Product Description

Book Description

Five people die in an unexplained housefire in the Spanish resort of Estrella de Mar, an exclusive enclave for the rich, retired British, centred around the thriving Club Nautico. The manager of the club, Frank Prentice, pleads guilty to charges of murder — yet not even the police believe him. When his brother Charles arrives to unravel the truth, he gradually discovers that behind the resort's civilised facade lurks a secret world of crime, drugs and illicit sex ...

At once an engrossing mystery and an unnerving vision of a society coming to terms with a life of unlimited leisure, Cocaine Nights is a stunningly original work of the imagination from one of this country's most acclaimed writers.

About the Author

J.G. Ballard was born in 1930 in Shanghai, where his father was a businessman. After internment in a civilian prison camp, he and his family returned to England in 1946. His 1984 bestseller Empire of the Sun won the Guardian Fiction Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. It was later filmed by Steven Spielberg. His controversial novel Crash was made into an equally controversial film by David Cronenberg. His most recent novels are the Sunday Timesbest-sellers Cocaine Nights and Super-Cannes.

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	76% buy the item featured on this page: Cocaine Nights 3.0 out of 5 stars (10)
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Customer Reviews

10 Reviews

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

Average Customer Review

3.0 out of 5 stars (10 customer reviews)

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4.0 out of 5 stars Vintage Ballard psych-noir, April 26 2001

By	Mac Tonnies (Kansas City, MO USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

"Cocaine Nights" is a return to Ballard's psychological preoccupations. We're ushered into the quintessential Ballardian scenario: the microcosmic "culture" of the wealthy and retired. We quickly learn that all is not well, and follow the quasi-hard-boiled narrator as he succumbs to the community's visceral core. Bloody and provocative, "Cocaine Nights" is an excellent compliment to Ballard's other "landscape" novels ("Crash," "High-Rise," "Concrete Island"), in which he plumbs the apocalyptic interface between desire and environment, turning the psyche inside-out with the steely objectivity of a lab tech. "Cocaine Nights" is vintage Ballard psych-noir and won't disappoint.

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3.0 out of 5 stars Sun Baked, Mar 3 2001

By	"odindog" (san francisco, Ca United States) - See all my reviews

Ballard's attempt to "expose" the seedy underbelly of English retirement communities under the guise of mystery ultimately fails to deliver on its initial promise. The beginning, with whispered conspiracies and country club cliques, sets the stage for a scandal-laced, brutally honest look at leisure society and its inability and unwillingness to think outside the box without prompting. Unfortunately, the characters are ultimately shallow, the situations familiar (cocaine in discotheques, oh my), and, the mark of death for any mystery, predictable. The prose and Ballard's ability to breathe life into the strangest and far fetched situation shines through as usual, but this neither ranks as a good mystery, nor as good Ballard.

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5.0 out of 5 stars Liberation, freedom, sarcasm, brilliance........., Oct 2 2000

By	Jarkko Yfantidis (Thessaloniki Greece) - See all my reviews

Well if you understood fight club, this is a book written before and based on the same ideals. Loving other humans, bringing people together, giving up as a liberation, lack of property as the way to ascend and more. This book is about waking people up, about putting a meaning to everything. It is an utterly symbolic book so most of the narrow minded and people without fantasy will never be able to read it. It is also a humorous book, sarcastic as hell, full of ideas alternatives and above all sooooooo entertaining.

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Most recent customer reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Ballard is a genius
And this is a brilliant novel of what lies under the thin veneer of civilisation that we all wear, an edgy exploration of the the violence that lies within us all. Read more

Published on Sep 13 2000

3.0 out of 5 stars Sustaining the dream
This was the first J.G. ballard novel I had read, and first impressions of are of a curiously old fashioned novelist writing about very modern ideas. Read more

Published on Jul 25 2000 by Vodka and Cranberry

2.0 out of 5 stars Club class? More like cruise control...
Not a bad story, with the usual Ballardian ideas. But that is the problem: J.G. Ballard is getting lazy. Read more

Published on Jul 11 2000 by flying-monkey

1.0 out of 5 stars Oh Dear!
I know I can blame nobody but myself, but I was taken in by the interesting title and the reviews on the back: 'One of the few world-class British writers alive today. Read more

Published on Mar 30 2000 by Matthew Szabo