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3.46 AVERAGE
3.46 AVERAGE
this might be a hot take, but being trapped for four days on a traffic island doesn't really justify peeing on a disabled guy. also this is a terrible book.
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
it was such a strong concept that personally means so much to me and such a promising start that the 2nd act of the book being a let down was a just horrible blow to my morale
"'People are never happier than when they're inventing new vices'"
The suffocating loneliness and selfishness of the city. Maybe I want to be stranded.
The suffocating loneliness and selfishness of the city. Maybe I want to be stranded.
dark
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Ballard depicts how our shiny modern life can be just one mundane catastrophe away from a descent to insanity, savagery, and base survival instincts. The MC Maitland is stranded on a concrete strip amidst busy highways and apartments, but is still nevertheless isolated in a landscape of rusted vanities and abandoned objects. Here, the capitalist altar of toys and technologies we keep reveal their true form of rubbish, and the true form of a human individual is perhaps the very physical and psychological desire for dominance, inextricably intwined with suffering.
Concrete Island is an odd little book. A modern day Robinson Crusoe, I pictured it taking place (for you Milwaukeeans out there) under the Marquette interchange in some sort of alternate universe. Although it starts out as a man vs. nature tale, power struggles do crop up when Maitland discovers he is not the only person on the island.
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 :)
devoured CONCRETE ISLAND, a book that started out really good - fantastic in fact, but thinned out in the last lap. i would say the first 120 pages are just about perfect. CI is an ultra-tight nightmare where every word has depth and overtones, but the last 40 or so pages felt like the bubble had burst and he was prolonging the text; it didn't feel as vital or compelling as the opening. regardless, i would recommend it without much reservation, because, dang - the first three acts are really something. won't bother illustrating the plot - if someone explained it to me i don't know that i would have read it. it's deceptively simple and yet ...