Image: Kirill Sharkovski via Unsplash
Despite being forty-five years old this year, J.G. Ballard’s dystopian novel, High-Rise, is just as relevant and shocking today as it was when it was first published. As an examination of the human mind, it is a must-read for fans of Lord of the Flies, as it posits that the disintegration of society is slow but inevitable. Tracing the lives of the two thousand residents of an enormous high-rise building in London, the novel focuses on Robert Laing, a professor and divorcee; Richard Wilder, a filmmaker; and Anthony Royal, the building’s architect. Through these characters, we see the ultra-lavish building derive tension between those on the lower, middle, and upper floors. Fights break out, refuse and even bodies are left in the halls, and the remaining tenants, who find themselves unable to leave the building, spiral into confusion.
As a metaphor for class relations and the faults that a seemingly polished life can bring, it is as near flawless as I have seen. I could write a whole essay on the symbolism of social structure that Ballard creates in this novel, but the result is still a hugely enjoyable book with a poignant and important message. It is a book in which it is unclear which event was the tipping point or how, exactly, one moment led to the next, but as a whole it makes perfect sense.
The book’s one fault manifests itself in the frustration which the reader derives from the novel’s characters. The whole premise of the novel is on the side of unbelievable. But, then, is it meant to be believable on such a small scale? This microcosm of society is incredibly frustrating for its inability to do anything about its slow decline, but I suppose this is an appropriate analogy for Ballard’s chosen subject.
If you like dystopian novels, High Rise is definitely to be recommended. It is not like The Hunger Games or Brave New World, in that it doesn’t show big, sweeping changes from the society that we recognise as our own. Rather, it shows us what we ought to recognise, but probably won’t, at least not at first. I have never thought of high-rise apartments as spaces full of the unusual, but Ballard transports the eyrie feeling of a ghostly hotel or an abandoned parking lot and slots it into quiet urban living. It is not quite like any book I’ve ever read before and will almost certainly leave you scratching your head over how something so good became so wrong.