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Kingdom Come (Paperback)

by Jg Ballard (Author)

5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)

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Product Details

Paperback: 304 pages
Publisher: UK General Books (Jul 19 2007)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0007232470
ISBN-13: 978-0007232475
Product Dimensions: 19.2 x 12.8 x 2.4 cm
Shipping Weight: 200 g

Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)

Amazon.ca Sales Rank: #152,831 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Review

'Dystopias are Ballard's stock-in-trade and, when on song, he animates them better than anyone else!it takes a master novelist to pick out the small details!fascinating.' Sunday Telegraph 'It is his ability to summon a deteriorated but recognisable modern world into being that makes him among the finest dystopians at work.' Sunday Times 'We're in Ballard-land, his old archetypes at war in a familiar-yet-strange terrain, and that should be compelling enough for any reader!Ballard, paradoxically, with all his characters gripped by obsession and necessity, is one of the great novelists of freedom.' Financial Times '"Kingdom Come" looks like a report on the state of modern Britain, but it's really a report on the state of J.G. Ballard's head, and the good news is that it's as fertile as ever!"Kingdom Come" is impressively packed with brilliant apercus.' Observer 'Mesmeric!you read this novel for his prescient vision, his acute insights and his shards of wit.' Tatler 'The magus of Shepperton is on tip-top form. No-one writes with such enchanted clarity or strange power as James Graham Ballard.' Scotsman '"Kingdom Come" encapsulates everything for which J.G.Ballard is admired!Simply put, "Kingdom Come" distils the best of Ballard to confirm he is still one of our finest living novelists.' Metro '"Kingdom Come" is important, germaine, timely and creepy, a tidal wrack of ideas washed up on the artificial beach of our resort culture.' Will Self '"Kingom Come" is a worthy addition to an extraordinary body of work. It is impossible to read one of JG Ballard's books and not to marvel at his style and ability to capture the times in which we live. His writing has been a source of excitement and inspiration to me since I was reading library books under the covers by the light of a battery torch.' Louise Welsh 'Entertaining!fragmented narratives!emerge as perfect, threatening little Ballardian vignettes.' TLS 'J.G. Ballard is the undisputed laureate of suburban psychosis!"Kingdom Come" is a brilliant novel.' Literary Review

Product Description

A masterpiece of fiction from J. G. Ballard, which asks could Consumerism turn into Facism? Richard Pearson, unemployed advertising executive and life-long rebel, is driving out to Brooklands, a motorway town on the M25. A few weeks earlier his father was fatally wounded at the Metro-Centre, a vast shopping mall in the centre of this apparently peaceful town, when a deranged mental patient opened fire on a crowd of shoppers. When the main suspect is released without charge thanks to the dubious testimony of self-styled pillars of the community -- including Julia Goodwin, the doctor who treated his father on his deathbed -- Richard suspects that there is more to his father's death than meets the eye, a more sinister element lurking behind the pristine facades of the labyrinthine mall. Determined to unravel the mystery, Richard soon realises that the Metro-Centre, with its round-the-clock cable channel and sports clubs, lies at the very heart of his father's death. Consumerism rules the lives of everyone in the motorway towns and feeds the cravings of this bored community with its desperate need for something new, whatever the cost. Riots frequently terrorise the streets, immigrant communities are set upon by roving bands of hooligans and sports events mushroom into jingoistic political rallies. Gradually, Richard finds himself drawn into this world, caught up in the workings of the mall, exposed to the insides of the consumer dream, and starts upon dismantling this wayward vision his advertising career helped to found! In this gripping, dystopian tour de force, J.G. Ballard holds up a mirror to middle England, reflecting an unsettling image of suburbia and revealing the darker forces at work beneath the gloss of consumerism and flag-waving patriotism.

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5.0 out of 5 stars Thy Kingdom Come, Thy Ads Be Run?, Jan 5 2007

By	Richard McGrath (Toronto, Canada) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Kingdom Come (Hardcover)

At 75 years of age you might think the irascible JG Ballard might be bored with finger-pointing and setting up future ?I told you so? scenarios from the sedate safety of his Shepperton semi-detached.

But no.

With the publication of his latest novel, Kingdom Come, Ballard once again is "picturing the psychology of the future", this time moving his critical eye beyond the culture of business parks and gated communities and into the English suburbs with its landscape of sports arenas, massive shopping centers? and violence.

Following closely in the stylistic footprints of his prior three novels -- Cocaine Nights, Super-Cannes and Millennium People -- Ballard continues his longtime role of Psychological Town Crier, this time pealing out warnings about the possibility of a fascist republic growing from the bored suburb?s fascination with sports, nationalism and consumerism.

In Kingdom Come the hero is a massive shopping centre; the plotline an advertising slogan. Off to the side, one group of professionals work together in an attempt to create a fledgling fascist state so the authorities will arrive, stamp out the insurrection, tear down the shopping malls, then leave so the original residents can once again enjoy an old-fashioned, bucolic middle-class rural existence. On the other hand, another group seeks to increase shopping centre sales by initiating a ?subversive? advertising campaign to change the ?mental ecology? of Brooklands. And then there are the gun toting crazies who initiate and finalize this surreal re-enactment of The Teddy Bear?s Picnic.

Kingdom come uses the first person point of view ? all the better to ?reveal? the story, although the linear effect is sometimes slow, especially if the narrator likes to go off in tangents -- and it rests its case in the form of a mystery, although the quest for whodunit in Kingdom Come soon takes a back seat to the slightly comic landscape of philosophy, violence and psychopathology which quickly engulfs the characters and the reader.

In this novel Ballard describes the action through the eyes of one Richard Pearson, a recently-redundant advertising agency account executive who leaves his London flat (after his wife has castrated him professionally before kissing him off personally) to venture out into the suburbs to a town called Brooklands, off the M25 freeway, to finalize the estate of his recently-murdered father.

Dazed and confused in this odd land of suburbia, Pearson stands out like a slogan without a brand, and he quickly falls into a scenario in which he creates a series of noir print and TV ads to shore up the prospects of the Metro-Centre mega-mall. Does the campaign work? Of course, and only too well. As Pearson notes, his advertisements build on each other in such a way that, "Together they made sense at the deepest levels, scenes from the collective dream forever playing in the back alleys of their mind." The population goes literally crazy, the cash registers ring, Metro-Centre becomes more like a self-contained church, and all is outwardly well in Happy Valley. By day. By night Brooklands reflects the dark side of Pearson's relentless campaign. The basic instincts rule the streets and sports stadiums; the individual becomes a corporate thug.

So much for English culture. But this pessimistic view is, of course, the basis for the novel in the first place. In a mad, mad, ad world, you get what you deserve. All campaigns end, however, and Ballard treats us to an amazing set-piece of violence and destruction at the end.

Without a doubt, Pearson the adman is an interesting addition to the stable of unstable Ballardian characters. By being "artistic" with his pathologies, Pearson manages to transform himself from an emotionally-damaged half-man into a complete, and wiser, individual. Ultimately, Pearson himself is the real advertisement for life against death. If the Metro-Centre campaign is an externalized version of Pearson's inner psychological state, then his recovery comes with its ultimate destruction. Once again Ballard?s longstanding theme of personal redemption and affirmation is confirmed. Through Pearson, Ballard successfully creates his own advertisement for salvation. Buying stuff is boring. It's just voting for one corporation's stuff over another. But the artistic is always engaging, even if it's just an ad campaign.

Bottom line, I found Kingdom Come to be equally as entertaining as the last three novels, each of which has fired a dystopian volley across our cultural bows. I disagree with reviewers who write that Ballard?s recent novels are repetitive rants with different plots, as I find these novels, and Kingdom Come in particular, hold the reader's interest not only for their dire warnings, but for their imaginative plotting, their deep understanding of violence, their fascination with inversions, especially of social status, and ultimate redemptive qualities. You want more? OK, it's also black humour, at its best.

Is Kingdom Come "Ballardian"? The dictionary says I should be looking for "dystopian modernity, bleak man-made landscapes and the psychological effects of technological, social or environmental developments". Well, I see that, all right. Whew. But aside from its complex, linear plot (an offshoot of the first person POV), familiar characters and feelgood ending, Kingdom Come still has time to offer up one of the most fascinating ad campaigns ever launched in fiction, a superb set-piece of the Metro-Centre rotting away while being occupied, some incredibly astute insights into the psychology of consumerism, and an ever-sharp sense of irony and humour that may cause the uncareful to laugh out loud while reading. Here's a typical example: Ballard has a character describe Pearson as, "sane, kindly, with all the genuine sincerity of an advertising man." Wish I had said that. I highly recommend it.

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