A masterpiece of fiction from J. G. Ballard, which asks could
Consumerism turn into Facism?
Richard Pearson, unemployed advertising
executive and life-long rebel, is driving out to Brooklands, a motorway
town on the M25. A few weeks earlier his father was fatally wounded at
the Metro-Centre, a vast shopping mall in the centre of this apparently
peaceful town, when a deranged mental patient opened fire on a crowd of
shoppers. When the main suspect is released without charge thanks to
the dubious testimony of self-styled pillars of the community – including Julia Goodwin, the doctor who treated his father on his
deathbed – Richard suspects that there is more to his father's death
than meets the eye, a more sinister element lurking behind the pristine
facades of the labyrinthine mall. Determined to unravel the mystery,
Richard soon realises that the Metro-Centre, 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. Riots frequently terrorise the
streets, immigrant communities are set upon by roving bands of
hooligans and sports events mushroom into jingoistic political rallies.
Gradually, Richard finds himself drawn into this world, caught up in
the workings of the mall, exposed to the insides of the consumer dream,
and starts upon dismantling this wayward vision his advertising career
helped to found!
In this gripping, dystopian tour de force, J.G.
Ballard holds up a mirror to middle England, reflecting an unsettling
image of suburbia and revealing the darker forces at work beneath the
gloss of consumerism and flag-waving patriotism.
