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Concrete Island: A Novel
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN: 9780312420345
Edition: First Edition
ISBN: 031242034X
Label: Picador
Manufacturer: Picador
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 180
Publication Date: October 05, 2001
Publisher: Picador
Studio: Picador
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Editorial Review:
On a day in April, just after three o'clock in the afternoon, Robert Maitland's car crashes over the concrete parapet of a high-speed highway onto the island below, where he is injured and, finally, trapped. What begins as an almost ludicrous predicament soon turns into horror as Maitland—a wickedly modern Robinson Crusoe—realizes that, despite evidence of other inhabitants, this doomed terrain has become a mirror of his own mind. Seeking the dark outer rim of the everyday, Ballard weaves private catastrophe into an intensely specular allegory.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - A revelatory experience
Like all of Ballard's writing Concrete Island is about a particular locution of the contemporary mind; it explores the kind of empty dread, the failure to connect that spells the end of empathy and humanity and the beginning of some new kind of consciousness that doesn't recognize the importance of compassion or community. His work parallels that of David Cronenberg whose explorations of the "new flesh" in films like Videodrome and The Fly posit a future that is both less than and more than human. ... Read More
Rating: - islands of the mind
a fascinating foray into the human mind from the perspective of being scarily trapped. I could not help but think that the creators of "Lost" owe much to the brilliance of Ballard.
This novel gradually sucks you in and compels you to venture into a strange and surreal "mindspace" that is in parts terrifying and intriguing.
One comes away with a newfound appreciation of freedom in any sense and a curious enlightenment about the ways in which others are usually living lives ... Read More
Rating: - I am the island
This modern 'Robinson Crusoe' tale tells the story of an architect trapped in a concrete traffic island after a car crash. Man's selfishness is exposed by the fact that nobody stops for him.
He meets his 'Friday's in the form of two outcasts surviving in a shelter on the island, 'their last hiding place, appropriately in the centre of this alienating city.'
Like the main character in Kobo Abe's 'The Woman in the Dunes', the architect tries to escape. But, when eventually he is free, ... Read More
Rating:  - More a Writing Exercise Than a Story
This is a modernized update on the Robinson Crusoe story, which accomplishes next to nothing in theme or plot development. Ballard has used the premise as an exercise in man-against-nature and man-against-self conflict construction. Here, a man named Maitland, in busy London, has crashed his car into a traffic island that is cut off from the rest off the world by freeway ramps. He finds himself in an unknown place that he can't escape, a la Crusoe. The fact that he is actually just a few feet away from ... Read More
Rating:  - A spectacular disappointment
Mr. Ballard's novel CONCRETE ISLAND starts out somewhat promising, with a successful English salaryman unintentionally finding himself trapped beneath a freeway overpass. What could have been an interesting study on modern alienation becomes a bizarre parody of Steinbeck's OF MICE AND MEN, with the George Milton character supplanted by a teenage runaway. An incredibly frustrating novel that sucks you in with promises of something better but never delivers.
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