Review: Kingdom Come by J.G Ballard

Kingdom Come
by J.G. Ballard

Published: 2006

Synopsis (via The Ballardian): Richard Pearson, a 42-year-old advertising executive is driving from central London to Brooklands, a town near the M25 on the western edge of the city. A few weeks earlier Richard’s father, a retired airline pilot, was fatally wounded during a shooting incident in the Metro-Centre – a vast shopping mall and sports complex, in the centre of Brooklands – when a deranged mental patient opened fire on a crowd of shoppers. It soon becomes clear to Richard that there was more to the incident than meets the eye. He senses that people are covering up what really happened. His suspicions are confirmed when the local mental patient arrested by police is released. Pillars of the community, among them Dr Julia Goodwin a young doctor who treated his father after the shooting, testify that the patient was with them and could not have committed the crime. Richard resolves to track down the real killer.


My god this novel packs a punch! I picked up my copy of this at a book sale because the $3 price tag was one I couldn't balk at and I've always heard such great things about Ballard, even though I've rarely picked up any of his books. All the reviews I've read of this book suggest it's vintage Ballard but since I can't vouch for that I'm going to do my best to explain why this book left me with my mouth hanging open days later.

As the synopsis describes Richard has headed back to the scene of his father's death in order to try and get some answers. I was actually a little confused at the start, when you join Richard he's struggling to find his way around the labyrinth of roads that tangle around the Heathrow suburbs and I felt as though the book had actually started two chapters earlier and somehow my edition was missing those crucial introductory pages. I was jarred by Richard's character, his motivation, the death of his father, the bizarre restaurant that he stops at, the old couple making out on the street. It was like I was one step behind or I was missing that final piece of the jigsaw that would allow me to see the picture clearly. It became pretty obvious that this is what Ballard wants you to feel. He wants you to be uncomfortable and confused and reading closely because what happens next will require your full attention.

The England he sets his story in, the suburbs surrounding the major highways and Heathrow airport are on the fringe of 'normal' society. They're the suburbs that you drive right by without giving a second glance or thought. Though they're relatively close to the action of London they're left to their own devices and left out of the major activity. They're near enough to the action and hubbub of London that they need stimulation but too far away to attain it with ease. Basically they're bored. They're bored and they have nothing better to do than go shopping or to the sports club to watch the latest soccer/rugby/hockey game.

They don't realise it but the people of Brooklands are spiraling out of control. The sports events have become a front for the "St Georgers," men and women wearing the St George cross, and going on rampages through the street terrorising anyone of ethnic or class difference. When Richard arrives at Brooklands he sees an Indian shop owner bar up his windows when someone in a St George shirt walks past, he sees a group of muslims escorted out of their mosque by the police as men and women with shopping bags around their wrists scream abuse and hurl rocks and punches in their direction. The air in Brooklands is tense and the only respite seems to be the astronomically large shopping centre that glows invitingly no matter where you are. But is it respite?

One review comment on the cover of my edition described this book as a dystopian novel. I'd have to disagree...sort of. In my mind this is event that leads to the dystopia. This is the build up of frustration, anger, hatred, stupidity and violence that ends society as we know it and plunges the world into a right load of shit. I haven't read too many books where I think "yep, this is what the world will look like when the world is on the precipice of the apocalypse". This book absolutely nailed it. The boredom, the rampant consumerism and the dangerous advertisements and inappropriate leaders/false idols. This is our world today dialled up a couple of notches.

The thing that sparked my interest was how real yet unreal this book was. It was almost like walking through a fun-house looking at yourself in all those crazy mirrors. You can recognise yourself but you're...different. The Metro Centre sounds like so many shopping centres I've walked through. The bright lights, soothing music, plastic shiny things adorning the walls and floors and ceilings. But then you take a closer look and you see the animatronic bears that are the shopping centres mascots. Nothing too strange about that, but then you notice the pots of honey and get well cards laid out in front of them to wish them well after the shooting that recently took place and claimed Richard's dad's life. You notice the slightly crazed fervour that the PR rep speaks with when he gives Richard a tour of the centre. You realise that people always seem to be either going to or from the shopping centre regardless of what time of day or night it happens to be.

Similarly the crowds at the sports games are recognisable, and not. You recognise the atmosphere that permeates the air post-game when the crowds move through the streets towards home, cars or buses. You recognise the team shirts, the singing the beer cans in hand. Then you notice the Pakistani family cowering behind a wall waiting for the crowd to pass, or the fact that the crowd doesn't actually seem to be heading home but pushing towards an area of town that's marked by broken windows, overturned cars and ominously dark houses.

The book manages to create this real build of unease as Richard spends more time in the town and realises it isn't quite the quaint suburban town he thought it was. Everyone seems to have hidden agendas and switch from trustworthy to questionable at best. The quest to get to the bottom of Richard's father's dead gains more importance then drops then gains more prominence. There is this faint whiff of absurdism, hilarity on the verge or hysteria throughout the novel. It's intoxicating and you find yourself swept up in it from time to time.

The book has three parts and covers the space of several months and like the start sometimes seems to black out chunks of information. It's such a weird book because in some ways it's like any murder mystery but in so many other ways it is anything but. All I can really say is that J.G. Ballard is amazing and has completely won my heart and mind with this book. I am a convert to the J.G Ballard way of life! His writing style is easy to read but holds landmines of truth and commentary just ready to explode out at you.

This book makes you feel ashamed for your consumerist behaviour but it never preaches. Instead it opens your eyes to the dangers of rampant advertising and unrestricted consumerism and the disgusting nature of sports hooliganism. It connects the two is such a complex and yet simple manner that it astounds and revolts. A must-read for anyone who wants a dystopian novel with a twist, a sci-fi a little closer to home and a mystery that's impossible to crack even though you know the answer from the start.

My rating: 4/5

About as soothing as a punch in the face: An interview with J.G Ballard

I've just finished reading J.G. Ballard's Kingdom Come and was amazed at the relevancy of this book in regards to the devastating riots happening in the UK. Kingdom Come follows Richard Pearson into the motorway town of Brooklands after the murder of his father. On the surface the town seems like your typical sleepy, idyllic English town but it soon becomes clear to Pearson that bubbling below the surface is a dangerous yearning to attack, riot and leap willingly into madness. The book looks at issues of boredom, suburbia, consumerism, class, race and football (soccer) hooliganism in an explosive environment. I'll get a review up next week but in the meantime I thought I'd share the interview* which was featured at the back of my edition of the novel. In it Ballard answers questions on the English people and English society in ways that parallels the current global discussion on the cause/reason for the riots.

Kingdom Come, with its cast of marauding hooligans and morality-free 'pillars of the community', dwells on the dark and dangerous side of human nature. Is this sensitivity to the depth our behaviours can plumb attributable to any particular experience you've endured, do you think?

Ballard:Yes. I think a number of experiences, particularly during my childhood in the Far East during the Second World War, encouraged me to regard the human race as potentially quite dangerous. People brought up in the comfortable suburbs of Western Europe and North America tend to think that human beings are at heart governed by a kind of enlightened self-interest; that they are thoughtful and humane above all. I'm not sure if that is true. If you look at the behaviour of, say, the warring factions in Iraq at the moment with their endless suicides bombings and terrible carnage, or the civil war in the former Yugoslavia, where the most incredible brutality and ethnic cleansing took place, or if you go back to the Second World War in Europe, where tens of millions died in the most brutal way, I'm not convinced that human beings can be trusted beyond a certain point. I think they are quite capable in the right, or rather the wrong, circumstances of behaving irrationally. That's certainly my experience.

People think that the events in Kingdom Come are a bit extreme. But they actually aren't. For example, about two years ago there were riots in an IKEA store near the North Circular road in London. People abandoned their cars and were fighting over sofas; there was a huge riot in which people were hurt. Football hooliganism has been a terrible stain on the national character, and it could come back. Nothing I describe is all that extreme.

It's interesting that you mention the IKEA riots when discussing Kingdom Come because in the British media they weren't reported in a serious way at all.

Ballard: I think it's because we have a sort of Passport in Pimlico view of social behaviours in this country. It's an Ealing-comedy, Dad's Army view of the world: we laugh, but forget that in the real world there is a war going on too, as it were. We like to think of England as a big brown teapot with a nice tea cosy over it but actually we should remember that there isn't always tea in the pot. Sometimes it's something a little stronger.

There's a line in Kingdom Come which says: "Like English life as a whole, nothing in Brooklands can be taken at face value." Was that your experience of English life, when you moved here in 1946?

Ballard: I think the English are great actors, there's no doubt about it, and we're all performing roles whether we're aware of it or not. We don't have the sort of frankness and openness of the Australians, or Americans or Canadians. In England there's a very complex social landscape dominated by the class system, which still seems to be very strong. Here people tend not to say what they think. It's always because we're a crowded island. We behave like people on a crowded aircraft or, if you like, a crowded lifeboat: we put on a face that is designed to lower the temperature, allowing everything to carry on without too much discomfort. The trouble is that this hides the underlying truth about what we feel. Look at how the English are notorious for their pleases and thank yous: when we go into a shop we please and thank you to such an extent that visitors are amazed. After all, you're paying fot the think: you don't need to say thank you. But what the pleases and thank yous actually do is hide an underlying aggression and unease. They are all to do with our desire to paper over the cracks-and there are a lot of cracks.

Kingdom Come seems to have anticipated the recent resurgence of film noir. Is there something in the air at the moment?

Ballard: I think it taps into the same thing. In Kingdom Come Pearson believes that you've got to dip a toe into the waters of psychopathology to provide the kind of high-tension excitement that people need, because everyone in the consumer world is very bored. This is the thing about suburbia: there's enormous boredom, and we've reached the stage where people need something a little frightening, a little deviant, to take notice. It's not enough these days to say this detergent washes whiter; you've got to put a spin on it of some kind. Yes, I think there's something in the air. Compare, say, TV programmes like Inspector Morse, which had a gentleman detective sipping his pint and listening to Mozart as he solved a crossword puzzle, and something like CSI, where you're looking at a corpse on an autopsy table, and ribcages are being opened like suitcases. It's dangerous because I think violence and madness have a huge appeal, and it'll move into the area of politics sooner or later too. We've already seen it, in fact, with the rise of the Nazis.

Your own narrator in Kingdom Come is described as 'beyond psychiatric help'.

Ballard:Yes, although that particular reference is actually a joke at my expense. When I submitted the manuscript of my novel Crash to Jonathan Cape in 1972 the reader was the wife of a psychiatrist and she recommended the book be rejected, saying that I was 'beyond psychiatric help'. I of course took it as the greatest compliment - total artistic success!

Does Kingdom Come match the dictionary definition of a 'Ballardian' novel? Is it concerned with 'dystopian modernity, bleak man-made landscapes and the psychological effects of technological, social or environmental developments'?

Ballard: It's certainly not a bleak novel. It has the bright glitter of big shopping malls, and is quite upbeat in tone, so I don't think one should that dictionary definition too literally. Having said that, if you do believe that England is all cricket grounds and villages and cycling to evensong then you're going to find Kingdom Come about as soothing as a punch in the face.

You're noted as being a writer who's interested in the landscape and how it evolves.

Ballard: I think that's true. Many people have complained that old town centres are being abandoned because huge retail parks are opening on the outskirts of towns. The whole social landscape of England is changing tremendously, and particularly, I think, around the big motorways. Not that the people who work in newspapers and television ever visit these areas. They come back from their cottages in the West Country and they look down for the M4 at places like Staines and Slough and Houslow and they give a shudder and drive on! But it is happening.

Lastly, I have to ask about your own shopping habits. 

Ballard: I hate shopping! It drives me mad. I do as little of it as possible. A big retail park is my idea of hell. Every so often I need to buy a new washing machine and it leads me into a nervous breakdown.

*The interview takes place between Ballard and Sarah O'Reilly and was featured in the 2007 Harper Perennial edition of the novel, Kingdom Come.