By J.G. Ballard
Wikipedia link (click here to buy it from England!)
(Fun fact: this book was my solitary goal in my book-searching quest over in the British Isles earlier this year. It was this book or bust. Found it in the Foyles on Charing Cross. Excellent store, six floors of book heaven.)
A long time ago, I cracked open a copy of Stephen King's Danse Macabre (which I sorta recommend, but that's a whole other kettle of fish) and went to the far back to read the recommended books list. The tome of horror's long-ass history listed High Rise and Concrete Island alongside The Exorcist and The Haunting of Hill House. After finding High Rise, and just now finishing it, of this trilogy that Ballard had (Crash, Concrete Island, and High Rise; all which hilariously enough I read in order) this one is definitely the most likely to represent future real life.
The story has several narrators, Robert Laing (a doctor), Anthony Royal (architect and genius behind the high rise), and Richard Wilder (a documentary filmmaker); but the true main character is the nameless London high-rise. It has everything you would ever need: a school for the youngins, a department/grocery store with a hair salon, swimming pools, and a rooftop tennis court. A thousand apartments, with forty floors, it is a tall mess of people.
But things get rotten quickly. The wealthy (living on the top floors) are not cleaning up after their pets and even monopolizing the elevators, messing up the middle class (see where this this going?) and the lower classes below them.
Above all, it was their [the rich folks'] subtle patronage that kept the middle ranks in line, this constantly dangling carrot of friendship and approval.
-from page 53 of the book
Yeah, the classism from the rich characters is about as subtle as a brick through a window in a glass house. Laing is immediately shut out (he used to play tennis with Royal) while Wilder tries to investigate, but gets beaten to a pulp by the wealthy (led by Royal). It gets more violent in a dime-turn: adults are frightening children, pets are drowned, and women are sexually assaulted. It then becomes a challenge: how worse can it get and when will it end?
The build up is intense, each page greets you with new horror of the human rampage. Nobody is safe, especially not the reader. Ballard again uses his terse writing to come across as unaffected by the whole thing, leaving the readers to judge for themselves. And Lordy, they will get it quickly! He captures the destruction of polite behavior and even having it feel that such a possibility is inevitable. We all are capable of violence; and even if we remain calm in the case of an emergency, our uglier sides could emerge.
If you are uncomfortable with violence, especially against women, you do want to avoid this.
Ballard does it again, writing about the success of industrialization and the decline of human behavior. That is likely why Stephen King recommended it, he was thinking the same thing I did.
COPYRIGHT NOTE: all bold quotes are from the novel and were written by the author himself. Those words are not my own.
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