An oddity about J.G. Ballard is that his unquestionable truths about English society are often encased within deliberately, and stupendously, implausible plots; his trick is to conjure reality from the deeply unrealistic. Kingdom Come, his latest novel, demonstrates that he is still, in his eighth decade, as outré as ever, and still as keen to understand the national psyche.
It begins, conventionally enough, with its narrator, Richard Pearson, describing outer London suburbia, a place where
every resident… was constantly trading the contents of house and home, replacing the same cars and cameras, the same ceramic hobs and fitted bathrooms. Nothing was being swapped for nothing. Behind this frantic turnover, a gigantic boredom prevails.
So far, all is normal; most readers will recognise this type of area. But Ballard’s suburbia quickly becomes more sinister. Pearson, an out-of-work advertising executive, arrives in Brooklands, near Weybridge, following his father’s murder in the Metro-Centre, the town’s vast retail complex.
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