Concrete Island

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He then exploits Proctor by performing an unspeakable act of humiliation, as the vestiges of civilized behavior seem to melt away from him. Jacket lightly foxed to verso, spine ends and edges lightly rubbed, small closed tear, light sticker ghost to lower front blurb ; Original black papered boards, spine gilt. Her idea was that because Maitland's current life was in such moral shambles, he is forced into a rebirth and rapidly goes through the stages of a helpless infant, scheming child, rebellious teen, and finally independence through these two surrogate parents. Ballard, by contrast, was fascinated by the idea of the whole superstructure of our civilisation suddenly removed and the possible psychological con Here again Concrete Island and Empire of the Sun resemble one another, for in both the absence of parent figures, and of the props of civilized society means the individual must rely on himself to survive.

My theory: his storylines are so ridiculously preposterous (and escalating exponentially page-by-page) that by the time he goes to pull all the threads together, it just works out of some weird logic that you have to acknowledge is pretty darn original. The best-guess location for the ‘real’ Concrete Island, based on Ballard’s descriptions in the book, is a small open space at the convergence of the Westway roundabout and the two southern spurs of the West Cross Route. Concrete Island is the story of Robert Maitland (Ballard loved naming his protagonists "Robert" for some reason), a wealthy architect that crashes his car in the opening paragraph. This is the story of one man, Robert Maitland, and for almost half the book he is the only character. Now a major traveller site, here is an intersection of major road arteries, soaring concrete flyovers, and neglected urban wilderness, which fired Ballard’s dark imagination to create a city dystopia.And so it goes on in the same vein, with Maitland struggling to even walk, struggling to keep a sense of purpose, experiencing lightheadedness due to hunger, dehydration and the recurrent fevers caused by the severe injuries to his hip and thigh, which sweep over him, making him vomit, pass out, come to with no memory of where he is and, increasingly, who he is.

Couple this perfect conceptual terrain, so near to my own weird heart, with a generally quick and incisive narrative and crisp evocative description of the detritus of modernity, and this is up with Crash in Ballard's solid mid-70s not-really-sci-fi high point (as far as I can tell so far). It has absurdist moments, Proctor doing acrobatics badly; surreal moments, Maitland feverishly wonders if it’s all a dream.But then I realised Ballard is doing something canny: the book opens with the height of factual, police evidence-level pedantic precision. That is really what's interesting about Concrete Island and every other interaction in the book is meant to make you understand the relationship between Maitland and the highway better. Jane watches him do it, and the gesture asserts control over her, too, although only intermittent, and subject to her own unpredictable mood swings. G Ballard explored those almost fifty years ago in his urban disaster trilogy, which Concrete Island is a part of.

The rest of this very short novel charts the slowly changing relationships between these three, as they play off one another. was at last beginning to shed sections of his mind, shacking off those memories of pain, hunger and humiliation. Behind Maitland was the northern wall of the island, the thirty-feet-high embankment of the westbound motorway from which he had crashed.

Robert Maitlan, an urban Crusoe with unresolved issues and his concrete prison a platform for resolution and identity seeking. Bradbury on the other hand, can sit right alongside any other book on the shelf without getting dirty looks from the other books (strained metaphor). The Renaissance was a time of renewed classical learning, of discovered continents and rediscovered manuscripts, progress in the arts and sciences, and the expansion of . So, the superstructure that facilitated his dual existence took him out of the equation into a third plane of existence where he is forced to confront the desolate, jagged landscape he created for himself.

He would leave his right leg at the point of the crash, his bruised hands impaled upon the steel fence. He reached the foot of the embankment, and waved with one arm, shouting at the few cars moving along the westbound carriageway. We follow Maitland in this struggle and watch as his desire to escape is tested, and his motivations in general come into question.still visible, one small 1/4" color chip out of top edge of jacket spine, jacket now protected in a Brodart. As Maitland goes out of his mind he begins to think the long grass on the island is talking to him, encouraging him, urging him on, and he starts talking back to the grass, sharing his plans with it. Except for a rare turgid patch where a metaphor or a bit of description doesn't quite work, the novel is highly readable.