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Concrete Island
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 in Concrete Island soon turns into horror as Maitland - a wickedly modern Robinson Crusoe - realizes that, despite evidence of other inhabitants, this doomed terrain has become a mirror of his own mind. Seeking the dark outer rim of the everyday, Ballard weaves private catastrophe into an intensely specular allegory.
176 pages, Paperback
First published April 1, 1974
207 people are currently reading
11.8k people want to read
About the author
J.G. Ballard
426 books3,929 followersJames Graham "J. G." Ballard (15 November 1930 – 19 April 2009) was an English novelist, short story writer, and essayist. Ballard came to be associated with the New Wave of science fiction early in his career with apocalyptic (or post-apocalyptic) novels such as The Drowned World (1962), The Burning World (1964), and The Crystal World (1966). In the late 1960s and early 1970s Ballard focused on an eclectic variety of short stories (or "condensed novels") such as The Atrocity Exhibition (1970), which drew closer comparison with the work of postmodernist writers such as William S. Burroughs. In 1973 the highly controversial novel Crash was published, a story about symphorophilia and car crash fetishism; the protagonist becomes sexually aroused by staging and participating in real car crashes. The story was later adapted into a film of the same name by Canadian director David Cronenberg.
While many of Ballard's stories are thematically and narratively unusual, he is perhaps best known for his relatively conventional war novel, Empire of the Sun (1984), a semi-autobiographical account of a young boy's experiences in Shanghai during the Second Sino-Japanese War as it came to be occupied by the Japanese Imperial Army. Described as "The best British novel about the Second World War" by The Guardian, the story was adapted into a 1987 film by Steven Spielberg.
The literary distinctiveness of Ballard's work has given rise to the adjective "Ballardian", defined by the Collins English Dictionary as "resembling or suggestive of the conditions described in J. G. Ballard's novels and stories, especially dystopian modernity, bleak man-made landscapes and the psychological effects of technological, social or environmental developments." The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography entry describes Ballard's work as being occupied with "eros, thanatos, mass media and emergent technologies".
While many of Ballard's stories are thematically and narratively unusual, he is perhaps best known for his relatively conventional war novel, Empire of the Sun (1984), a semi-autobiographical account of a young boy's experiences in Shanghai during the Second Sino-Japanese War as it came to be occupied by the Japanese Imperial Army. Described as "The best British novel about the Second World War" by The Guardian, the story was adapted into a 1987 film by Steven Spielberg.
The literary distinctiveness of Ballard's work has given rise to the adjective "Ballardian", defined by the Collins English Dictionary as "resembling or suggestive of the conditions described in J. G. Ballard's novels and stories, especially dystopian modernity, bleak man-made landscapes and the psychological effects of technological, social or environmental developments." The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography entry describes Ballard's work as being occupied with "eros, thanatos, mass media and emergent technologies".
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 721 reviews
May 21, 2022
Even if no man is an island, in the modern world any man could be found living in a total psychological isolation like on a desert island. And anyone can feel lonely in a crowd…
So Concrete Island can be read as a parable of alienation of an individual in the vast urbanized world.
How many people are roaming lost in the human desert without any hope to be found?
In fact, the whole city was now asleep, part of an immense unconscious Europe, while he himself crawled about on a forgotten traffic island like the nightmare of this slumbering continent.
So Concrete Island can be read as a parable of alienation of an individual in the vast urbanized world.
He realized, above all, that the assumption he had made repeatedly since his arrival on the island – that sooner or later his crashed car would be noticed by a passing driver or policeman, and that rescue would come as inevitably as if he had crashed into the central reservation of a suburban dual carriageway – was completely false, part of that whole system of comfortable expectations he had carried with him. Given the peculiar topography of the island, its mantle of deep grass and coarse shrubbery, and the collection of ruined vehicles, there was no certainty that he would ever be noticed at all.
How many people are roaming lost in the human desert without any hope to be found?
June 16, 2022
The first book I read by Ballard was The Drowned World. What I liked most about it was the imagery. The story itself, especially once the action truly began, seemed much less important than the mood Ballard established at the beginning with his lush descriptive writing. However, with Concrete Island, I was immediately captivated by the story.
This is the story of one man, Robert Maitland, and for almost half the book he is the only character. I like that. I like stories that focus on a single individual and especially on the inner workings of that individual’s mind.
The theme of isolation in The Drowned World is even more pronounced in Concrete Island. When two other characters are finally introduced, they are just as isolated as Maitland is. And not just isolated—alienated. They dwell smack in the middle of a traffic interchange, yet they are alienated from the society that streams around and above them.
Maitland’s isolation did not begin when he crashed onto the traffic island. As Jane tells him, “you were on an island long before you crashed here” (141). The accident that trapped him on the island was just the outer manifestation of his inner reality. This is something I liked in The Drowned World: the way Ballard combines the inner world and the outer world.
Maitland is alienated from his family, from his mistress (and the presence of a mistress only reinforces his alienation from his wife), and from society. And this is apparently a pattern in his life. It goes back to his childhood.
“Most of the happier moments of his life had been spent alone” (27).
Once he is stranded on the island, his inner isolation becomes something physical. He is alone. He is invisible. Even when he tries to summon help, no one stops. He can see his office building, but the people within cannot see him. He can see his wife’s car go by, but she cannot see him. No one is expecting him—neither wife nor mistress nor co-workers—so no one will notice that he is gone.
Maitland’s fate is the fate of the individual in the dehumanizing modern world, a technological world that alienates people from each other even as it crowds them closer and closer together, a social world that leaves a man feeling empty even when he possesses all the social marks of success—a Jaguar, a mistress, a high-paying career.
Ballard’s style is less luxuriant in Concrete Island than it was in The Drowned World. Appropriately so. The Drowned World depicted an overgrown tropical jungle. It needed a lush rich language, dense with metaphor and imagery. Concrete Island demands a concrete language, but not one entirely devoid of metaphor. After all, the island on which Maitland is marooned is not entirely devoid of life. There is grass. The grass is personified.
“The grass seethed around him in the light wind, speaking its agreement” (68).
“The grass rustled excitedly, parting in circular waves, beckoning him into its spirals” (68).
“The grass lashed at his feet, as if angry that Maitland still wished to leave its green embrace” (68).
“... he followed the grass passively as it wove its spiral patterns around him” (74).
Maitland goes from trying to escape the island to trying to “dominate” the island. The island, of course, is himself.
“More and more, the island was becoming an exact model of his head. His movement across this forgotten terrain was a journey not merely through the island’s past but through his own” (69-70).
To seek “dominion” over the island is to seek dominion over himself.
Just like in The Drowned World, Ballard introduces more characters and action in the second half of the book, but I think it works better in Concrete Island than it did in The Drowned World. Jane and Proctor are also alienated individuals. Together the three characters reveal three different relationships to the island:
Maitland arrived on the island suddenly, violently, and involuntarily.
Proctor’s arrival was gradual. The highway was simply built around him. Having no motivation to leave, he allowed himself to be isolated. Now the island is his protection from the outside world.
“He deliberately sought out the areas of deepest growth, as if he were most at home in the invisible corridors that he had tunnelled in his endless passages around the island” (127).
Even his little shack serves to shut out the rest of the world.
“The quilted floor merged into the walls, as if the lair had been designed to blunt and muffle all evidence of the world outside” (122).
Jane comes and goes as she pleases, moving mysteriously between the outside world and her isolated island existence. Yet her dealings with the outside world only highlight her alienation. As a prostitute, she forms no real connections. This is her protection. Maitland can relate to this.
“His relationships with Catherine and his mother, even with Helen Fairfax, all the thousand and one emotionally loaded transactions of his childhood, would have been tolerable if he had been able to pay for them in some neutral currency, hard cash across the high-priced counters of these relationships” (142).
This is what the world can do to people. And when it becomes more than they can bear, they retreat from it, slipping in and out silently, without leaving a mark on it, like Jane. Or passively letting it go on around them while remaining apart from it all, like Proctor. Or being abruptly flung out of it by an accident that was waiting to happen, like Maitland.
In Concrete Island, Ballard creates a fitting metaphor for the social and emotional alienation that plagues modern men and women.
This is the story of one man, Robert Maitland, and for almost half the book he is the only character. I like that. I like stories that focus on a single individual and especially on the inner workings of that individual’s mind.
The theme of isolation in The Drowned World is even more pronounced in Concrete Island. When two other characters are finally introduced, they are just as isolated as Maitland is. And not just isolated—alienated. They dwell smack in the middle of a traffic interchange, yet they are alienated from the society that streams around and above them.
Maitland’s isolation did not begin when he crashed onto the traffic island. As Jane tells him, “you were on an island long before you crashed here” (141). The accident that trapped him on the island was just the outer manifestation of his inner reality. This is something I liked in The Drowned World: the way Ballard combines the inner world and the outer world.
Maitland is alienated from his family, from his mistress (and the presence of a mistress only reinforces his alienation from his wife), and from society. And this is apparently a pattern in his life. It goes back to his childhood.
“Most of the happier moments of his life had been spent alone” (27).
Once he is stranded on the island, his inner isolation becomes something physical. He is alone. He is invisible. Even when he tries to summon help, no one stops. He can see his office building, but the people within cannot see him. He can see his wife’s car go by, but she cannot see him. No one is expecting him—neither wife nor mistress nor co-workers—so no one will notice that he is gone.
Maitland’s fate is the fate of the individual in the dehumanizing modern world, a technological world that alienates people from each other even as it crowds them closer and closer together, a social world that leaves a man feeling empty even when he possesses all the social marks of success—a Jaguar, a mistress, a high-paying career.
Ballard’s style is less luxuriant in Concrete Island than it was in The Drowned World. Appropriately so. The Drowned World depicted an overgrown tropical jungle. It needed a lush rich language, dense with metaphor and imagery. Concrete Island demands a concrete language, but not one entirely devoid of metaphor. After all, the island on which Maitland is marooned is not entirely devoid of life. There is grass. The grass is personified.
“The grass seethed around him in the light wind, speaking its agreement” (68).
“The grass rustled excitedly, parting in circular waves, beckoning him into its spirals” (68).
“The grass lashed at his feet, as if angry that Maitland still wished to leave its green embrace” (68).
“... he followed the grass passively as it wove its spiral patterns around him” (74).
Maitland goes from trying to escape the island to trying to “dominate” the island. The island, of course, is himself.
“More and more, the island was becoming an exact model of his head. His movement across this forgotten terrain was a journey not merely through the island’s past but through his own” (69-70).
To seek “dominion” over the island is to seek dominion over himself.
Just like in The Drowned World, Ballard introduces more characters and action in the second half of the book, but I think it works better in Concrete Island than it did in The Drowned World. Jane and Proctor are also alienated individuals. Together the three characters reveal three different relationships to the island:
Maitland arrived on the island suddenly, violently, and involuntarily.
Proctor’s arrival was gradual. The highway was simply built around him. Having no motivation to leave, he allowed himself to be isolated. Now the island is his protection from the outside world.
“He deliberately sought out the areas of deepest growth, as if he were most at home in the invisible corridors that he had tunnelled in his endless passages around the island” (127).
Even his little shack serves to shut out the rest of the world.
“The quilted floor merged into the walls, as if the lair had been designed to blunt and muffle all evidence of the world outside” (122).
Jane comes and goes as she pleases, moving mysteriously between the outside world and her isolated island existence. Yet her dealings with the outside world only highlight her alienation. As a prostitute, she forms no real connections. This is her protection. Maitland can relate to this.
“His relationships with Catherine and his mother, even with Helen Fairfax, all the thousand and one emotionally loaded transactions of his childhood, would have been tolerable if he had been able to pay for them in some neutral currency, hard cash across the high-priced counters of these relationships” (142).
This is what the world can do to people. And when it becomes more than they can bear, they retreat from it, slipping in and out silently, without leaving a mark on it, like Jane. Or passively letting it go on around them while remaining apart from it all, like Proctor. Or being abruptly flung out of it by an accident that was waiting to happen, like Maitland.
In Concrete Island, Ballard creates a fitting metaphor for the social and emotional alienation that plagues modern men and women.
April 22, 2019
I was quickly drawn into JG Ballard's Concrete Island. After the protagonist crashes his car and becomes trapped on a concrete island in the middle of a highway, he becomes a modern day Robinson Crusoe. This is all the more startling because civilization is in his sight. However, he is cut off from it and seemingly can't find help or make an escape. What it means to be alienated from civilization either by accident or choice is explored throughout the novel as both a physical reality and a reflection of the protagonist's mind. It's interesting to discover that he is not alone on the island. Still, even though I was drawn into the story, it felt drawn out and nowhere near as focused by the conclusion. 3.5 stars.
October 1, 2019
Ooh, boy. If you want unique literary weirdness, Ballard is the man for you. If you want to small the soil of wars & apocalyptic landscapes alike, Ballard is the one you seek...
Everyone must familiarize themselves with this oracle, well, at least if you consider literature a serious Art. Ballard's collection of short stories, a 1200 page gargantuan with strange stories with even stranger predictions (that could be ripped from our headlines! That WILL be ripped from the headlines!), fails to disappoint. His longer novels are a different item altogether. There are, excuse this liberty as commonplace reader, misses (The Drowned World) & MEGA hits (Empire of the Sun) in his resume of novels. This one seems to be the former but becomes as intensely AMAZING as the latter. There are many themes at play in what is originally pitches as a Crusoe on a highway underpass concrete strip. The modern psychoplay that Ballard orchestrates impresively is what makes this one a notch above "High-Rise"; portrait of a decomposing soul via modern Everyman.
Everyone must familiarize themselves with this oracle, well, at least if you consider literature a serious Art. Ballard's collection of short stories, a 1200 page gargantuan with strange stories with even stranger predictions (that could be ripped from our headlines! That WILL be ripped from the headlines!), fails to disappoint. His longer novels are a different item altogether. There are, excuse this liberty as commonplace reader, misses (The Drowned World) & MEGA hits (Empire of the Sun) in his resume of novels. This one seems to be the former but becomes as intensely AMAZING as the latter. There are many themes at play in what is originally pitches as a Crusoe on a highway underpass concrete strip. The modern psychoplay that Ballard orchestrates impresively is what makes this one a notch above "High-Rise"; portrait of a decomposing soul via modern Everyman.
February 23, 2014
3.5 stars. Not SF as I ordinarily think of it, more a quasi dystopia set in the present-day. Affluent Robert Maitland crashes his Jaguar on a precipitous traffic island such as we see all the time occupying the waste ground between ramps and highways. He climbs the grade to street level, but the traffic's too fast and there are no shoulders. He struck in the hand by an oblivious passing motorist. Then inflammation and sets in; his injuries keep him feverish in the wrecked Jag. When he's ambulatory again, though barely, the island begins to reveal heretofore unsuspected features. Maitland comes across the foundations of an old suburban neighborhood razed long ago to make way for the interchange. He discovers the basements of old rowhouses, a cinema, Cold War-era air-raid shelters, a breaker's yard, etc. Then he realizes he's not alone. By this time, though he won't admit it, or won't accept it--his position is never made entirely clear--he doesn't want to leave the traffic island. Memories of his previous existence--his lovers, profession, friends--grow hazy, distant.
The writing is almost wholly vivid description. If anything, it might be said to be overly described. This leaves the reader with an almost vertiginous effect, as if the traffic island were somehow in motion, instead of static. (It's times like these when I realize I read too closely. Certainly the breezy reader, rushing ever onward solely for the sake of plot, would hardly notice.) Except for a rare turgid patch where a metaphor or a bit of description doesn't quite work, the novel is highly readable. I think Ballard's later stories and especially his first memoir, Empire of the Sun, show a subtler writer at work, but Concrete Island is hardly amateurish. It simply represents an earlier stage in his artistic development, and for those of us who like to track a writer's themes and obsessions over time, it may be all the more interesting because of that. Highly recommended.
The writing is almost wholly vivid description. If anything, it might be said to be overly described. This leaves the reader with an almost vertiginous effect, as if the traffic island were somehow in motion, instead of static. (It's times like these when I realize I read too closely. Certainly the breezy reader, rushing ever onward solely for the sake of plot, would hardly notice.) Except for a rare turgid patch where a metaphor or a bit of description doesn't quite work, the novel is highly readable. I think Ballard's later stories and especially his first memoir, Empire of the Sun, show a subtler writer at work, but Concrete Island is hardly amateurish. It simply represents an earlier stage in his artistic development, and for those of us who like to track a writer's themes and obsessions over time, it may be all the more interesting because of that. Highly recommended.
November 18, 2023
Ballardian reckoning. A hyper-realistic urban allegory: an island - a dystopia surrounded by the perceived reality! Un-escapable. Sodium lights, shabby wrecks, crashed blades, rusting hulls…and concrete, concrete everywhere. An environment so “monochromatic”, so bare and bleak that makes you shudder. Burlesque characters add an additional layer of illusion to this concrete decay.
Robert Maitlan, an urban Crusoe with unresolved issues and his concrete prison a platform for resolution and identity seeking. An agonizing struggle both physically and mentally on every step of the way. Time becomes abstract -meaningless, orientation imperceptible, deliverance is so close but so distant. Survival becomes a game of dominance and Maitland in the epicenter - exactly where he belongs…“You were on the island long before you crashed here….Already he felt no real need to leave the island, and this alone confirmed that he had established his dominion over it…I am the island!”
Concrete vertigo!
Robert Maitlan, an urban Crusoe with unresolved issues and his concrete prison a platform for resolution and identity seeking. An agonizing struggle both physically and mentally on every step of the way. Time becomes abstract -meaningless, orientation imperceptible, deliverance is so close but so distant. Survival becomes a game of dominance and Maitland in the epicenter - exactly where he belongs…“You were on the island long before you crashed here….Already he felt no real need to leave the island, and this alone confirmed that he had established his dominion over it…I am the island!”
Concrete vertigo!
October 17, 2015
Concrete Island: Stranded in modernity like a latter-day Crusoe
Originally posted at Fantasy Literature
In the early 1970s, J.G. Ballard was busily creating modern fables of mankind’s increasingly urban environment and the alienating effect on the human psyche. Far from humans yearning to return to their agrarian and hunter-gatherer roots, Ballard posited that modern man would begin to adapt to his newly-created environment, but at what price? Ballard’s protagonists in Crash (1973), Concrete Island (1974), and High-Rise (1975) are modern, urbane creatures, educated and detached, who embrace their technology-centric urban lifestyles. But when conditions change, their primitive urges and psychopathologies emerge to horrifying effect.
In Concrete Island, a modern-day retelling of Robinson Crusoe, Ballard introduces the most unlikely set-piece for a modern novel, an overlooked patch in our overdeveloped cities, a triangular overgrown traffic island bordered by two expressways. This is the opening passage of the book:
Soon after three o’clock on the afternoon of April 22nd 1973, a 35-year-old architect named Robert Maitland was driving down the high-speed exit lane of the Westway interchange in central London. Six hundred yards from the junction with the newly built spur of the M4 motorway, when the Jaguar had already passed the 70 m.p.h. speed limit, a blow-out collapsed the front nearside tyre. The exploding air reflected from the concrete parapet seemed to detonate inside Robert Maitland’s skull.
During the few seconds before his crash he clutched at the whiplashing spokes of the steering wheel, dazed by the impact of the chromium window pillar against his head. The car veered from side to side across the empty traffic lanes, jerking his hands like a puppet’s. The shredding tyre laid a black diagonal stroke across the white marker lines that followed the long curve of the motorway embankment. Out of control, the car burst through the palisade of pinewood trestles that formed a temporary barrier along the edge of the road. Leaving the hard shoulder, the car plunged down the grass slope of the embankment. Thirty yards ahead, it came to a halt against the rusting chassis of an overturned taxi. Barely injured by this violent tangent that had grazed his life, Robert Maitland lay across his steering wheel, his jacket and trousers studded with windshield fragments like a suit of lights.
Our protagonist Maitland finds himself injured and dazed, unable to climb up the steep embankments but also invisible from the drivers on the expressways. He tries to get drivers’ attention as they drive to and from home to work on the weekdays, and then as they drive off to picnics and other leisure activities on the weekend. As the days go by, he tries various ways to escape his situation, but fails to do so. He uses his store of wine from the trunk of his Jaguar to dull his pain and hunger, and finally resorts to setting his vehicle on fire to get attention. This does succeed in getting the attention not of passerby but instead two marginal individuals who have broken off from society: Jane, a young woman fleeing an unhappy marriage, and Proctor, a simpleton who was formerly an acrobat in a traveling circus. Proctor is strong but subservient to Jane, and she lives a strange decadent existence, turning tricks with passing motorists and smoking marijuana in an abandoned theatre.
When Maitland first encounters the two, they control the situation but extend aid to him. As he recuperates, his initial urgency to get back to his easy but empty existence with his wife, child, and mistress lessens, as he starts to find a strange comfort in leaving behind all the everyday stresses of modern life. He develops a sexual relationship with Jane, who insists on being paid five pounds to ensure there are no emotional ties whatsoever. Maitland seeks to enlist the aid of Proctor, but it is only when he exerts force over both Jane and Proctor that they grant him grudging respect. He then exploits Proctor by performing an unspeakable act of humiliation, as the vestiges of civilized behavior seem to melt away from him. The ending is inconclusive and leaves us with no clear-cut moral to ease our discomfort.
The story of Concrete Island is very simple indeed, almost a stage play with three principle actors, except that the most important character is the setting itself, the forlorn and ignored patch of discarded objects and marginal people which make up this island. The character of Maitland is far from a heroic protagonist, as his behavior becomes increasingly instinctual and selfish. And yet there is a strange appeal to their lives, forgotten by the modern world surrounding them.
The ambiguity with which Ballard infuses his modern urban landscapes is his most powerful technique, as he explores the ‘inner space’ of his characters in his modern fables. If our obsession with modernity has desensitized us to our environment, can we really return to an earlier existence closer to nature? Or will we embrace technology and modern comforts, even at the expense of our emotional lives? It’s a valid question to raise, and certainly one that remains unanswered, even 40 years after the first publication of this strange and disturbing tale.
Originally posted at Fantasy Literature
In the early 1970s, J.G. Ballard was busily creating modern fables of mankind’s increasingly urban environment and the alienating effect on the human psyche. Far from humans yearning to return to their agrarian and hunter-gatherer roots, Ballard posited that modern man would begin to adapt to his newly-created environment, but at what price? Ballard’s protagonists in Crash (1973), Concrete Island (1974), and High-Rise (1975) are modern, urbane creatures, educated and detached, who embrace their technology-centric urban lifestyles. But when conditions change, their primitive urges and psychopathologies emerge to horrifying effect.
In Concrete Island, a modern-day retelling of Robinson Crusoe, Ballard introduces the most unlikely set-piece for a modern novel, an overlooked patch in our overdeveloped cities, a triangular overgrown traffic island bordered by two expressways. This is the opening passage of the book:
Soon after three o’clock on the afternoon of April 22nd 1973, a 35-year-old architect named Robert Maitland was driving down the high-speed exit lane of the Westway interchange in central London. Six hundred yards from the junction with the newly built spur of the M4 motorway, when the Jaguar had already passed the 70 m.p.h. speed limit, a blow-out collapsed the front nearside tyre. The exploding air reflected from the concrete parapet seemed to detonate inside Robert Maitland’s skull.
During the few seconds before his crash he clutched at the whiplashing spokes of the steering wheel, dazed by the impact of the chromium window pillar against his head. The car veered from side to side across the empty traffic lanes, jerking his hands like a puppet’s. The shredding tyre laid a black diagonal stroke across the white marker lines that followed the long curve of the motorway embankment. Out of control, the car burst through the palisade of pinewood trestles that formed a temporary barrier along the edge of the road. Leaving the hard shoulder, the car plunged down the grass slope of the embankment. Thirty yards ahead, it came to a halt against the rusting chassis of an overturned taxi. Barely injured by this violent tangent that had grazed his life, Robert Maitland lay across his steering wheel, his jacket and trousers studded with windshield fragments like a suit of lights.
Our protagonist Maitland finds himself injured and dazed, unable to climb up the steep embankments but also invisible from the drivers on the expressways. He tries to get drivers’ attention as they drive to and from home to work on the weekdays, and then as they drive off to picnics and other leisure activities on the weekend. As the days go by, he tries various ways to escape his situation, but fails to do so. He uses his store of wine from the trunk of his Jaguar to dull his pain and hunger, and finally resorts to setting his vehicle on fire to get attention. This does succeed in getting the attention not of passerby but instead two marginal individuals who have broken off from society: Jane, a young woman fleeing an unhappy marriage, and Proctor, a simpleton who was formerly an acrobat in a traveling circus. Proctor is strong but subservient to Jane, and she lives a strange decadent existence, turning tricks with passing motorists and smoking marijuana in an abandoned theatre.
When Maitland first encounters the two, they control the situation but extend aid to him. As he recuperates, his initial urgency to get back to his easy but empty existence with his wife, child, and mistress lessens, as he starts to find a strange comfort in leaving behind all the everyday stresses of modern life. He develops a sexual relationship with Jane, who insists on being paid five pounds to ensure there are no emotional ties whatsoever. Maitland seeks to enlist the aid of Proctor, but it is only when he exerts force over both Jane and Proctor that they grant him grudging respect. He then exploits Proctor by performing an unspeakable act of humiliation, as the vestiges of civilized behavior seem to melt away from him. The ending is inconclusive and leaves us with no clear-cut moral to ease our discomfort.
The story of Concrete Island is very simple indeed, almost a stage play with three principle actors, except that the most important character is the setting itself, the forlorn and ignored patch of discarded objects and marginal people which make up this island. The character of Maitland is far from a heroic protagonist, as his behavior becomes increasingly instinctual and selfish. And yet there is a strange appeal to their lives, forgotten by the modern world surrounding them.
The ambiguity with which Ballard infuses his modern urban landscapes is his most powerful technique, as he explores the ‘inner space’ of his characters in his modern fables. If our obsession with modernity has desensitized us to our environment, can we really return to an earlier existence closer to nature? Or will we embrace technology and modern comforts, even at the expense of our emotional lives? It’s a valid question to raise, and certainly one that remains unanswered, even 40 years after the first publication of this strange and disturbing tale.
March 1, 2011
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 obsessively taking in screenings of Safe and Persona and Red Desert at his campus's theater, who was beginning to transfer his book-love from Paul Park's Celestis and John Crowley's The Deep to the novels of DeLillo...that guy would've worshiped Ballard, and found in him a real life companion.
All this being said, if Peter Chung ever makes an animated movie of High-Rise or The Atrocity Exhibition, I'm fucking THERE.
All this being said, if Peter Chung ever makes an animated movie of High-Rise or The Atrocity Exhibition, I'm fucking THERE.
October 15, 2018
Interesting concept. a man crashes his car and ends up in a concrete wasteland between motorways. His injuries from the crash are such that he cannot climb the embankment back up to the road.
How does he survive?
Over the period of a few days he manages to create a precarious life whilst all around him the relentless traffic flows by, oblivious to him and his fate
There is even a small community living on the island, comprising a paranoid prostitute and a former trapeze artist who has fallen on his head once too often
Will they help him escape?
Interesting dystopian read, if a little dated
How does he survive?
Over the period of a few days he manages to create a precarious life whilst all around him the relentless traffic flows by, oblivious to him and his fate
There is even a small community living on the island, comprising a paranoid prostitute and a former trapeze artist who has fallen on his head once too often
Will they help him escape?
Interesting dystopian read, if a little dated
July 10, 2017
I gotta hand it to Ballard: there hasn't been one book I've read of his where, halfway through, I'm not ready to yank my fucking hair out only to have him pull it out of his ass. I honestly don't know how he does it. 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. Of course, that means that the absolute STUPIDEST shit imaginable occurs on pretty much every leaf, but it's fun to see him pull it off. And he has for, dunno, something like 5 books now. There's a lot of criticism I could offer of this or any of his work, but saying he wasn't his own man would never be a part of it. Also, opinions are like cell phones: radioactive and largely fucking annoying.
This is my dumb Summer-self knowingly bowing before Entertainment rather than Enlightenment. Why? 'Cause sometimes the old girl upstairs needs a break. I believe there are worse crimes. Say, television.
Or matricide.
OR
Because you know you just wanna read a book that contains a passage of a cripple whipping out his schlong and pissing all over the face and body of a seated homeless, ex-acrobat halfwit dressed in a shiny dinner jacket and leotard who may or may not open his mouth. That's right, folks: the Full Golden Shower—no quarter given or requested. Hang out with your wang out/rock out with your cock out, JGB.
This is my dumb Summer-self knowingly bowing before Entertainment rather than Enlightenment. Why? 'Cause sometimes the old girl upstairs needs a break. I believe there are worse crimes. Say, television.
Or matricide.
OR
Because you know you just wanna read a book that contains a passage of a cripple whipping out his schlong and pissing all over the face and body of a seated homeless, ex-acrobat halfwit dressed in a shiny dinner jacket and leotard who may or may not open his mouth. That's right, folks: the Full Golden Shower—no quarter given or requested. Hang out with your wang out/rock out with your cock out, JGB.
August 16, 2019
A quick read from my 2010 TBR, a Ballard backlisted title from 1974.
“You were on an island long before you crashed here.”
“You were on an island long before you crashed here.”
January 9, 2014
A haunting tale, throbbing in its urban insecurity, matters of quotidian angst reach crisis. Each daytrader becomes a Crusoe. It is imperative that the reader control its breathing. Once the cast expanded, about half way through, the tension dropped considerably and a different game was unleashed, different and not near as compelling. This becomes a dialogue about conformity, productivity. Matters become controlled when steered by a bank account. I still enjoyed Concrete Island immensely.
July 11, 2012
Traveling west from New York City, to Newark Airport or down the coast or inland and away, on a PATH train or New Jersey Transit or in a car on the highway, you first have to cross the Meadowlands. Crisscrossed by old and new transit options and little else, this stretch of marshes and landfill mounds has become an entirely liminal space, a place designed only to be passed through without stopping. Naturally, I've become fascinated with this empty overlooked space as a destination, a place to wander and spend time -- and if crossed, only on foot. This often leaves me in conflict with the general planning or lack thereof of the terrain, leaping crash barriers to dart across empty Garden State Parkway ramps, or ducking between concrete parapets beneath highway overpasses. Real solitude, even so close to NYC, can be found in the boggy overgrown triangles that these features cut out of the landscape. These are places I seek out.
I do so by choice. But what if someone found themselves in one of the these lost zones against their will, victim of a motor accident, trapped by speeding traffic, barriers, and the semi-wild post-human landscape? These were places not meant to hold people, so why would anyone think to look for anyone in one? They're not made to be moved in without a car or train, so how easy would it be for the uninitiated to get out? This is Ballard's scenario, an ordinary man immobilized into one such Concrete Island cut out of the city by its mobility-infrastructure and unable to escape, a survival story ironically within a stones throw of all manner of normal modern life. It's oddly believable -- I've seen these spaces, spent time in them: they aren't meant for people.
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). Fantastic.
I do so by choice. But what if someone found themselves in one of the these lost zones against their will, victim of a motor accident, trapped by speeding traffic, barriers, and the semi-wild post-human landscape? These were places not meant to hold people, so why would anyone think to look for anyone in one? They're not made to be moved in without a car or train, so how easy would it be for the uninitiated to get out? This is Ballard's scenario, an ordinary man immobilized into one such Concrete Island cut out of the city by its mobility-infrastructure and unable to escape, a survival story ironically within a stones throw of all manner of normal modern life. It's oddly believable -- I've seen these spaces, spent time in them: they aren't meant for people.
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). Fantastic.
May 1, 2019
I’m convinced that Ballard didn’t care what people thought. Of course he did, though. His sentences are polished enough that he ironed most of them out like a fussy tailor. He shines best in his short novels, when he just takes one simple idea and draws it out to the extreme of absurdity. His landscapes retain a corny sort of Twilight Zone quality. Concrete Island is a representative work for him, I think, because it shows what he can do with a couple satirical characters in a nightmarish situation. Even more than High-Rise, I think this book epitomizes what he was going for. One puts oneself in the character’s shoes, wondering if it would be possible to live under such circumstances. Next time you pass a freeway island you’ll wonder, imagine yourself erecting a lean-to on the side of the road.
The main problem one will encounter while reading Ballard's novels is interchangeability. They all feel the same. You get a natural disaster or something happens to tear holes in the fabric of society, and his characters are still sipping Perrier from crystal snifters as their mansions burn. They are like obnoxious sitcom characters. But Ballard's satire is often effective enough to cause a chuckle. If you can't decide where to start, this novel is a good appetizer.
Many of his stories lack these easily dismissed character cliches and rely so much on imagery that they can muddle your memory of them. He did write many brilliant stories, but there are some that I find a major slog. For this reason I think Bradbury is a superior writer, though Bradbury always worked in the safe territory, colored inside the lines, and Ballard laughed at the lines, deliberately avoided them, and danced around the borders. He was a bold writer, got to give him that, but would you really be able to hand one of his books to your mother and say, look here, you might enjoy this? Probably not. 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).
May 1, 2018
When I was in my twenties I read J G Ballard’s novel “Empire of the Sun”. I didn’t like it that much and it put me off reading more of his books, until now.
I was really impressed with this short novel from 1974. First of all, I liked the concept of a modern day reworking of Robinson Crusoe in an urban setting. In the novel, architect Robert Maitland crashes on the motorway and careers down a steep embankment, to find himself in a wasteland bounded by embankments on three sides, with a metal wire mesh fence on the other. Unable to climb the embankments because of his injuries, he has to work out a way of surviving.
It’s very difficult to say more about the plot without giving away spoilers, so I’ll just say that the storyline held my interest all the way, and to the end I remained curious about Maitland’s eventual fate. I also thought the interaction between the characters was done very effectively. The reader can also make their own mind up about Maitland’s behaviour. Is he perhaps using his injuries as an excuse for not trying harder to escape, in a sense choosing to remain – a rejection of the outside world?
No doubt many people will see the story as fantasy, but where I live in Scotland, there was a real-life incident in 2015 where a car containing two people went off a motorway and down an embankment, and it was 3 days before they were discovered. When found the male driver was dead but his female companion was alive though seriously injured. She later died in hospital. A case that shows, once again, that truth can be as strange as fiction
I was really impressed with this short novel from 1974. First of all, I liked the concept of a modern day reworking of Robinson Crusoe in an urban setting. In the novel, architect Robert Maitland crashes on the motorway and careers down a steep embankment, to find himself in a wasteland bounded by embankments on three sides, with a metal wire mesh fence on the other. Unable to climb the embankments because of his injuries, he has to work out a way of surviving.
It’s very difficult to say more about the plot without giving away spoilers, so I’ll just say that the storyline held my interest all the way, and to the end I remained curious about Maitland’s eventual fate. I also thought the interaction between the characters was done very effectively. The reader can also make their own mind up about Maitland’s behaviour. Is he perhaps using his injuries as an excuse for not trying harder to escape, in a sense choosing to remain – a rejection of the outside world?
No doubt many people will see the story as fantasy, but where I live in Scotland, there was a real-life incident in 2015 where a car containing two people went off a motorway and down an embankment, and it was 3 days before they were discovered. When found the male driver was dead but his female companion was alive though seriously injured. She later died in hospital. A case that shows, once again, that truth can be as strange as fiction
November 29, 2020
Really enjoyed this 70s Ballard novel about Robert Maitland, an architect who finds himself isolated with seemingly no escape on a traffic island after a car accident (it is possible that it was deliberate, he was driving too fast returning to his wife after spending time with his mistress). Isolation, alienation, although surrounded by civilisation(there’s lots of traffic speeding by), does he want to leave? Of course in true Crusoe form he discovers he’s not alone on the island, there’s a young woman and a disabled man. It has absurdist moments, Proctor doing acrobatics badly; surreal moments, Maitland feverishly wonders if it’s all a dream. Another Ballard novel that will stick in my brain!
May 29, 2024
Best thing about Ballard; sends your imagination into riot. Every time.
Concrete Island reminded me of the bullring /cardboard city unsanctioned homeless shelter by Waterloo station on route to our favourite Shell centre skateboarding spots. Like the gravestones and gardens of the island, now stamped under (late 90’s) by the elephant foot of the BFI imax.
Concrete Island reminded me of the bullring /cardboard city unsanctioned homeless shelter by Waterloo station on route to our favourite Shell centre skateboarding spots. Like the gravestones and gardens of the island, now stamped under (late 90’s) by the elephant foot of the BFI imax.
April 4, 2019
A man driving a silver jaguar crashes his car and finds himself marooned and injured in a no-mans-patch-of-land in the middle of three highway overpasses. No one stops to help, or even notices he’s there.
As I read along, and as this poor man’s plight became more and more dire, I kept thinking: I know exactly how you feel, Mister.
I also kept thinking about how cell phones have ruined the future of stories like these, along with destroying the very notion that we can become hopelessly lost anywhere on the planet where GPS signals reach, which is more or less everywhere. Authors from now on will be stuck with placing their people in alternative worlds without cell phones, or setting their stories before 1990, or resorting to writing awkward, unbelievable sentences like: “Damn it, where is my cell phone when I need to get out of this tight spot?” Gerard thought.
The novel reminded me of Women in the Dunes by Kobo Abe, but while Abe’s novel is an anguished cri de coeur over the suffocating pointlessness of life, Concrete Island is an always-witty, sometimes-painful demonstration of how much joy J.G. Ballard gets from torturing his characters.
As I read along, and as this poor man’s plight became more and more dire, I kept thinking: I know exactly how you feel, Mister.
I also kept thinking about how cell phones have ruined the future of stories like these, along with destroying the very notion that we can become hopelessly lost anywhere on the planet where GPS signals reach, which is more or less everywhere. Authors from now on will be stuck with placing their people in alternative worlds without cell phones, or setting their stories before 1990, or resorting to writing awkward, unbelievable sentences like: “Damn it, where is my cell phone when I need to get out of this tight spot?” Gerard thought.
The novel reminded me of Women in the Dunes by Kobo Abe, but while Abe’s novel is an anguished cri de coeur over the suffocating pointlessness of life, Concrete Island is an always-witty, sometimes-painful demonstration of how much joy J.G. Ballard gets from torturing his characters.
October 3, 2017
It was great by any Ballardian standards, but I feel that the allegory overtook the narrative and the characters a little bit compared to HIGH RISE. CONCRETE ISLAND is more the living embodiment of an idea than an actual novel. Nothing in it can be taken at face value. Because if you do, it can get a little boring.
The best way I can describe CONCRETE ISLAND is ROBINSON CRUSOE meets LOST. The island where Robert Maitland has fallen on has "claimed" him for a reason he's not ready to face yet. So, the island is not really the island. The oncoming traffic is not really traffic. What the hell is going on here? My point, exactly. This is stimulating, but nowhere near as multidimensional at HIGH RISE is. And a little exhausting. I liked it a lot, but it's something for Ballard fans such as myself only.
The best way I can describe CONCRETE ISLAND is ROBINSON CRUSOE meets LOST. The island where Robert Maitland has fallen on has "claimed" him for a reason he's not ready to face yet. So, the island is not really the island. The oncoming traffic is not really traffic. What the hell is going on here? My point, exactly. This is stimulating, but nowhere near as multidimensional at HIGH RISE is. And a little exhausting. I liked it a lot, but it's something for Ballard fans such as myself only.
November 19, 2008
I understand that Ballard had designs at one point on adapting this into a children's book entitled "Robert Maitland and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day."
Don't quote me on that, though.
This little book is the perfect complement to Ballard's more infamous novel, 'Crash'. The difference here is that we get a look at the not so fun side of the car crash compared to the zany, sexually fetishized thing that 'Crash' had going for it.
I love Ballard's unique writing style. His voice is most often that of the unattached, bemused observer. The prose is very cold and clinical - a diamond edged scalpel that is beautiful in its brutality. It seems like most people are usually down on Ballard because he deals with uncomfortable themes, but I would think anyone who is a serious student of writing would want to give him a look because of his brilliant writing style.
Robert Maitland is a successful architect with questionable priorities. He spends his time between a wife and a mistress, and seems to "have it all" in that straight, corporate world view of things. This all changes when he loses control of his car during rush hour and finds himself stranded on a no longer used concrete island off of the side of an overpass. Anyone who has ever stood beside a broken down car on the side of the road wondering why the hell no one will stop can certainly relate to this situation. When he realizes that no one sees him and help is not forthcoming we are treated to the minutiae of survival. These chapters, first published in 1973, would convince any judge in a court of law that Ballard is entitled to a percentage of McCarthy's big fat check for 'The Road' if Ballard was feeling litigious.
As things are looking worse for Maitland, he is picked up by two denizens of the island, Proctor and Jane Sheppard. Proctor is an imposing, brain-damaged, former trapeze artist, while Jane is a bit of an unbalanced spitfire. Um...I think I may have dated Jane once or twice in my younger days, but luckily I was just wily enough to not drink the paraffin. This duo nurses Maitland back to health while imposing their wills upon him. As Maitland regains his strength, he turns the tables on them and imposes his own will. This turn of events draws the reader's sympathy away from Maitland, and I found myself caring more for the unfortunate Proctor.
I ran into some issues with parsing the overall theme of this story. I dabbled with the idea that all things being equal, the upper-middle class guy is always going to outfox those on the margins of society. While there seems to be a bitter truth here, I don't like it and I don't think Ballard would do that to us. Whenever I find myself in this situation, Tami always seems to ride in to save the day. 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. I'm still rolling this idea around in my head, but I really like it. Thanks again, Tami.
Don't quote me on that, though.
This little book is the perfect complement to Ballard's more infamous novel, 'Crash'. The difference here is that we get a look at the not so fun side of the car crash compared to the zany, sexually fetishized thing that 'Crash' had going for it.
I love Ballard's unique writing style. His voice is most often that of the unattached, bemused observer. The prose is very cold and clinical - a diamond edged scalpel that is beautiful in its brutality. It seems like most people are usually down on Ballard because he deals with uncomfortable themes, but I would think anyone who is a serious student of writing would want to give him a look because of his brilliant writing style.
Robert Maitland is a successful architect with questionable priorities. He spends his time between a wife and a mistress, and seems to "have it all" in that straight, corporate world view of things. This all changes when he loses control of his car during rush hour and finds himself stranded on a no longer used concrete island off of the side of an overpass. Anyone who has ever stood beside a broken down car on the side of the road wondering why the hell no one will stop can certainly relate to this situation. When he realizes that no one sees him and help is not forthcoming we are treated to the minutiae of survival. These chapters, first published in 1973, would convince any judge in a court of law that Ballard is entitled to a percentage of McCarthy's big fat check for 'The Road' if Ballard was feeling litigious.
As things are looking worse for Maitland, he is picked up by two denizens of the island, Proctor and Jane Sheppard. Proctor is an imposing, brain-damaged, former trapeze artist, while Jane is a bit of an unbalanced spitfire. Um...I think I may have dated Jane once or twice in my younger days, but luckily I was just wily enough to not drink the paraffin. This duo nurses Maitland back to health while imposing their wills upon him. As Maitland regains his strength, he turns the tables on them and imposes his own will. This turn of events draws the reader's sympathy away from Maitland, and I found myself caring more for the unfortunate Proctor.
I ran into some issues with parsing the overall theme of this story. I dabbled with the idea that all things being equal, the upper-middle class guy is always going to outfox those on the margins of society. While there seems to be a bitter truth here, I don't like it and I don't think Ballard would do that to us. Whenever I find myself in this situation, Tami always seems to ride in to save the day. 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. I'm still rolling this idea around in my head, but I really like it. Thanks again, Tami.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 3, 2017
A man drives his Jaguar off an exit ramp at high speed and crashes onto an isolated piece of wasteland beneath the convergence of three highway overpasses. Though not catastrophically injured in the accident, he ends up doing further violence to his body while trying to signal for help on the road above. The situation gets worse before it ever approaches what anyone would describe as better. This is a compulsively readable novel with its short chapters and singular focus. Certainly one can choose to read it as an extension of, as the jacket flap notes, Ballard's 'metaphor of the automobile as the symbol of modern life.' On its surface, though, it's a story of a self-absorbed architect who is suddenly thrust into a situation far outside his element. Over time he learns to adapt, sometimes in cruel ways. Will he ever escape from the 'island' as he comes to call it? Does it even matter? There is a rich stratified history layered throughout this forgotten patch of land. And the mesmeric motion of the wild grasses overtaking it is hard to resist...
December 6, 2018
The Desert Island List is a classic interview question: what would you take to a remote island, if you were to be marooned? A shipping container full of books? The complete musical works of Prince? A couple-hundred pounds of chocolate?
That's my Desert Island List (if pressed I could cut it down to only the chocolate - although not an ounce less than 200 pounds!) but of course most people who end up on sandy atolls don't get their choice of either their supplies or their location, and so it is in Concrete Island.
The main character of J.G Ballard's Concrete Island - Robert Maitland - is marooned with only a wrecked car, some clothes, and a case of wine. Furthermore, his island isn't of the traditional type - it's a 200-yard long traffic island, one of those many patches of scrub and dirt around the world that are hemmed in by roaring, speeding traffic. There isn't a coconut palm to be seen.
In its lonely desperation Concrete Island reminds me of Stephen King's classic short story Survivor Type, where a wealthy, corrupt surgeon finds himself marooned on a small island, with nothing but his surgical tools, his boat and a kilo of pure heroin.
Like the protagonist in King's story Maitland is stranded. He has crashed his car off a freeway and down an embankment onto an overgrown patch of wasteland. After suffering an injury to his leg he cannot climb the steep slopes hemming him in and finds himself trapped (interestingly King's story sees his protagonist hobbled too, with a shattered ankle, although his injury leads him in a very different direction to Maitland). This is 1973, prior to the development of cellphones, so despite being in sight of a busy road he is marooned as effectively as Robinson Crusoe.
And of course, while the island is small, there are no guarantees that Maitland is alone...
Ballard is great at making the normal abnormal, at skewing mundanity into weirdness and horror, and he makes the rubbish-strewn and overgrown no-mans-land between the freeways into a unique and desperate little world that his protagonist must struggle against to survive.
We follow Maitland in this struggle and watch as his desire to escape is tested, and his motivations in general come into question.
As his strength wanes and his thoughts become blurred from hunger and illness he begins to wonder: did he subconsciously contrive to put himself on the island? Is he somehow working against himself as he tries to escape? Is there a part of him that wants to leave his complex modern life and revert to a kind of isolated savagery?
Interestingly, Ballard's novel The Drowned World also dealt with a kind of reversion to a primal, primitive state in an overgrown world. Ballard seems to have had a real interest in people regressing to a primitive state/escaping from civilized society.
All this is pretty interesting, but you're probably wondering - is it a good read? The answer is: mostly.
The early sections of the story are pretty compelling as Maitland tries to escape the island, then comes to realise he must survive while he awaits help. Ballard's descriptions of the island and Maitland's travails are vivid and immediate, giving a strong sense of isolation and despair.
The later sections aren't quite as convincing, and in particular weren't entirely plausible to me.
Overall, Maitland's struggle and his coming to terms with being exiled from his life, while still being only metres from rescue, makes for an interesting and engaging story.
But is it a great book? Well, it wouldn't make it onto my Desert Island List, or my Traffic Island List either.
3 stars.
That's my Desert Island List (if pressed I could cut it down to only the chocolate - although not an ounce less than 200 pounds!) but of course most people who end up on sandy atolls don't get their choice of either their supplies or their location, and so it is in Concrete Island.
The main character of J.G Ballard's Concrete Island - Robert Maitland - is marooned with only a wrecked car, some clothes, and a case of wine. Furthermore, his island isn't of the traditional type - it's a 200-yard long traffic island, one of those many patches of scrub and dirt around the world that are hemmed in by roaring, speeding traffic. There isn't a coconut palm to be seen.
In its lonely desperation Concrete Island reminds me of Stephen King's classic short story Survivor Type, where a wealthy, corrupt surgeon finds himself marooned on a small island, with nothing but his surgical tools, his boat and a kilo of pure heroin.
Like the protagonist in King's story Maitland is stranded. He has crashed his car off a freeway and down an embankment onto an overgrown patch of wasteland. After suffering an injury to his leg he cannot climb the steep slopes hemming him in and finds himself trapped (interestingly King's story sees his protagonist hobbled too, with a shattered ankle, although his injury leads him in a very different direction to Maitland). This is 1973, prior to the development of cellphones, so despite being in sight of a busy road he is marooned as effectively as Robinson Crusoe.
And of course, while the island is small, there are no guarantees that Maitland is alone...
Ballard is great at making the normal abnormal, at skewing mundanity into weirdness and horror, and he makes the rubbish-strewn and overgrown no-mans-land between the freeways into a unique and desperate little world that his protagonist must struggle against to survive.
We follow Maitland in this struggle and watch as his desire to escape is tested, and his motivations in general come into question.
As his strength wanes and his thoughts become blurred from hunger and illness he begins to wonder: did he subconsciously contrive to put himself on the island? Is he somehow working against himself as he tries to escape? Is there a part of him that wants to leave his complex modern life and revert to a kind of isolated savagery?
Interestingly, Ballard's novel The Drowned World also dealt with a kind of reversion to a primal, primitive state in an overgrown world. Ballard seems to have had a real interest in people regressing to a primitive state/escaping from civilized society.
All this is pretty interesting, but you're probably wondering - is it a good read? The answer is: mostly.
The early sections of the story are pretty compelling as Maitland tries to escape the island, then comes to realise he must survive while he awaits help. Ballard's descriptions of the island and Maitland's travails are vivid and immediate, giving a strong sense of isolation and despair.
The later sections aren't quite as convincing, and in particular weren't entirely plausible to me.
Overall, Maitland's struggle and his coming to terms with being exiled from his life, while still being only metres from rescue, makes for an interesting and engaging story.
But is it a great book? Well, it wouldn't make it onto my Desert Island List, or my Traffic Island List either.
3 stars.
June 15, 2011
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 object, preferably gleaming, burning or exploding at that)- whether it be an improbable dialogue or a barely insightful introspection- even now I think of Ballard as more of a 'could have been my favourite author ever' than anything else. it must be his originality and boldness that make people so forgiving of his mediocrity. I'm quite curious about his other novels, such as 'High-rise' and 'Crystal World'. soo, it's a 'let's be friends' for now, even though I do wish it could have been something more than that.
September 27, 2024
From 1974
A man driving a Jaguar near Heathrow crashes and lands in a section of land between and under the roads. At first he is desperate to get out, but even if he gets the driver’s attention they can’t slow down. Eventually he just stays in the traffic island, making a life with a highway hooker and a large simple man.
There are names in this he also uses in Crash. The wife named Catherine. However, the main character in this is Maitland, whereas in Crash the main character is named JG Ballard
A man driving a Jaguar near Heathrow crashes and lands in a section of land between and under the roads. At first he is desperate to get out, but even if he gets the driver’s attention they can’t slow down. Eventually he just stays in the traffic island, making a life with a highway hooker and a large simple man.
There are names in this he also uses in Crash. The wife named Catherine. However, the main character in this is Maitland, whereas in Crash the main character is named JG Ballard
June 25, 2022
Videorecensione: https://youtu.be/bU8TK_77WNY
July 28, 2012
This is a book I should have read earlier. This is a book I’ve had in the back of my mind to read for a very long time now, and it shames me a little that I’ve only just got around to it.
If you think about it, the notion of a man who gets stuck on a traffic island, a patch of wasteland at the intersection of the new motorway network, is something which could also have been done by the contemporaneous ‘Monty Python's Flying Circus’. (Imagine Michael Palin's 'It's' man staring forlornly at the traffic). But Ballard – from that period in the early seventies when he was at his visionary best – takes the situation entirely seriously, thinking logically and sensibly about how this would happen and what the poor castaway would have to do to survive and try to ensure his rescue.
Although if it was written today the author would have to explain what happened to the lead character's mobile phone, this still feels a fresh and contemporary novel. Reading it at this precise moment, where there's a lot of talk of the top 1% who take all the money and everybody else who has to pay for it (a debate which has even subsumed the new Batman film), then this book feels weirdly tapped into the mood. Our lead protagonist crashes his jaguar, and those he meets see him as a slick capitalist, an exploiter and try to give him a little comeuppance. So far, so Guardian reader’s wet dream – but of course, this being Ballard, things never follow a predictable path
'Concrete Island' is a genuinely far reaching and yet small and recognisable novel. And it stands at the apex of Ballard's homespun science fiction.
If you think about it, the notion of a man who gets stuck on a traffic island, a patch of wasteland at the intersection of the new motorway network, is something which could also have been done by the contemporaneous ‘Monty Python's Flying Circus’. (Imagine Michael Palin's 'It's' man staring forlornly at the traffic). But Ballard – from that period in the early seventies when he was at his visionary best – takes the situation entirely seriously, thinking logically and sensibly about how this would happen and what the poor castaway would have to do to survive and try to ensure his rescue.
Although if it was written today the author would have to explain what happened to the lead character's mobile phone, this still feels a fresh and contemporary novel. Reading it at this precise moment, where there's a lot of talk of the top 1% who take all the money and everybody else who has to pay for it (a debate which has even subsumed the new Batman film), then this book feels weirdly tapped into the mood. Our lead protagonist crashes his jaguar, and those he meets see him as a slick capitalist, an exploiter and try to give him a little comeuppance. So far, so Guardian reader’s wet dream – but of course, this being Ballard, things never follow a predictable path
'Concrete Island' is a genuinely far reaching and yet small and recognisable novel. And it stands at the apex of Ballard's homespun science fiction.
July 12, 2022
On the very first page, after a crashing car has come to rest, we get this: “Maitland lay across his steering wheel, his jacket and trousers studded with windshield fragments like a suit of lights…” Yep, for the first time in decades I’m back reading J G Ballard again.
And this is classic Ballard too, from his early science-fiction days. Robert Maitland, at the wheel of a Jaguar speeding home one afternoon on the Westway out of central London, is hurled through a temporary barrier when his front nearside tyre explodes. The car plunges down a steep embankment and comes to rest, not on an uncharted tropical island like Crusoe, but its modern equivalent maybe: a traffic island. Formed at the junction of two motorways and a feeder road, this is a fenced-off, perhaps forgotten, triangle of uncut grass and the foundations of demolished buildings. Badly injured in a subsequent escape attempt, first comes self-pity, a bottle of Burgundy from the wrecked Jag, an exhausted sleep; then, next morning, his bid for survival begins: water, food, shelter, a signal-fire, rescue.
But there are psychological problems to confront too—and these are more insidious, harder to overcome, because this only starts out like a modern Robinson Crusoe. Throughout his whole time on an eighteenth-century island, Defoe’s castaway never becomes anything other than the civilised man who washed up there in the first place; in fact, he expends a great deal of effort trying to recreate the world with all its home comforts he’s lost. Ballard, by contrast, was fascinated by the idea of the whole superstructure of our civilisation suddenly removed and the possible psychological consequences for any survivors. In many of those early science-fiction novels not everyone is devastated by this loss, and some are even glad to be rid of it all. So you may find water on your concrete island, even food of a sort, but can you sustain the desire to escape? Or might it begin to seem like a refuge, your prison of embankments and flyovers a release, a strange freedom?
And this is classic Ballard too, from his early science-fiction days. Robert Maitland, at the wheel of a Jaguar speeding home one afternoon on the Westway out of central London, is hurled through a temporary barrier when his front nearside tyre explodes. The car plunges down a steep embankment and comes to rest, not on an uncharted tropical island like Crusoe, but its modern equivalent maybe: a traffic island. Formed at the junction of two motorways and a feeder road, this is a fenced-off, perhaps forgotten, triangle of uncut grass and the foundations of demolished buildings. Badly injured in a subsequent escape attempt, first comes self-pity, a bottle of Burgundy from the wrecked Jag, an exhausted sleep; then, next morning, his bid for survival begins: water, food, shelter, a signal-fire, rescue.
But there are psychological problems to confront too—and these are more insidious, harder to overcome, because this only starts out like a modern Robinson Crusoe. Throughout his whole time on an eighteenth-century island, Defoe’s castaway never becomes anything other than the civilised man who washed up there in the first place; in fact, he expends a great deal of effort trying to recreate the world with all its home comforts he’s lost. Ballard, by contrast, was fascinated by the idea of the whole superstructure of our civilisation suddenly removed and the possible psychological consequences for any survivors. In many of those early science-fiction novels not everyone is devastated by this loss, and some are even glad to be rid of it all. So you may find water on your concrete island, even food of a sort, but can you sustain the desire to escape? Or might it begin to seem like a refuge, your prison of embankments and flyovers a release, a strange freedom?
July 24, 2016
The formula for this is pretty straightforward, goes something like this,
Robinson Crusoe - the ocean and Robinson himself + an arrogant British businessman, a load of tarmac and a couple of weirdos = Concrete Island...oh hang on, better just add a sprinkling of dystopia to the mix, there that's about right.
Robinson Crusoe - the ocean and Robinson himself + an arrogant British businessman, a load of tarmac and a couple of weirdos = Concrete Island...oh hang on, better just add a sprinkling of dystopia to the mix, there that's about right.
September 1, 2021
Lettura da 3.5.
Interessante prospettiva di come l'uomo si trasforma in base alle necessità per sopravvivere od ottenere ciò che vuole anche a costo di deludere altre persone o di usarle; questa è anche la storia di una fuga dalla propria routine, dai problemi e dalla società e storia di accettazione personale nella solitudine.
Lo consiglio!
Interessante prospettiva di come l'uomo si trasforma in base alle necessità per sopravvivere od ottenere ciò che vuole anche a costo di deludere altre persone o di usarle; questa è anche la storia di una fuga dalla propria routine, dai problemi e dalla società e storia di accettazione personale nella solitudine.
Lo consiglio!
January 1, 2023
Robert Maitland, a 35-years old architect, crashes his Jaguar and ends up on a concrete island, trapped between highways. Injured, it is impossible to get off the island. Soon he finds out he is not the only one there. Proctor, a former trapeze artist, and Jane, a prostitute who escaped an unhappy marriage, try to keep him there. He taps into his best Robinson Crusoe skills to try to survive on the island and escape from it.
The story of Concrete Island seems a metaphor for feeling being trapped in life. Maitland has a succesful career, a wife, a kid, a mistress, basically everything society expects, yet he finds a certain satifaction on the concrete island he is missing in his life. Maybe Jane and Proctor are metaphors for surpressed parts of his mind, because Jane suggests at a certain point that she and Proctor think Maitland has been on the island before. I probably should reread it from this perspective to see if my assumption works.
Once more Ballard unveils the poetry in modern day structures. The wastelands hides so many interesting and beautiful things from the past: the basements of houses, an oldcinema, air-raid shelters from the Cold War era, a breaker's yard. His descriptons, his characters, it feels like a play where the concrete island serves a stage. Can't wait to read another Ballard, I'm am addicted :)
The story of Concrete Island seems a metaphor for feeling being trapped in life. Maitland has a succesful career, a wife, a kid, a mistress, basically everything society expects, yet he finds a certain satifaction on the concrete island he is missing in his life. Maybe Jane and Proctor are metaphors for surpressed parts of his mind, because Jane suggests at a certain point that she and Proctor think Maitland has been on the island before. I probably should reread it from this perspective to see if my assumption works.
Once more Ballard unveils the poetry in modern day structures. The wastelands hides so many interesting and beautiful things from the past: the basements of houses, an oldcinema, air-raid shelters from the Cold War era, a breaker's yard. His descriptons, his characters, it feels like a play where the concrete island serves a stage. Can't wait to read another Ballard, I'm am addicted :)
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