Running Wild [Paperback]

J G Ballard (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1, 1995

A high-security luxury housing estate in the Thames Valley is the setting for a disturbing outbreak of violence in this compelling novella from the acclaimed author of 'Cocaine Nights' and 'Super-Cannes'. Pangbourne Village housing estate is exclusive, expensive and protected from the outside world by the very latest in security systems. It should be the perfect place to bring up a child. So why, in the space of ten minutes early one morning, were the thirty-two adult residents brutally murdered, and all thirteen children abducted? No kidnapper has ever come forward, and the police are mystified. It is only when psychiatrist Richard Greville is called in that the truth behind the massacre gradually becomes clear!

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Thirty miles outside of London lies a suburban utopia called Pangbourne Village, an exclusive residential development in which all the houses are new, the security system is impeccable, parents are happy and children are provided with a nonstop roster of structured activity. But fans of Ballard's High Rise , in which he turned an apartment tower into a warring miniature city, will recognize his dim view of fabricated societies. Indeed, in his eerie new novella's first moments, Pangbourne's 32 adults are found murdered, and the complex's 13 children, all but one of them teenagers, have vanished. Written as a police psychiatrist's forensic diary, the story unfolds as an investigation that quickly points to the children themselves as culprits. Though the author sketches a sharp portrait of complacent privilege in Thatcher's England and tells a provocative story with a jolting final twist, the explanation of a carefully coordinated plot among the youths--"in a totally sane society, madness is the only freedom"--is unduly glib. At just over 100 pages, that's really all there is to it; this is, in every sense, a minor work by a major writer.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

'A tight, macabre tale!A well-constructed and superbly written novella. As a malevolent gesture in the direction of facts we prefer to ignore, it provides a salutary chill.' Jonathan Coe, Guardian 'In words as crisp as a well-cut film, Ballard's gripping story shocks middle-class assumptions to the roots.' Mail on Sunday 'Has the impact of a black-and-white television documentary. The writing is elegant, taut and economical, the story gripping.' Sunday Times 'A particularly chilling fable!Ballard in a nutshell.' Nicholas Lezard, Guardian 'Simultaneously a detective novel, a psychological horror novel and a dystopian political novel. "Running Wild" may well be remembered as one of the major political novels of our time.' New York Review of Science Fiction

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Product Details

• Paperback: 80 pages
• Publisher: Flamingo (June 1, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0006548199
• ISBN-13: 978-0006548195
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 5.1 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 0.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,743,707 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars very unpleasant, but required reading, April 1, 2000

By 

T. Bekken (Austmarka Norway) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Running Wild (Paperback)

J.G.Ballard has a knack for digging into some really nasty subjects, and this book is no exception. The quasi-documentary style creates a truly unpleasant mood throughout the book, and makes it all too credible. Ballard's view of ultra-suburbanism is quite probably the grimmest ever to be published in print, and makes for very scary reading, espscially in the light of student shootouts in American schools or similar incidents reported in the news. Nevertheless, it is necessary to take this book seriously. It raises some extremely important questions about what sort of values adult society presents to its children.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars It takes a village..., September 15, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Running Wild (Paperback)

Amidst the sterile routines of suburban England, Ballard tells a short fable about the loving your children too much. The post-mortem objective style of the massacre's investigator adds to the unsettling tone of this novel. Like Ballard's other works (I've read Crash, War Fever, and the Atrocity Exhibition) he explores the subterranean barbarities latent in our denatured, desensitized urban landscape. This novel is hardly one to advocate nurturing our future generations, since the blank-eyed authoritarianism of suburban child nurturing is blamed for the pscychopathic massacre. Loving a child, doesn't mean that the child is free. And the children, suffocated by parental love, suburbia, and technocracy has two routes: suicide (like 'The Virgin Suicides') or murder. Ballard shows that children are far from innocent: little bundles of joy who are ticking time bombs with artificial smiles and revenge fantasies. A must read for parents and high schoolers everywhere.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The key to his later works., June 29, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Running Wild (Paperback)

This book is where you should start off to understand Ballard's later fiction (CRASH, ATROCITY EXHIBITION, HIGH RISE, or anything after the early 1970's). This novella reveals Ballards signature pessimism and facination for the technological landscape: its inherent role in the systematization and categorizing of human behaviour. In RUNNING WILD, Ballard shows the devastating effect when our primal urges rears its ugly head after buried for too long. The novella is set in a self-contained living complex (much like HIGH RISE) where tragedy is struck. Like Freud, Ballard accepts the tragic, barbaric reality of humankind and continually asserts (which he does in his latest, COCAINE NIGHTS) that the primal nature of man will subvert, or altogether revolt against any "civilized" attempt to change it. This novel is depressing and revealing. Read it. It won't take long to finish it and it also won't be long before you become a Ballard fanatic.