Staff Pick: High-Rise

J.G. Ballard’s High-Rise, begins with a simple promise: whatever else might happen, Dr. Robert Laing will eventually be perched on the balcony of his 25th floor luxury apartment eating a dog.

With impending social collapse tipped from the beginning, High-Rise charts the unrelenting descent of financially well-off apartment dwellers into abject depravity. Readers are invited to explore the building from lobby to penthouse, but be forewarned: the elevators aren’t working, the stairs are barricaded, electricity and climate control is hit-or-miss, and the British occupants have splintered into territorial squatters innately suspicious of outsiders — 45 years before Brexit!

Highlights include: 1970s cocktail parties, semi-subconscious habits of waste management, architecturally-induced collective insomnia, neglected indoor swimming pools, intentionally vacant / dissociative sex acts, generalized pre-Thatcheresque awfulness, and an absolutely bonkers tripartite denouement.

The book is matched in quality by the 2015 film adaptation. And of course no J.G. Ballard recommendation would be complete without also mentioning his absolutely demented novel about car-crash sexual fetishism.

Perfect for: Understanding the rise and impact of Brutalism on the human soul, as well as the limitations of allowing money to act as a substitute for spiritual fulfillment.

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