The Kindness of Women - Softcover

Ballard, J. G.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0156471140 ISBN 13: 9780156471145

Publisher: Harcourt, 1993

Synopsis

Ballard here writes a brilliant hybrid of autobiography and fiction. The sequel to The Empire of the Sun, this work puts his earlier account of a boy’s experiences in occupied Shanghai in the context of a lifetime. Ballard’s eye has never been more cinematic, and his writing, especially in the love scenes, is a masterful blend of the raw and the tender.

About this title

About the Author:

J.G. Ballard is a contributor for the following Houghton Mifflin Company Title: The Kindness of Women

From Kirkus Reviews:

In Empire of the Sun (1984), Ballard turned his searing childhood memories--of prison-camp experiences in WW II Shanghai- -into fiercely effective autobiographical fiction. This episodic sequel begins again in Shanghai but quickly moves to England, as narrator ``Jim'' explores sex, marriage, fatherhood, and friendship through the Fifties, Sixties, and Seventies. The opening chapters return to the horror of the Shanghai bombing and the Lunghua prison-camp; worst of all, at war's end, 15-year-old Jim witnesses the torture-murder of a young Chinese prisoner--a monstrosity that will haunt him always. As a med student at Cambridge he tries to exorcise corpse-filled memories by calmly dissecting a cadaver. A short stint in the RAF--another attempt at confronting the violence within--is equally unsuccessful. So Jim instead forgets the past by settling into a cozy domestic present: marriage to earthy Miriam, three children, a quiet life in suburban Shepperton (near England's film studios). But Miriam's sudden accidental death, during a vacation in Spain, reawakens Jim's sense of dislocation--just in time for the ``crazed'' 1960's. He tries LSD, unorthodox sex (with a rich, kinky young American woman), curates an exhibition of crashed cars--``a potent symbol in the new logic of violence and sensation that ruled our lives.'' He broods upon the media-zation of postwar society, as embodied by a friend who becomes a TV psychology-guru...and ultimately films his own death from cancer. But the wounds from Shanghai never fully heal, not even when Jim--after the success of Empire--has a cathartic (and erotic) reunion with the governess (now 60-ish) whom he lusted after as a teenager. The psychology here often seems simplistic; so does Ballard's socio-historical view of the postwar decades. And the many sexual encounters are stronger on clinical detail than emotional impact. Still: sporadically involving and occasionally disturbing memoir/fiction from an always-interesting writer. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Harcourt
• Publication date: 1993
• ISBN 10: 0156471140
• ISBN 13: 9780156471145
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 352