Concrete Island

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G. Ballard novel ( Concrete Island is my fourth in the last year or so) I think two things: 1) hey, that was pretty terrific; 2) it's a shame I didn't read it ten years ago. Jane watches him do it, and the gesture asserts control over her, too, although only intermittent, and subject to her own unpredictable mood swings. In fact, the whole city was now asleep, part of an immense unconscious Europe, while he himself crawled about on a forgotten traffic island like the nightmare of this slumbering continent. It will be interesting to see if the current Lockdown provides inspiration for similarly visionary writing in the future.

Here, then, is the predominate theme – the testing of the boundaries of the human spirit in the struggle to master an alien environment.We follow Maitland in this struggle and watch as his desire to escape is tested, and his motivations in general come into question. Maitland seeks to enlist the aid of Proctor, but it is only when he exerts force over both Jane and Proctor that they grant him grudging respect. I didn’t understand how Ballard planned to stretch what should be a temporary condition into a full-length novel.

In its lonely desperation Concrete Island reminds me of Stephen King's classic short story Survivor Type, where a wealthy, corrupt surgeon finds himself marooned on a small island, with nothing but his surgical tools, his boat and a kilo of pure heroin. The Jag careers through some wooden barriers lining the road and plunges down an embankment into a large overgrown grassy area. Furthermore, from my position of happy ignorance, I feel entitled to spout twaddle without recourse to academic rigour or the necessity of tiresome self-justification.

And by the 1980s it had become a really hackneyed cliché, the subject of bloated, boring mainstream fiction [see Stanley and the Women or The Russian Girl by Kingsley Amis]. Both Proctor, who’s realm the island is, and Jane, are necessary to Maitland’s survival, and while still weak from injury and hunger, he seeks to control them first by playing one against the other – winning Procter’s devotion through gifts, pieces of the car, burgundy and so on.

If the island is Maitland’s interior, then these semi-fantastic figures with whom Maitland must wrestle are devices of the sub-conscious, means by which Maitland’s frustrations can be resolved, worked through, transcended. Here again Concrete Island and Empire of the Sun resemble one another, for in both the absence of parent figures, and of the props of civilized society means the individual must rely on himself to survive. Out of control, the car burst through the palisade of pinewood trestles that formed a temporary barrier along the edge of the road. In the middle are a number of bomb shelters with steps down into them hidden by nettles and long grass.Still, even though I was drawn into the story, it felt drawn out and nowhere near as focused by the conclusion. The apex of the island pointed towards the west and the declining sun, whose warm light lay over the distant television studios at White City. Maitland realises she knows a way out and yet… by this stage… he is in such a strange zone that he doesn’t ask her… not just yet, anyway… sometime….