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52nd out of 75 books
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52 voters
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Concrete Island
by
J.G. Ballard
On a day in April, just after three o'clock in the afternoon, Robert Maitland's car crashes over the concrete parapet of a high-speed highway onto the island below, where he is injured and, finally, trapped. What begins as an almost ludicrous predicament soon turns into horror as Maitland—a wickedly modern Robinson Crusoe—realizes that, despite evidence of other inhab...more
Paperback, 180 pages
Published
October 5th 2001
by Picador
(first published 1974)
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Every time I finish a J.G. Ballard novel (Concrete Island is my fourth in the last year or so) I think two things: 1) hey, that was pretty terrific; 2) it's a shame I didn't read it ten years ago. Which is not to say I'm ashamed I've been so slow to hop on the Ballard train, or worried I've become terminally bourgy in my old age. The 29-year-old me thinks Ballard was a hell of a writer, but the 19-year-old me, the guy who couldn't stop listening to Kid A and Hex Enduction Hour on repeat, who was...more
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Tom James
rated it
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review of another edition
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review of another edition
Recommends it for:
Anyone who can read and wants a simple story.
Recommended to Tom by:
Friend
This is the second Ballard book that I've read, and although I didn't enjoy it as much as High Rise, I still found myself being carried along by his prose. I think that his writing style is extremely smooth, and you find yourself reading through the book at a steady pace. I think this is one of Ballard's strongest points, along with the ideas that form his stories.
I found the concept of this story very interesting, and from reading the blurb on the back of the book, decided I wanted to...more
I found the concept of this story very interesting, and from reading the blurb on the back of the book, decided I wanted to...more
This is one of those novels that, for me, I tend to like months later after Ive read it. When I was reading it, and immediately afterward, I just barely liked it. But now that its been a few months, its really had the time to worm itself inside my head and stay there and I see it on so many other levels. Ballard really has a way of doing that to me...
In other news! Brad Anderson (of Session 9 fame) is set to bring this to the screen! I cant wait!
In other news! Brad Anderson (of Session 9 fame) is set to bring this to the screen! I cant wait!
The premise of this one is well-known: a wealthy businessman careens his car into a triangular wasteland between highways, and ends up a Crusoe-style castaway there. At first I figured this would be a carefully constructed modern parable, echoing noisily with depths of symbolism and apocalyptic meaning. But it becomes very clear that Ballard just came up with a groovy premise, added some horrible injuries, a trunk full of white Burgundy, a hippie prostitute, and some sort of hulking Tor Johnson ...more
I have been putting off reading my first Ballard for just too long to feel genuinely disappointed. It's just that I have grown used to thinking of Ballard as potentially my favourite author, one whose brutalist anti-fantasies would forever define my personal ideal for architectural aesthetics conveyed in writing. Now that I'm somewhat underwhelemed by his heavy-handed post-existentialist allegorism (did i rly just type that) and poor handling of anything involving more than one character (or one...more
This was fantastic. Ballard's imagination is beautiful. I was particularly impressed by the fact that for the first 80 pages the protagonist is completely alone. Of course, in other Ballard I've read, even when the protagonist isn't physically alone the narrative certainly feels like he is alone (particularly in High Rise: even in scenes where action is being described that involves a number of people, it rarely feels like anyone other than the protagonist is involved). What strikes me abou...more
Right now I am busily racking my brains, trying to recall any Ballard references in Peter Ackroyd's books on London's literary history. The central motif of this novel chimes with the main conceit of Ackroyd's novels and non-fiction; namely, that London is an anachronistic construct, in which any stratum may be scratched to expose an older level on the same space.
I find it difficult to say anything coherent about this work; I was left with two main thoughts: the anti-Rousseauean conception...more
I find it difficult to say anything coherent about this work; I was left with two main thoughts: the anti-Rousseauean conception...more
What drives this book is the reader's appreciation of the machinations Ballard employs to keep his 35-year-old architect anti-hero stranded on a traffic island after he runs his Jaguar aground when he sails off the highway. What begins as bemused pity bordering on Schadenfreude at Robert Maitland's inability to deliver himself from his predicament morphs into disdain and self-critique as Maitland's laid-bare civilizations are perverted by his conflicting desperation to escape and return to himse...more
A tale about a man marooned on a cnocrete island between the main motorway roads surrounding london. Intent on survival and escape he discovers that the island isn't just physical, but mentally within himself too.
This book is an amazing concept and very well written, especially in the development of the main character and his mental deterioration and redevelopment as each day on the island passes...bringing pain, hunger and the realisation that he might not actually leave.
I'd actuall...more
This book is an amazing concept and very well written, especially in the development of the main character and his mental deterioration and redevelopment as each day on the island passes...bringing pain, hunger and the realisation that he might not actually leave.
I'd actuall...more
This is an incredible novella. Giving my full interpretation of the story would ruin it, so I won't. The book begins with a man, Robert Maitland, losing control of his car on a busy highway as he returns from a weekend with his mistress-- he crashes down to a "concrete island" below, is seriously injured, and can't seem to get free from the "island," which is basically an industrial waste, a slice of land used up and forgotten, concealed beneath the frenetic comings and going...more
Ballard's take on freeway or highway culture. It can take you from A to B, but what happens if you stuck on the side of the freeweay - off the road. A contemporary horror story with realistic situations.
A nightmarish take on Robinson Crusoe (and an online reviewer noted a touch of the Tempest), full of decay and filth. Haunting and unpleasant, but worth reading if you're interested in Ballard. I'd rate it higher, but the first half where Maitland is alone is a bit of a slog, though it has some nice passages. It's when two other characters come into play that the book hits its stride, I think.
I wouldn't rate it too highly for humane values--it's a very ugly book with ugly things to sa...more
I wouldn't rate it too highly for humane values--it's a very ugly book with ugly things to sa...more
Concrete Island is an unusual take on the concept of being stranded on a desert island, turning it upside down on it's head by having this private struggle situated on the concrete island beneath a busy urban motorway after architect Robert Maitland crashes his car over the ledge.
Themes are once again Ballard's strong suit, enough to carry some rough writing through all the way to a bizarre turn of events as a crippled Maitland has to fight for his survival. As he starts to lose his ...more
Themes are once again Ballard's strong suit, enough to carry some rough writing through all the way to a bizarre turn of events as a crippled Maitland has to fight for his survival. As he starts to lose his ...more
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After a car accident, a businessman gets stranded on a grassy patch between three highways. I was expecting a full-on satire of modern life, of car culture, of something - but there weren't any jokes.
The writing comes off as realist, so I couldn't help seeing all the easy ways the guy could've gotten off of the concrete island. Sometimes stupid protagonists are entertaining, but if they're not funny, they're just stupid. This would probably have been more resonant in ye ole coun...more
The writing comes off as realist, so I couldn't help seeing all the easy ways the guy could've gotten off of the concrete island. Sometimes stupid protagonists are entertaining, but if they're not funny, they're just stupid. This would probably have been more resonant in ye ole coun...more
Directors Danny Boyle (127 Hours, Slumdog Millionaire) and Brad Anderson (The Machinist, Session 9) were circling this novel with hopes of making a film about it. Count me intrigued. Very interesting survival story about a modern-day Robinson Crusoe who, after a car accident, is trapped on a piece of land, a concrete island if you will, which lies in between a labyrinthian intersection of highways and tunnels on the outskirts of London, England. Great idea. Very surreal landscape. Nice writing....more
"And I awoke into the war I knew I must wage for all eternity."
-William S. Burroughs, Cities of the Red Night.
Ballard poses a fairly orthodox story, at least for an adherent of Beckett’s school; a man is stranded by an automobile crash and must survive, injured and disconnected from society, like a pathetically modern Crusoe. With this glimmer alone the novel could have been angry drek, the ranting of a lesser Palahniuk, but Ballard applies excellent craft, and I don...more
-William S. Burroughs, Cities of the Red Night.
Ballard poses a fairly orthodox story, at least for an adherent of Beckett’s school; a man is stranded by an automobile crash and must survive, injured and disconnected from society, like a pathetically modern Crusoe. With this glimmer alone the novel could have been angry drek, the ranting of a lesser Palahniuk, but Ballard applies excellent craft, and I don...more
I came upon a friend's review of Blood Meridian. Here's the beginning of his review:
i can only say that every now and then i come across a book that doesn’t make me feel like i’m reading a story but rather like i’m being injected into some other, concentrated, purified form of the world. a form that doesn’t really make sense, because it’s beyond my comprehension, but which thrills and frightens and amuses and teases me with hopes and thoughts and meanings. if that seems awfully vagu...more
i can only say that every now and then i come across a book that doesn’t make me feel like i’m reading a story but rather like i’m being injected into some other, concentrated, purified form of the world. a form that doesn’t really make sense, because it’s beyond my comprehension, but which thrills and frightens and amuses and teases me with hopes and thoughts and meanings. if that seems awfully vagu...more
Pairs well with: William Golding's Pincher Martin: The Two Deaths of Christopher Martin, an excellent shipwrecked story with similar themes; the movie 127 Hours which also explores the thin line between the comfort and security individuals take for granted within a well-equipped society and how weak and vulnerable a person may rapidly become in isolation
Writers read this for: An example of in media res: The story begins when Robert Maitland's car crashes over a concrete barrier and ...more
Writers read this for: An example of in media res: The story begins when Robert Maitland's car crashes over a concrete barrier and ...more
This book was strange. And weird. Here is my review:
The premise: A+! Way awesome. A guy crashes off of the freeway and gets stranded on an island between the roads. (Or sort of below them. To be honest, I never could figure out exactly how it was set up. It was an island, but big. And there were other wrecked cars, and old ruins of buildings from before the freeway was built. And he was chained in on one side by a fence, and had to climb a steep embankment on the other. I think.) He ...more
The premise: A+! Way awesome. A guy crashes off of the freeway and gets stranded on an island between the roads. (Or sort of below them. To be honest, I never could figure out exactly how it was set up. It was an island, but big. And there were other wrecked cars, and old ruins of buildings from before the freeway was built. And he was chained in on one side by a fence, and had to climb a steep embankment on the other. I think.) He ...more
Mi piace Ballard. Mi piace come scrive, mi piacciono le storie che crea, mi piace lo spessore psicologico con cui riesce a delineare i suoi personaggi. Mi affascina e mi stupisce come costruisce con fluidità il processo involutivo dei protagonisti, che pagina dopo pagina si liberano progressivamente dei risultati del contrario e pregresso processo della civiltà, in nome di un fine più primitivo.
Ma, c'è un ma. Questo è solo il secondo suo romanzo che leggo, dopo Il condominio, è mi sa di già...more
Ma, c'è un ma. Questo è solo il secondo suo romanzo che leggo, dopo Il condominio, è mi sa di già...more
A very interesting story which had me in a distinct state of mind while reading it, contrasting from how I usually am. It was a book suggested to me by a friend, which I usually don't get so I felt I had to take advantage of the suggestion. Ballard has an excellent way with words using great imagery to have yourself be in the story as if it were you that was caught in this dilemma. I found myself having to re-read a few chapters, because it was at times a little difficult to grasp what exactly w...more
This book gets 6 stars for the premise, but not quite that many stars for the actual execution. A dude gets stranded on an island. The twist: it is a traffic island in the middle of the freeway. How cool is that? Well, turns out it is not cool at all. It was so boring that I procrastinated reading the last 10 pages for three days because I just didn’t care if he got off the island, died, or whatever.
He had a fine chance to leave the island, but he chose to jump in front of a car...more
He had a fine chance to leave the island, but he chose to jump in front of a car...more
JG Ballard understands the plight of modern man more so than any other author I've read. He understands the irony of our urban isolation, the effects of modern technology on the human psyche, and of how humankind copes with the very things we've created. He possessed an uncanny ability to examine our modern world through an acutely focused speculative lens. Ballard's fiction single-handedly argues for the use of the term Speculative Fiction rather than Science Fiction.
Concrete Island...more
Concrete Island...more
It seems to me that Ballard was more concerned with making a point rather than telling a good story. And that annoyed me because the idea for the setting of this novel really thrilled me. Even if it was a scary read, to me the story just wasn't good enough. The plot, the characters and the writing only gets 2 stars from me, but the idea of this modern Crusoe-story and setting adds an extra star.
A sometimes over-strenuously poetic exploration of alienation and the search for meaning. A man crashes his car onto an overlooked and forgotten area of ground and meets a sinister, secretive woman and a simple, physically strong man. Archetypes, urbanisation and existentialism colide as the book calls into question the character's apparent desire to escape.
Robert Maitland crashes his car and winds up on a deserted lot bounded on all sides by highways. Wounded in his first escape attempt, Maitland slowly comes to terms with his isolation. Eventually he even begins to find a sense of triumph in it.
I read this when I was 16 or 17. Reading it now I was struck by the plot's surreality and the bleak humor in Ballard's writing.
Needless to say it's probably not to everyone's tastes.
I read this when I was 16 or 17. Reading it now I was struck by the plot's surreality and the bleak humor in Ballard's writing.
Needless to say it's probably not to everyone's tastes.
Does anybody remember when Josh and I wanted to make a tv show called Survivor: Urban Island, where the contestants would have to live in a wooded highway median, subsisting on whatever they could find there and whatever litter people threw from the road? Turns out that J.G. Ballard had that idea 25 years ago, only better.
This is the first Ballard I've read. I liked it--short and weird, easy prose with challenging ideas. Yes, it's a lot like Robinson Crusoe, but it's also a lot like The Tempest (the novel definitely has a Caliban and an Ariel). A very good novel, and worth your time if you're looking for something different.
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J.G. Ballard (James Graham Ballard) was born in 1930 in Shanghai, China where his father was a businessman. After the attack on Pearl Harbour, Ballard and his family were placed in a civilian prison camp. They returned to England in 1946. After two years at Cambridge, where he read medicine, Ballard worked as a copywriter and a Covent Garden porter before going to Canada with the RAF.
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