High-Rise

It starts well enough and the writing is great.
The premise is also interesting and I think the story would have been perfect for a short story or an essay. Unfortunately, it's quite too long for the content and it gets repetitive and boring. I hung in there and read it until the end but left unimpressed.

The two stars are for decent writing. This novel started out promising, but soon devolved into complete drivel. The behaviors of the highrise inhabitants seem to be invented by someone who has never met a real human being, male or female.

*Spoiler alert* Civilization collapses within the highrise, and the people within appear to be struck with a severe case of mental impairment. No, they do not turn into Neanderthals, because Neanderthals were smart enough not to sh*t where they ate, and to know that survival requires intelligent action, reproduction, and the pursuit of food. Instead, all the men on whom the author chooses to focus single-mindedly decide to support the author's metaphors (the guy who abandons his wife and children to literally climb the highrise is a social climber, get it?). All the women, on the other hand, immediately turn into passive zombies, so there is no point understanding them I guess. Knowing full well that a single gun would blow up the whole conceit, the characters retain the sportsmanship to rely on fisticuffs only to resolve disputes.

This was a great book. I enjoyed it. Definitely a little dark and disturbing. Will make you think about society a little bit. Now I'm worried about my apartment dwelling neighbors! Can't wait for the movie.

If you're in to apocalyptic weirdness, this is for you. I'm not, so it wasn't for me. The premise sounded great, so it was a disappointment. The author is extremely creative but it was over my head.

Bleak nihilistic critique of the mind-numbing banality of urban consumerism. Ballard's message: technological sophistication does not lead to greater freedom and happiness. Instead, it produces a ruthless hierarchy that only increases man's oppression and exploitation of his fellow human being. Basically, this s class warfare run amok, to the point where it becomes nothing but ultra-violent tribalism.

The central idea here is interesting. One thousand well-to-do residents of a modern luxury high rise turn to savages within the confines of their own building. As the mechanics of the building break down, so do the societal rules. It starts with graffiti and broken elevators and devolves into rape, murder, cannibalism and more. (The book is extremely disturbing.)

My one VERY MAJOR problem with the book is that there is no reason for any of this to occur. The residents aren't trapped. All of them are free to leave at any time. But they decide to stay because, well, it's never really explained. This building is hell on earth, and not a single resident stops to think, "Hmm, maybe I should leave"?

They live among increasing amounts of filth and human waste with no water or electricity. They allow relatives to be attacked, don't report dead bodies, and seem totally ok with the fact that they're all going to die and possibly be eaten by their neighbors.

Oh, one other thing. No one in the outside world notices. Not the relatives or coworkers of the tenants who decide to cut themselves off from the outside world. Not the mailmen or delivery men or anyone else who for some reason stop showing up. Not neighbors in nearby buildings who can see there is no electricity and probably hear the violence occurring nightly and smell the garbage. Or the one single police officer who shows up over the course of the months(?) the book takes place who leaves after only a minute or two.

If the residents of the high rise were trapped somehow, I could have more easily gone along with the story. But the complete lack of concern for themselves and the complete lack of concern from the outside world made this book absolutely preposterous.

I definitely do not recommend this book.

This book covers territory which is better-charted than its author and his audience (who seem to agree that he's some sort of pioneer) would suspect; the question of how people behave in the breakdown of social order is not a new one in this of all centuries. Ballard's premise, the isolation of the building and its shift into unexpected but psychologically natural warfare, had me expecting _Watership Down_, and the passage with the gulls suggests that Ballard might have been expecting the same, but that isn't exactly what we got.

This is a fever dream of a rootless humanity with no loyalties, no strong emotions, and no understanding of or desire for either; it rings false. The author does not know what people really act like under these kinds of pressures (though a study of the literature of the two World Wars, fiction as well as memoirs and history, would certainly have told him); but he does know, and laboriously depicts, the set of behaviors that modern literary critics would tell him would occur. It is true enough, as the narrator openly states, that the model for these characters' behaviors is postmodern man, not primitive man; but the defining trait of the postmodern is insulation from difficult physical realities -- hunger, death, pain, war, disease -- and postmodernity tends not to last when this insulation has disappeared.

The author's eye is inaccurate in general; one small but telling detail is the mention of a shotgun halfway through the book, and the comment that the inhabitants of the high-rise had a tacit agreement that they would settle their conflicts "by physical means alone." This sort of understanding (an implausibility which this book shares with _The Napoleon of Notting Hill_, in both cases probably due to their authors' aesthetic preference for melee weapons) would last only until someone decided that victory was more important than tacit agreements -- in other words, until someone had been truly and deeply insulted, or found that someone or something that he really valued had been put in danger. Bursts of this sort of real violence happen even in our own more stable society; in a context like this, busily unravelling into a Nietzchean fairyland, they would be all but constant. (Nor does this mention the utter failure of everyone present to involve the police, and indeed the failure of the police, the military, the building inspectors, the insurance companies, and so on to take any interest whatsoever in the high-rise, if nothing else for their own financial self-interest. I'm familiar with what Barzun calls "the loss of nerve characteristic of periods of decadence," but this takes the cake; if Wilder had actually burned down the building as Laing had imagined, think of the life-insurance payouts alone...)

This sort of spurious depiction is probably most painful because much better works have covered this subject, or elements of it. Perhaps the closest analogy to High-Rise is G.K. Chesterton's _The Napoleon of Notting Hill_ (now out of copyright, and readily available on-line). Bill Mauldin's _Up Front_ is one of many memoirs of the World Wars -- and the trench warfare of the Italian campaign of 1943-5 saw physical conditions similar to this book's, but with quite different consequences. Post-apocalyptic fiction is a thriving, if often irresponsible, genre; for psychological truths relevant to this book's subject matter, I would recommend Aldous Huxley's _Ape and Essence_ and Walter Miller's _A Canticle for Leibowitz_. And, of course, for a work dealing with the same themes, but with conclusions as different as its physical trappings, I'd recommend Richard Adams' _Watership Down_.

Ballard provides no initiating event to explain why the residents become territorial and combative. Speculative fiction requires the reader to suspend disbelief at one underlying premise and all subsequent events have a coherent logic. This book requires multiple suspensions of disbelief and provides little subsequent logic. The book is also extremely misogynistic.

Bleak nihilistic critique of the mind-numbing banality of urban consumerism. Ballard's message: technological sophistication does not lead to greater freedom and happiness. Instead, it produces a ruthless hierarchy that only increases man's oppression and exploitation of his fellow human being. Basically, this s class warfare run amok, to the point where it becomes nothing but ultra-violent tribalism.

The central idea here is interesting. One thousand well-to-do residents of a modern luxury high rise turn to savages within the confines of their own building. As the mechanics of the building break down, so do the societal rules. It starts with graffiti and broken elevators and devolves into rape, murder, cannibalism and more. (The book is extremely disturbing.)

My one VERY MAJOR problem with the book is that there is no reason for any of this to occur. The residents aren't trapped. All of them are free to leave at any time. But they decide to stay because, well, it's never really explained. This building is hell on earth, and not a single resident stops to think, "Hmm, maybe I should leave"?

They live among increasing amounts of filth and human waste with no water or electricity. They allow relatives to be attacked, don't report dead bodies, and seem totally ok with the fact that they're all going to die and possibly be eaten by their neighbors.

Oh, one other thing. No one in the outside world notices. Not the relatives or coworkers of the tenants who decide to cut themselves off from the outside world. Not the mailmen or delivery men or anyone else who for some reason stop showing up. Not neighbors in nearby buildings who can see there is no electricity and probably hear the violence occurring nightly and smell the garbage. Or the one single police officer who shows up over the course of the months(?) the book takes place who leaves after only a minute or two.

If the residents of the high rise were trapped somehow, I could have more easily gone along with the story. But the complete lack of concern for themselves and the complete lack of concern from the outside world made this book absolutely preposterous.

I definitely do not recommend this book.

This book covers territory which is better-charted than its author and his audience (who seem to agree that he's some sort of pioneer) would suspect; the question of how people behave in the breakdown of social order is not a new one in this of all centuries. Ballard's premise, the isolation of the building and its shift into unexpected but psychologically natural warfare, had me expecting _Watership Down_, and the passage with the gulls suggests that Ballard might have been expecting the same, but that isn't exactly what we got.

This is a fever dream of a rootless humanity with no loyalties, no strong emotions, and no understanding of or desire for either; it rings false. The author does not know what people really act like under these kinds of pressures (though a study of the literature of the two World Wars, fiction as well as memoirs and history, would certainly have told him); but he does know, and laboriously depicts, the set of behaviors that modern literary critics would tell him would occur. It is true enough, as the narrator openly states, that the model for these characters' behaviors is postmodern man, not primitive man; but the defining trait of the postmodern is insulation from difficult physical realities -- hunger, death, pain, war, disease -- and postmodernity tends not to last when this insulation has disappeared.

The author's eye is inaccurate in general; one small but telling detail is the mention of a shotgun halfway through the book, and the comment that the inhabitants of the high-rise had a tacit agreement that they would settle their conflicts "by physical means alone." This sort of understanding (an implausibility which this book shares with _The Napoleon of Notting Hill_, in both cases probably due to their authors' aesthetic preference for melee weapons) would last only until someone decided that victory was more important than tacit agreements -- in other words, until someone had been truly and deeply insulted, or found that someone or something that he really valued had been put in danger. Bursts of this sort of real violence happen even in our own more stable society; in a context like this, busily unravelling into a Nietzchean fairyland, they would be all but constant. (Nor does this mention the utter failure of everyone present to involve the police, and indeed the failure of the police, the military, the building inspectors, the insurance companies, and so on to take any interest whatsoever in the high-rise, if nothing else for their own financial self-interest. I'm familiar with what Barzun calls "the loss of nerve characteristic of periods of decadence," but this takes the cake; if Wilder had actually burned down the building as Laing had imagined, think of the life-insurance payouts alone...)

This sort of spurious depiction is probably most painful because much better works have covered this subject, or elements of it. Perhaps the closest analogy to High-Rise is G.K. Chesterton's _The Napoleon of Notting Hill_ (now out of copyright, and readily available on-line). Bill Mauldin's _Up Front_ is one of many memoirs of the World Wars -- and the trench warfare of the Italian campaign of 1943-5 saw physical conditions similar to this book's, but with quite different consequences. Post-apocalyptic fiction is a thriving, if often irresponsible, genre; for psychological truths relevant to this book's subject matter, I would recommend Aldous Huxley's _Ape and Essence_ and Walter Miller's _A Canticle for Leibowitz_. And, of course, for a work dealing with the same themes, but with conclusions as different as its physical trappings, I'd recommend Richard Adams' _Watership Down_.

Ballard provides no initiating event to explain why the residents become territorial and combative. Speculative fiction requires the reader to suspend disbelief at one underlying premise and all subsequent events have a coherent logic. This book requires multiple suspensions of disbelief and provides little subsequent logic. The book is also extremely misogynistic.

Would have liked to see more explanation of how the residents got into their situation and how it affected their lives but the story skipped forward to the result very early. Also wanted to read about some scenes from their life outside the high rise to see how they kept what was going on secret.

Book cover says "Now a Major Motion Picture." I was really hoping to buy a book that didn't have that on it, and the photo here in the store didn't have it. Same cover is shown, but it omitted the movie blurb that is on the actual product.

This book left me feeling alternately bored and puzzled. I cared nothing for what happened because I could not wrap my mind around the idea that all of these people of means choose to stay. The mothers stayed with their children in a place with no power and random acts off violence? No one had relatives/employers/friends that were looking for them? Ugh. I just could not suspend enough belief to get around the central conceit. Awful, painful read.

"High-Rise" by J.G. Ballard is a conglomeration between the dystopian and science fiction genres according to its publication in 1975, but by today's standards it leans more towards dystopian. It is a cool, detached novel that follows Richard Wilder (lower class), Robert Laing (middle class), and Anthony Royal (upper class) throughout the degradation of the infamous high-rise community.

The high-rises designed and maintained by Royal are a culture in and of themselves. One single skyscraper has all the stores and places a family could possibly need, like a supermarket, swimming pool, brothel, and studio. Residents could get their chores and hobbies done without taking a step out of the building, but here's the catch: there is tension between the classes from the start.

The presence of the fifty or so dogs in the high-rise had long been a source of irritation. Almost all of them were owned by residents on the top ten floors – just as, conversely, most of the fifty children lived in the lower ten. Together the dogs formed a set of over-pampered pedigree pets whose owners were not noticeably concerned for their fellow tenants' comfort and privacy, (pg 25).

While pampered dogs agitate the lower story residents, rowdy children agitate the upper class. The class war truly uprises once the lower floors gain the courage to step on their toes in return (especially via Richard Wilder). In the beginning the damage done to each other is minimal (they crash parties, dogs continue to disrupt the lower floors, fight over hours at the swimming pool), but as the middle class joins in, the attacks border on murder. The most interesting part about this community is that the feuds happen in disorganized sprints. Ballard compares them to "dormant machinery of disruption and hostility," (pg 33) which only rings truer once all the classes uphold a silent agreement to halt their wars during working hours until all the high-rise occupants return.

It is once the middle class joins the inside war that the stakes soar. Why? They are "Self-centred but basically docile members." They are "Puritain and self disciplined, had all the cohesion of those eager to settle for second best," (pg 70). The second best the middle class settles into is a new personality that's wrought on by the high-rise itself: "A cool, unemotional personality impervious to the psychological pressures of high-rise life, with minimal needs for privacy, who thrive like an advanced species of machine in the neutral atmosphere," (pg 43). This personality leads them to barricading, creating tribes between themselves, and ransacking the higher middle class and lower together. Like clockwork. Of course, "It was [the upper class'] subtle patronage that kept the middle ranks in line, this constantly dangling carrot of friendship and approval," (pg 70). Nonetheless, in the latter portion of the book the war rises between the middle and upper class too despite their facade of friendship.

There are two continuous subjects that Ballard brings up that make a huge impact on the book: 1) the TVs and 2) his describing the high-rise as a living building. The reason the residents turn on each other is a valid, common one, which is typical class warfare via dogs and children. The reason they continue to crossfire is because of the closed-in nature of the building that has become their world. Something about the cement rials them up; the swimming pool is a continuous point of conflict; the higher levels pressing on their backs makes those who are not on the highest floor scramble to reach higher. As Ballard's creation, the high-rise has a mind and heart of its own, and its one desire is that how the story concludes comes to pass.

About the TVs, Laing's thoughts say it best: "He turned down the sound, not out of boredom with these documentaries and situation comedies, but because they were meaningless. Even the commercials, with their concern for the realities of everyday life, were transmissions from another planet," (pg 149). This too ties into the fact that the high-rise is a place of its own with rules and manners of its own.

There is so much more I could talk about. "High-Rise" is a novel rich with social commentary, symbolism, and subtle allegory, but I believe it is one each reader has to make their own connections for.

Nonetheless, the novel does have flaws. I could suspend my disbelief that the residents did not want to leave their new world despite all the brutality just fine, but I could not believe the residents did not need proper food throughout the feud. True, they're all mad, and I know their goal is not gathering food in the slightest. Still, they are humans that need to eat more than the spoiled foods and canned goods left in the supermarket. What of the children the women come to defend so fiercely? They need proper food more than anyone.

I also wished Laing would have had more chapters dedicated to his point of view because once we join him again towards the final chapters, he underwent so much change we did not get to see develop. For being the character that the novel starts off with, he disappears into thin air once Royal and Wilder step in. The two ended up getting more development than him (and mentioned more when they were not the character of focus), which is also a fault I had with the movie adaptation that I hoped would not be in the source.

All in all, I enjoyed reading this clever novel, especially the concluding chapters, but the suspension required and losing Laing could not be trumped by all the stunning symbolism, vivid imagery, and eerie, detached narration. I wanted more Laing than Wilder in the end because Laing is a character I as the reader trusted. He was the smoothest channel through the vast veins of river the story was, or the footsteps into the high-rise I could follow.

I recommend "High-Rise" to anyone who would like a challenging read. It did open my eyes to the true nature of humanity; such small inconveniences have the potential to strip us of our delicate manners if triggered just right in the proper surrounding. That is both marvelous and petrifying.

*Copy pictured is the British and Australian paperback

"High Rise" is the literary version of an ass kicking. The plot develops at a breakneck pace, the action is savage, and the end result leaves you exhilarated and worn down.
"High Rise" takes place entirely within a high-rise apartment complex, a building meant to contain all the wants and needs of the residents living within. Unfortunately, human nature takes over and before long, a hierarchical class system begins to rule the roost, with the higher floor residents exerting power and control over the lower floor residents. Struggles ensue, physical violence breaks out, and by the time the first death occurs, all is lost. It is only a matter of time before the entire building descends into a Lord of the Flies madhouse.
If you are looking for an optimistic book about the future of mankind and all its wonderful possibilities, then avoid this book. This is human nature at its most savage. Violence, filth, despair, murder, rape, greed- all of our vices our given free rein within the towering walls of the high rise and the end result is far from pretty. Disturbing and unsettling, "High-Rise" is a brilliant read that will linger with you for months after you read it.

Like the towering high rise packed full of privileged people that descends into anarchy for no apparent reason, this book started out well but quickly degenerated into a stinking pile of garbage.

It's fitting that so much of the book is made up of descriptions of actual garbage. At times it felt like that's all it consisted of. The plot was ridiculous and repetitive, with people just roaming around the building getting into fights over nothing. There is not a shred of psychological realism to be found here, and as a critique of a dehumanising society or class politics, it doesn't make much sense.

I think this book is vastly overrated, but Ballard's writing style was OK and the concept was interesting. I'll probably give him one more chance to redeem himself.

I liked some things about 'High-Rise'; others, not so much.

My problem with the book wasn't so much the quality of writing (which was sound), or even the story (which was reasonably interesting). Rather, it was the book's overall presentation, which struck me as somewhat rushed and overly condensed, to the point that it bypassed brevity and crossed into a lack of raw context and development -- a rare instance of under-writing, instead of over-, in my opinion. Also, the characters, suffering from this underdevelopment, struck me as shallow and without texture, such that they came off as one-dimensional (when someone was mentioned by name, it meant nothing to me, conjuring none of the feelings or mental images that I would normally associated with a fictional character). To be fair, this perceived lack might've just been from the state of mind in which I read the book, as to be a case of bad reader rather than bad writing; I can't say. In any case, the text failed to transport me (at times, I couldn't even understand what was happening or why), to the extent that it detracted from my essential enjoyment. Perhaps another reader might feel differently.

However, 'High-Rise' did have a saving grace: its value as a psychological and sociological study. Namely, the book provided a solid, perceptive commentary on the potential social byproducts of the prevailing culture in much of the modern world, in which a rigid structure of largely unspoken social conventions defines much of one's thought and behavior. In a nut, 'High-Rise' explores the premise that such brute-force repression only confines commonly undesirable behavior and other social ills, so much sweeping our collective issues under the rug, rather than producing truly healthy people (or that's how I read the book, anyway). And, though these ideas were executed in a somewhat hyperbolic manner, they are, in my experience, essentially valid (and fully possible), such that a general air of authenticity ran through the text. As it were, I was able to appreciated this aspect of the book, despite whatever literary problems I thought it possessed; in the end, I finished 'High-Rise' feeling educated and provoked (if a bit awkward from the prose itself).

My sincere thanks goes out to this book's author and publisher. I am grateful for, and have benefited from, your work and service.

I read about ‘High-Rise’ in an article on brutalism that referenced a particularly grotesque concrete tower that served as this novel’s inspiration. The book doesn’t address Brutalist architecture per se but the primitive essence underlying that it is very much front and center.

The high-rise is brand new and we are treated to three male perspectives on the building’s devolution into chaos. I love the concept – a commonplace world that becomes dystopic. Also, I’ve lived in fancy high rise apartment buildings and can picture the small things that would degrade; the dog urine in the elevator, broken beer bottles in the hallway. Those acts if left unacknowledged can become more brutish and thoughtless ones like a hateful scrawl on a doorway or a broken window that goes unrepaired for far too long.

Ballard does a good job ratcheting up the incidents; the dead dog in the pool, the violence between neighbors, the building’s decreasing functionality. None of the protagonists whose head we enter at different points in the novel are very sympathetic. And yet they are our guides through the story and we relate to them in different ways but as they become increasingly dissipated and delusional, we lose connection to them and see the basic animal nature that we all paper over with forced smiles, nervous gestures and the white lies of civility.

And ultimately I thought “High-Rise” was a realistic portrayal of how the dying think. There is the struggle to stay alive, the delusion that death isn’t coming, the numbing out but also the possibility of mental clarity that can come at the very end of life. Read “High-Rise’ if you like dystopic fiction but don’t expect to be awestruck by the view from the top.

When the electricity supply goes off, a London building becomes a battlefield for its tenants, now a wild mob inclined to savagery and pillaging each other's apartments. A new social hierarchy is established, in which the highest floors become the elitarian headquarters. In a few days the tenants regress to a primitive state of rites, bloody ceremonies, hunger and tribal fights: even worst, they enjoy it. Nobody wants to leave the building; the external world is a remote blur, far away from this filthy jungle of debris.
Ballard takes us on a journey through the darkest depths of human nature, suggesting that one never knows when his own inner beast will finally escape its cage.

To interpret the actual high rise in this novel only as a statement of of modern architecture is not only to limit one's understanding of the theme but to do Ballard a disservice, as well. He takes a giant step off of the island in Golding's Lord of the Flies to create a man-made symbol (the high rise) of the man-made destruction of the society in which we have chosen to live. Not so far hidden behind the ever growing social constructions of bells and whistles still lies the heart of darkness that has pervaded what could once be called community, in fact progressive modernization provides the perfect opportunities for the enhancement of that darkness.Given that it was first published in 1975 shows the forte of Ballard's foreshadowing. Add to that Golding's 1954 rendition of the similar theme and one has to question if "ten thousand lies can be wrong." It's a difficult read, so I recommend that those who still believe in Santa Claus and Sugar Plum Fairies continue to peruse the children's section of the book store.

J. G. Ballard's High-Rise (1975) is a fascinating yet relentlessly mono-thematic novel inspired by the effects of overpopulation on society explored in earlier sci-fi masterpieces such as John Brunner's Stand on Zanzibar (1969) and Silverberg's The World Inside (1971) (both of which I prefer to High-Rise).

The appeal lies more in Ballard's literary qualities and stylistic choices rather than the novel's ideas which are dominated (albeit, I'm being overly simplistic) by a virulent strain of "Lord of the Flies syndrome" afflicting adults, instead of children, crammed into an "island-like" building. Wine war paint instead of pig blood... Chowing on Alsatian dog instead of feral pig... etc.

Plot Summary (limited spoilers)

"Later, as he sat on his balcony eating the dog, Dr Robert Laing reflected on the unusual events that had taken place within his huge apartment building during the previous three months."

And so begins our protagonist's (antagonist?) relentlessly dark (and relentlessly predictable) apartment wanderings -- a crumbling society plagued (in increasing degrees) by flickering electricity, disturbed naked drunken rampages along dog pee filled elevators, rape, suicide, the self-destruction of the upper class.

Laing is one of two thousand occupants of an ultra-modern apartment building for the wealthy which contains entertainment facilities, grocery stores, an endless supply of alcohol (a liquor store), swimming pools, and schools. A few minor inconveniences (a weak electricity supply, malfunctioning elevators) leads to the escalation of tension between the occupants.

Although all the occupants are wealthy, those that live higher up band together against the lower floors and a "class struggle" breaks out. The ultra-wealthy dart down the stairs and allow their dogs to pee in the hallways and swimming pools of those lower in the building. The less wealthy dart upstairs on daring raids stealing items. The highest floors take on a perceived "Eden-like" quality and our main characters aspire to venture to the higher floors.

Soon society devolves into an orgy of rape, extraordinary violence, primal urges, as all the elevators stop working, people stop attending work, and the food runs out. The occupants lose all their social restraint -- they lust after siblings, their friends' wives, etc. No one alerts the police... No one questions what is happening... The architect watching all from his high floor penthouse with his white alsatian...

Final Thoughts

High-Rise is a beautifully written book. The collapse of society unfolds in a disturbed and occasionally, an achingly beautiful manner. Our characters are objects -- archetypal parts of Ballard's crumbling society -- we feel nothing for them. A haunting spectacle -- the spectacular suicide (and rebirth?) of a modern society held together by a tenuous facade that snaps under the vaguest tension...

This is the first book by Ballard I've read and I'll definitely seek out more. Highly recommended for those not faint of heart!

What distinguishes this from Golding's book is that while the latter ascribes the descent into barbarism to inherent tendencies in the fallen human soul, Ballard is making an argument that it is the conditions created in modern urban housing that lead to the social breakdown and deterioration that create slums. It is not a question of class: the high-rise is inhabited by solidly middle class, and even affluent, tenants. And yet they end up in a state of barbarism as appalling as any one might find in the slums of the Bronx.
Also recommended: Disch's 334 334: A Novel

Consider this premise: What if one day, for no apparent reason, a creeping malaise overtook a bourgeois enclave and an entire building full of pampered yuppie achievement-monkeys reverted to the kind of state of nature philosophers of a certain type love to contemplate, replete with territorial sexual violence and brutal tribalism (added fact: Everyone's hygiene went to hell).

If the premise intrigues you, High Rise will be a scintillating read. If you can't or won't buy into the premise, the book will be a complete waste of your time.

I bought in hard, and the book was the beginning of a Ballard binge for me.

J.G. Ballard's 1975 novel "High Rise" contains all of the qualities we have come to expect from this author: alarming psychological insights, a study of the profoundly disturbing connections between technology and the human condition, and an intriguing plot masterfully executed. Ballard, who wrote the tremendously troubling "Crash," really knows how to dig deep into our troubling times in order to expose our tentative grasp of modernity. Some compare this book to William Golding's "Lord of the Flies," and there are definite characteristics the two novels share. I would argue, however, that "High Rise" is more eloquent and more relevant than Golding's book. Unfortunately, this Ballard novel is out of print. Try and locate a copy at your local library because the payoff is well worth the effort.
"High Rise" centers around four major characters: Dr. Robert Laing, an instructor at a local medical school, Richard Wilder, a television documentary producer, Anthony Royal, an architect, and the high rise building all three live in with 2,000 other people. Throughout the story, Ballard switches back and forth between these three people, recording their thoughts and actions as they live their lives in the new high-rise apartment building. Ballard made sure to pick three separate people living on different floors of the forty floor building: Laing lives on the twenty fifth floor, Wilder lives on the second floor, and Royal lives in a penthouse on the fortieth floor (befitting his status as the designer of the building). Where you live in this structure will soon take on an importance beyond life itself.
At the beginning of the story, most of the people living in the building get along quite well. There are the usual nitpicky problems one would expect when 2,000 people are jammed together, but overall people move freely from the top to the bottom floors. A person living on the bottom floors can easily go to the observation deck on the top of the building to enjoy the view, or shop at the two banks of stores on the tenth and thirty-fifth floors. Children swim and play in the pools and playgrounds throughout the high rise without any interference. Despite the fact that well to do people live in the building, with celebrities and executives on the top floors, middle-class people on the middle floors, and airline pilots and the like on the bottom ten floors, everyone gets along reasonably well-at first.
Then things change. The gossip level increases among the residents, and parties held on different floors start to exclude people from other areas. In quick succession, objects start to land on balconies, dropped by residents on higher levels. Equipment failures, such as electrical outages, lead to mild assaults between residents. Cars parked close to the building are vandalized, and a jeweler living on the fortieth floor does a swan dive out of the window. Every incident leads to further acts of violence and increasing chaos in the lives of those in the building. People begin to take a greater interest in what's going on where they live than in outside activities and jobs. As the violence escalates, elevators and lobbies on each floor turn into armed camps as the residents attempt to block any encroachments on their territory. What starts out as a book about living in a technological marvel quickly morphs into a study of how technology can cause human beings to regress back into primitivism. Moreover, Ballard tries to draw a correlation between the technology of the building and this descent into a Stone Age mentality. He shows in detail how the residents of the apartments sink back into the morass, passing through a classical Marxist structure of bourgeoisie-proletariat, moving on to a clan/tribal system, to a system of stark individuality. In short, Ballard tries to equate our striving towards individuality through technology with how we started out in our evolution as hunter-gatherers, as individuals seeking individual gains. The promise that technology will liberate the individual is not the highest form of evolution, argues Ballard, but is actually a return to the lowest forms of human expression.
Within a few pages of the story, I thought this might turn out to be very similar to a Bentley Little book. Little, nominally a horror writer but often a social satirist, often takes a situation like this and shows how people collapse under the pressures of modern life. My belief was not born out, however, not because Ballard doesn't take certain situations over the top but because he imbues his work with a significant philosophical subtext that Little would never write about. Bentley Little is all about focusing on the over the top, outrageous incidents of humanity's decline, whereas Ballard is more interested in serving as a preacher on anti-humanistic technology, thundering out a jeremiad concerning where we might go if we do not take the time to think very carefully about the society we wish to create.
"High Rise" is a dark, forbidding tale of woe that is sure to get a reaction from anyone who reads it. There seem to be few out there who can deliver such devastating blows to our love of technology as Ballard does in his works. This author is often referred to as a science fiction writer, but "High Rise" works just as well on a horror level. So does "Crash," when I think about it, although the cold, detached prose of that book is not present in "High Rise." Whatever genre Ballard falls into, this book delivers on every level.

It didn't give me nightmares, but... Ok! High-Rise is one of Ballard's best, but it's extremely disturbing. It's much more readable than his dark, freakish "Crash," but just as powerful.
One of SF's finest craftsman, Ballard is an expert at revealing insights towards human nature. Thus, after decades, his works are not dated, as much of the genre's works are. Like any decent SF, this was written not about where we are headed, but about where we already are. And this book is about the violent tendencies to human nature, and as long as we stay this way, this book will be important.
Violent, weird, violent again, but powerful.

There's nothing Ballard loves more than microcosms ("Rushing To Paradise", "Concrete Island", "Day of Creation") and in this one, he isolates the factors of human society and puts it up against our animal natures. The result is as fascinating as it is ultimately horrible. Very well-written, and strong both as a novel that raises a philosophical question and as a straight-ahead horror novel.
On a side note, I found this book in print, new editions, in a couple of major Canadian bookstore chain in Montreal. Yet it doesn't seem to be in print in the U.S. What's up?

I would advise the young to follow up their college-class readings of LORD OF THE FLIES with this book, about the war of residents in a high-rise, in which the outside world seems to dissapear and all that matters is the world inside, and the struggle (quite literally!) to the top. This is the postmodern, techno-age version of LORD OF THE FLIES, and implies that instead of an island, we have created our own fortresses and islands, in our age of apartment buildings, condos, and antiseptic, sealed-off living spaces. But we can not escape from ourselves, after all.

Excellent writing, but the story just banged along like a drum. I expected some kind of twist to bring interest to the events that were transpiring, but it just kept on with more of the same until the end. I got nothing out of this story.

"Hell is other people": this estimation by Jean Paul Sartre might be used to summarise this book, which could alternatively be described as a modern-day "Lord of the Flies". Yet I felt constantly alienated by the lack of psychological insights into any of the characters: I ended up not particularly empathising with any of them, or even clearly differentiating them. Perhaps the author intended precisely this reaction in the reader. The descriptions of the details of characters' behaviours read almost in an academic style, albeit without any typical failings of academic writing: this book is easy to read, and conveys a brilliant claustrophobia through the words. I did like the sexual analyses, though I personally believe that human beings have the definite capabilities to create societies less like that of chimpanzees and more like bonobos'. However, the portrayals of objective observations are accompanied by a frustrating sketchiness of the human characters. The reader is constantly told precisely what characters are doing, but with no deeper reflections as to why. Indeed, this may reflect the focus of the plot, whereby the building itself is more vivid, pervasive and 'alive' than any of the people physically and psychologically trapped inside. However in the end I found reading this book strangely dissatisfying, because I felt that the writing failed to capture or portray any particularly in-depth illuminations of any of the characters.

Unusually smug and slightly racist tale of rich, white people in a high rise co-op who trash the building and descend into primitive violence for reasons that are never entirely clear.

The narrative of this book is puzzling, and it makes even less sense as it goes along. Where are the police? Why does no one care? Then you realize the book was written in the early 1970s, right around the time public housing high-rises in poverty-stricken, gang infested areas had come into the public consciousness. Places like Cabrini-Green and Jordan Downs had descended into gang violence and sectional warfare, much like the high rise in Ballard's book. Gangs roamed the hallways and took over elevators, robbing and harassing at will. Tenants were forced to choose sides. It was general lawlessness.

The implications of Ballard's narrative become uncomfortably clear: what if nice, civilized white people started acting like African-Americans? But then again, they might enjoy the descent into primitive, uncivilized behavior.

Police did not go near public housing high rises because venturing into those neighborhoods was a risk. Additionally, few people would ever agree to press charges as doing so was a death sentence. They were off the grid, so to speak. But the people in Ballard's novel have no reason for acting like they do. Would people really just sit around in a violent, unpleasant environment if they had the choice not to? Highly unlikely.

Additionally, the characters are all so smug and remote it's impossible to care about any of them.They treat living in this kind of environment as some bizarre adventure. Ask someone forced to live in Cabrini Green because of
generations of red-lining if they considered it an "adventure". After you have the shoe surgically removed from the seat of your pants feel free to share your experience.

I will say this is the first Ballard novel I've read that I didn't like. The whole thing is puzzling until the analogy becomes clear.

Excellent writing, but the story just banged along like a drum. I expected some kind of twist to bring interest to the events that were transpiring, but it just kept on with more of the same until the end. I got nothing out of this story.

"Hell is other people": this estimation by Jean Paul Sartre might be used to summarise this book, which could alternatively be described as a modern-day "Lord of the Flies". Yet I felt constantly alienated by the lack of psychological insights into any of the characters: I ended up not particularly empathising with any of them, or even clearly differentiating them. Perhaps the author intended precisely this reaction in the reader. The descriptions of the details of characters' behaviours read almost in an academic style, albeit without any typical failings of academic writing: this book is easy to read, and conveys a brilliant claustrophobia through the words. I did like the sexual analyses, though I personally believe that human beings have the definite capabilities to create societies less like that of chimpanzees and more like bonobos'. However, the portrayals of objective observations are accompanied by a frustrating sketchiness of the human characters. The reader is constantly told precisely what characters are doing, but with no deeper reflections as to why. Indeed, this may reflect the focus of the plot, whereby the building itself is more vivid, pervasive and 'alive' than any of the people physically and psychologically trapped inside. However in the end I found reading this book strangely dissatisfying, because I felt that the writing failed to capture or portray any particularly in-depth illuminations of any of the characters.

Unusually smug and slightly racist tale of rich, white people in a high rise co-op who trash the building and descend into primitive violence for reasons that are never entirely clear.

The narrative of this book is puzzling, and it makes even less sense as it goes along. Where are the police? Why does no one care? Then you realize the book was written in the early 1970s, right around the time public housing high-rises in poverty-stricken, gang infested areas had come into the public consciousness. Places like Cabrini-Green and Jordan Downs had descended into gang violence and sectional warfare, much like the high rise in Ballard's book. Gangs roamed the hallways and took over elevators, robbing and harassing at will. Tenants were forced to choose sides. It was general lawlessness.

The implications of Ballard's narrative become uncomfortably clear: what if nice, civilized white people started acting like African-Americans? But then again, they might enjoy the descent into primitive, uncivilized behavior.

Police did not go near public housing high rises because venturing into those neighborhoods was a risk. Additionally, few people would ever agree to press charges as doing so was a death sentence. They were off the grid, so to speak. But the people in Ballard's novel have no reason for acting like they do. Would people really just sit around in a violent, unpleasant environment if they had the choice not to? Highly unlikely.

Additionally, the characters are all so smug and remote it's impossible to care about any of them.They treat living in this kind of environment as some bizarre adventure. Ask someone forced to live in Cabrini Green because of
generations of red-lining if they considered it an "adventure". After you have the shoe surgically removed from the seat of your pants feel free to share your experience.

I will say this is the first Ballard novel I've read that I didn't like. The whole thing is puzzling until the analogy becomes clear.

Nice concept but the motivations for violence towards other habitants of high rise were never fully developed. It was stereotypical sociological division of classes with no real explanation as to why INDIVIDUALS would act the way they did. Character development sucked and it I lost interest in the book because of this. There was such a sudden turn towards violence and hatred towards others I thought for sure there was some virus that infected the complex.

There were a lot of very interesting themes brought up in this book, a sort of "Lord of the Flies" for grown-u psychological that takes place in a high-rise. While the book concentrated on individuals and there conflicts and de-evolution, I was disappointed that the class stratification and ensuing struggles weren'the more fully explored.

I found this story to be totally unbelieveable and depressing. I realize that a distopic satire is not generally uplifting, but I have read many others that were more effective, and placed me in a vividly described future in which I could imagine myself being compelled to behave the same horrific way as the characters they describe. An example is George Orwell's 1984. Unlike the Orwellian future, the high rise didn't seem like a real place in which the characters would truly have behaved the way they did. I never felt an empathy for any of the characters in High Rise that would have made this example of the genre effective. If you are an eternal pessimist who has no real hope for humanity, maybe you will enjoy this book. I don't believe that simply living in a high rise building with 2000 occupants would cause wealthy people to stuff excrement into the poorer peoples' air conditioning vents. I don't believe that if people were forcing the elevators to remain on a single floor, violently preventing occupants from using certain floors, throwing furniture off balconies and damaging expensive cars, that nobody would call the police. It's just a ridiculous downer.

I am commenting on the Audible version, read by Tom Hiddleston--that fact is the only reason I bought the book. I think the book is ridiculous. It is unbelievably derivative of any number of dystopia-in-a-bottle stories. I didn't buy it at all as science fiction and I think that it was only published because Ballard is an established novelist. "His finest?" Crap, don't think I'll be seeking out the rest of his books . . . the only thing that makes it worth listening to is Tom's voice!

First, let me say the writing is excellent. Second, I HATED this book and after the second dog was beaten bloody I put my copy up for sale on Half.com. Great concept, terrible execution. I don't want to read about dogs being drowned and/or beaten in elevators. Obviously, I don't recommend the book.