transformation that occurs when we leave ego behind, the character Blake as a suburban Bodhisattva, the Amitabha of the retail park.

And like all Ballard's book we are left with the incredible visual imagery, picture burned deep into the imaginative retina.

Joyous!
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
2.0 out of 5 stars Quite Bland and Boring
Although posing interesting subjects and action, this novel is so boring and mono tonal, that I was constantly feeling like not finishing it. Read more
Published 13 months ago by Miguel Figueiredo
3.0 out of 5 stars The Unlimited Dream Company
Being a huge fan of Ballard's earlier works, but not particularly keen on some of the drug-fuelled surrealist pieces some people love Ballard for, I was put off by the near-random... Read more
Published on 23 Mar 2011 by David Brookes
2.0 out of 5 stars Delusions without Heart
This book tells the story of a wannabe pilot, and his escape from the wreckage of his life. There is some debate as to the intention of the supernatural acts that he commits -... Read more
Published on 18 Dec 2010 by Black Orchid
3.0 out of 5 stars Ballard's Weirdest
The books is wildly oneiric. It's a dream, it's a vision, it's a display of inexhaustible surrealistic imagination. Read more
Published on 25 Nov 2008 by Vittorio Caffè
5.0 out of 5 stars impressionistic dream painting
An incredible impressionistic dream painting which soars by with a grace and spendour other writers fail to apsire to. Read more
Published on 19 May 2001 by Neil Ford
5.0 out of 5 stars The dream of the Sun
This strange, hauntingly beautiful book finds author Ballard mytholigizing his hometown of Shepperton, England. Read more
Published on 2 Feb 2001 by cfitz@webzone.net
4.0 out of 5 stars Myths for suberbia
Ballard tells the tale of a crashed wanna be pilot who become the local god of Sheperton.

A book about film, acid and the odd myth resonaces in modern UK wanna be USA... Read more

Published on 8 Mar 2000
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