Description
Finally making its American debut, Kingdom Come is not only cult novelist J.G. Ballard's final novel but also a haunting, febrile hallucination of consumer culture run fatefully amok. “Important, challenging, [and] justly furious” (Independent), it is a terrifying glimpse into a probable future, a novel bursting with the same violence, xenophobia, and authoritarianism familiar to any reader of today's headlines.
Following the exploits of Chelsea resident and recently fired advertising executive Richard Pearson, Kingdom Come opens with Pearson traveling to the nearby city of Brooklands to unravel the mystery of his father's murder. At first, Brooklands seems to be like any of the countless “bosky” suburbs just off the motorways encircling London. With its retirees and sports fans and strip malls and striving immigrant communities, it could just as easily be New Jersey or Long Island. But a pernicious, seething force is slowly taking over the residents of this quiet town, drawing battle lines in the most unexpected fashions, and leading Pearson into a dangerous web of violence and deceit.
Indeed, at the center of all the chaos is the mall where Pearson's father was gunned down by a deranged mental patient: a gargantuan domed cathedral of consumerism called the Metro-Centre. It's a megamall of epic proportions, glowing luridly at all hours of the day, a place that would make Walmart look like a five-and-dime, and, in Ballard’s masterful hands, becomes a symbol for the mystery at the heart of Brooklands’s turmoil. As Pearson’s search propels him deeper into a torturous vortex of interests surrounding the Metro-Centre – duplicitous cops, scheming lawyers, racebaiting hooligans – he is confronted with a very real threat on his life.
Undeterred, Pearson soon realizes that the Metro-Centre itself, with its round-the-clock cable channel and sports clubs, lies at the very heart of his father’s death. Consumerism rules the lives of everyone in the motorway towns and feeds the cravings of this bored community with its desperate need for something new, whatever the cost. Gradually, Pearson finds himself drawn into this world, caught up in the workings of the mall, exposed to the insides of the consumer dream.
Ballard’s prophetic voice, no longer whispering at the margins, grips us from beyond the grave with this, the final achievement of one of Britain’s most celebrated writers and contemporary culture’s most acute seers. Now more than ever, this apocalyptic portrait of suburban London, this stark warning about the excesses of consumer culture and the reactionary forces that spring in its wake, is echoing across the developed world with disturbing accuracy.
Following the exploits of Chelsea resident and recently fired advertising executive Richard Pearson, Kingdom Come opens with Pearson traveling to the nearby city of Brooklands to unravel the mystery of his father's murder. At first, Brooklands seems to be like any of the countless “bosky” suburbs just off the motorways encircling London. With its retirees and sports fans and strip malls and striving immigrant communities, it could just as easily be New Jersey or Long Island. But a pernicious, seething force is slowly taking over the residents of this quiet town, drawing battle lines in the most unexpected fashions, and leading Pearson into a dangerous web of violence and deceit.
Indeed, at the center of all the chaos is the mall where Pearson's father was gunned down by a deranged mental patient: a gargantuan domed cathedral of consumerism called the Metro-Centre. It's a megamall of epic proportions, glowing luridly at all hours of the day, a place that would make Walmart look like a five-and-dime, and, in Ballard’s masterful hands, becomes a symbol for the mystery at the heart of Brooklands’s turmoil. As Pearson’s search propels him deeper into a torturous vortex of interests surrounding the Metro-Centre – duplicitous cops, scheming lawyers, racebaiting hooligans – he is confronted with a very real threat on his life.
Undeterred, Pearson soon realizes that the Metro-Centre itself, with its round-the-clock cable channel and sports clubs, lies at the very heart of his father’s death. Consumerism rules the lives of everyone in the motorway towns and feeds the cravings of this bored community with its desperate need for something new, whatever the cost. Gradually, Pearson finds himself drawn into this world, caught up in the workings of the mall, exposed to the insides of the consumer dream.
Ballard’s prophetic voice, no longer whispering at the margins, grips us from beyond the grave with this, the final achievement of one of Britain’s most celebrated writers and contemporary culture’s most acute seers. Now more than ever, this apocalyptic portrait of suburban London, this stark warning about the excesses of consumer culture and the reactionary forces that spring in its wake, is echoing across the developed world with disturbing accuracy.