The formula isnt any different to that of 'The Drowned Wolrd' or, more recently, 'Millennium People' but it still works effective in working a range of genres like social and political with good old excitement (with a dab of the black ballard humour). High Rise is my favourite because it is very accessible but doesnt lose out because of it. The atmosphere built is think and intense, reminiscient of 'Lord of the Flies' or the crawling paranoia of 'Apocalypse Now'. Characters are typically undeveloped but what they get up to and the clarity of their surroundings more than makes up for it.

Keep in mind that youve gotta let your imagination fly with this one more than others. Its top stuff.


One of Ballard's best novels   August 5, 2003
 16 out of 22 found this review helpful

High Rise (1995) here gets another reissue, just three years after the perfectly fine Flamingo edition- the cover of this one doesn;t appeal very much! High Rise was the third part of what academics and Ballard-buffs like to call 'The Urban Disaster Trilogy'- coming after Crash & Concrete Island.

High Rise has one of the finest opening paragraphs I've read, straight into the dark stuff with 'Later, as he sat on his balcony eating the dog, Dr Robert Laing reflected on the unusual events that had taken place within this huge apartment building during the previous three months'! As with many Ballard works- including the locale for the recent Super Cannes- Ballard shows a composite of society, within a society...& beneath that something dark and primal lurking- here there is a literal hegemony from top to bottom in the high rise block which has everything, from a bank to a swimming pool..

Ballard views a society that has closed itself off, and in turn sections of this society that have closed themselves off- one thinks of many things, from the infamous Kitty Genovese case to the LA Riots...This novel reacts to the so-called progression that began to surface in the 1970s- the abortive buildings now being torn down in places like Birmingham- & also taps into the spirit that would birth the yuppies in the 80s and the materialist species that followed in the late 1990s also. As with many Ballard works, there are those atypical Ballardian titles for chapters: The Drained Lake, The Vertical City, The Blood Garden...all roads leading to the sub/unconscious coming to the fore with 1984's autobiographical classic Empire of the Sun.

High Rise is a brief entertaining & horrifying read and remains one of Ballard's strongest novels which ranks well alongside such books as The Drowned World, The Atrocity Exhibition, Crash, Concrete Island, Vermillion Sands & Super Cannes.Personally, I feel it's the definitive Ballard novel & would be a much better place to start than with a book like Crash, which alienates as many as those who enjoy it (I fall into the latter group!). For anyone wanting to read Ballard for the first time I'd plump for this, or a short-story collection like The Voices of Time.


Battery Living   February 10, 2003
 9 out of 10 found this review helpful

Much of Ballard's work since the 1970's seems to employ as its central tenet the notion that lifestyle can be packaged and bought, pre-conceived and pre-fabricated. As an unavoidable fact of modern life the big city also features heavily as a theme, imposing the considerations of limited space upon modern man's reified lifestyle choices.
High-Rise is a good attempt to capture the blandness caused by the removal of risk and danger from people's lives, and the main narrative thrust is an imagination of the violence this may reawaken in people. The book is inferior to Cocaine Nights, and maybe Crash, in terms of atmospherics; its real strength lies in the way in which it gradually escalates in violence and purpose. The book is a dizzying, steadily heightening trip into the violent recesses of the human mind and, as always, Ballard's explication of events runs in smooth concurrence with them. The result, as usual, is both logical, mad and slightly claustrophobic. Intense, and recommended, reading.