His tall figure was warped like a grotesque scarecrow, and his white-skinned face bled away in the curving contours of the bodywork.”īallard shows his hand early in Concrete Island. “In the polished panels of the rear wheel housing,” Ballard writes, ”Maitland stared at the distorted reflection of himself. Maitland’s plight is presented as wholly avoidable but universally possible the novel conspicuously shines a mirror to reflect society’s current state. Ballard delivers scenes of Maitland using the hood of his Jaguar for shelter and drinking fine red wine for hydration with a pointed sort of cruelty. Ballard’s Concrete Island is a hyper-modern tale of survival and a portentous, scathing look at the perils of contemporary excess. Maitland’s life of excess and entitlement has finally caught up to him. And worse, nobody would care enough to look for him: his wife at home had grown accustomed to turning a blind eye to Maitland’s infidelities downtown and would certainly not suspect any mortal danger if he didn’t come home for a few nights at a time. The traffic island is a dead zone triangulated between incessant motorways, a grassy surplus of city planning that was never meant to be traversed. Dazed and wounded from his accident, Maitland slowly realizes he’s stranded. Speeding home from his London office, thirty-five-year-old Robert Maitland crashes his Jaguar off the highway and onto an empty stretch of land surrounded by speeding traffic.
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