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old_fart_at_play 's review for:
The Drowned World
by J.G. Ballard
Rarely has such prescience and promise (on display in the book’s excellent first act) been so poorly served by the subsequent plot. The moment Strangman enters the novel, Ballard’s vision devolves into something like a cheap action movie. The “feast of skulls” sequence is painfully unconvincing, the subsequent deus ex machina forced, and the last plot twist too little too late. None of the protagonists are distinctive enough to enliven some of the more cliché plot points, and Ballard does especially poorly by Beatrice Dahl, the only woman in his dramatis personae. It’s a young man’s novel, in short, and made me want to reread both Crash and Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. The Drowned World, despite Kingsley Amis’s blurb, does not come close to the latter’s genuine sense of “horror.” And I would argue that its portrayal of race is, in fact, as vile as Conrad’s is often accused of being.
That said, Ballard’s early concern with environmental catastrophe and extreme heat inevitably ring truer today than they did in the 1960s. The drowned world itself is too close to home. We are a shitty species.
That said, Ballard’s early concern with environmental catastrophe and extreme heat inevitably ring truer today than they did in the 1960s. The drowned world itself is too close to home. We are a shitty species.