Millennium People

Publisher and industry reviews

Jacket review

'Wonderfully warped, blackly comic! written with Ballard's customary panache, its potent mix of sex, violence and radicalism will keep his fans happy. Millennium People is at once deadly serious and slightly ridiculous -- and somehow all the more unsettling for it.' Economist 'Much of the fun of Millennium People -- and it is one of the most amusing novels I've read in a long time -- comes from watching as the world finally catches up with Ballard and Ballard, wryly, reacts.' Guardian 'Terrifying and strangely haunting! A riveting work from a writer of rare imaginative largesse, a bearer of bad tidings, unforgettably told.' Daily Telegraph 'Another disturbing and extraordinary vision exploring the nature of violence and pleasure.' Bookseller 'Ballard's flowing prose exerts its usual hypnotic spell and there are many darkly beautiful moments.' Andrew Martin, Daily Express 'Ballard, acutely fierce as ever, detonates a bomb under Middle England in his continuing attempt to shock the middle classes out of complacency and into violent struggle.' Esquire 'Very weird stuff! This is a tidy and thoroughly English sort of revolution, with the perpetrators considerately ordering skips beforehand. Ballard is a natural surrealist; his is a world where the unthinkable is commonplace and rationality chucked in the towel long ago. However deranged Millennium People might appear, Ballard's phrasing is as sure as ever. He writes wonderfully well about London. His characterisation is as vivid as it is strange. An extremely unsettling novel. Reading it is like having all the planks that underpin your life removed one by one and being forced to confront the brutality and emptiness that lies below.' John Preston, The Scotsman 'The strongest presence must be the sprawling, sinister, banal and electrifying metropolis that is Ballard's London. He has created a compelling city rooted in acute observation and extraordinary imagination. He is in a league of his own! who else could come up with "long-term car park of the soul"?' Sam Phipps, Herald

UK Kirkus review

To call J G Ballard's work shocking would be an understatement. As the country's most outspoken avant-garde writer, he has taken a multitude of social taboos over time and shamelessly dissected each one in front of his reader. In Cocaine Nights, Ballard exposed a thriving subculture of crime, drugs and illicit sex. In Crash, he unearthed a world of sadomasochism. This latest offering merely reaffirms this gruesome trend by exploring the nihilistic and self-destructive nature of Britain's middle classes. The plot retraces the steps of David Markham, a disillusioned psychologist with a penchant for violent behaviour. When a bomb goes off at Heathrow Airport a fascinated Markham is drawn to the crime scene, only to discover that his ex-wife is among the dead. Expecting the authorities to shy away from the subsequent investigation, he begins to conduct his own search for the killer in the placid suburb of Chelsea Marina. Convinced that the bombing is the work of a radical terrorist group, Markham attends a series of protest rallies, hoping to unravel the mysteries surrounding his wife's tragic death. But, falling in with a shadowy group of anarchists, he quickly loses sight of his good intentions. His memories of the Heathrow bomb become blurred, replaced by utopian dreams and a desire to free the middle classes from the shackles of consumerism. What starts out as one man's quest for understanding soon becomes a search for self-identity, as Markham's life spirals rapidly out of control. Imbued with the brutality of Chuck Palahniuk's Fight Club, and the imagination of Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake, Ballard's nightmarish vision of the future is without doubt his most astonishing novel to date. Apocalyptic, atmospheric and typically astute, it confirms that he has lost none of his powers of persuasion. He may occasionally overstep the mark by describing risque subjects in detail, but he is never afraid to speak out for the real Millennium People. (Kirkus UK)

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