Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #160477 in Books
• Published on: 2007-11-27
• Released on: 2007-11-27
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 352 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Ballard's sequel to his autobiographical epic Empire of the Sun treats the subsequent events of his life, offering visceral immediacy and piercing honesty. This title was cited in PW 's 1992 "red-and-black" issue as disappointing publishers' sales expectations in hardcover.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
This elegantly structured sequel to Empire of the Sun ( LJ 11/1/84) begins again with a boy's traumatic experiences in Japanese-occupied Shanghai and ends some 40 years later with his viewing a film based on his novel about those experiences. Before this "last act in a profound catharsis," however, the narrator Jim stumbles through medical study at Cambridge, trains briefly as an RAF pilot in Canada, marries, and suffers domestic tragedy. Jim both documents and participates in the violence and excess of the 1960s, but at various moments of crisis he is fortunate enough to experience the redemptive love of women. With penetrating topical commentary and abiding wisdom, this well-crafted novel should enjoy wide appeal. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 6/1/91.
- Albert E. Wilhelm, Tennessee Technological Univ., Cookeville
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews
In Empire of the Sun (1984), Ballard turned his searing childhood memories--of prison-camp experiences in WW II Shanghai- -into fiercely effective autobiographical fiction. This episodic sequel begins again in Shanghai but quickly moves to England, as narrator ``Jim'' explores sex, marriage, fatherhood, and friendship through the Fifties, Sixties, and Seventies. The opening chapters return to the horror of the Shanghai bombing and the Lunghua prison-camp; worst of all, at war's end, 15-year-old Jim witnesses the torture-murder of a young Chinese prisoner--a monstrosity that will haunt him always. As a med student at Cambridge he tries to exorcise corpse-filled memories by calmly dissecting a cadaver. A short stint in the RAF--another attempt at confronting the violence within--is equally unsuccessful. So Jim instead forgets the past by settling into a cozy domestic present: marriage to earthy Miriam, three children, a quiet life in suburban Shepperton (near England's film studios). But Miriam's sudden accidental death, during a vacation in Spain, reawakens Jim's sense of dislocation--just in time for the ``crazed'' 1960's. He tries LSD, unorthodox sex (with a rich, kinky young American woman), curates an exhibition of crashed cars--``a potent symbol in the new logic of violence and sensation that ruled our lives.'' He broods upon the media-zation of postwar society, as embodied by a friend who becomes a TV psychology-guru...and ultimately films his own death from cancer. But the wounds from Shanghai never fully heal, not even when Jim--after the success of Empire--has a cathartic (and erotic) reunion with the governess (now 60-ish) whom he lusted after as a teenager. The psychology here often seems simplistic; so does Ballard's socio-historical view of the postwar decades. And the many sexual encounters are stronger on clinical detail than emotional impact. Still: sporadically involving and occasionally disturbing memoir/fiction from an always-interesting writer. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Customer Reviews

The biography as fiction
Empire of the Sun was one of the best examples of putting your life up to a critical analysis and staring unflinchingly at it . . . Ballard's portrayal of himself during World War II as a child has to rank as one of the more honest (even when it's not so flattering) attempts at a self-charactization that I can really only compare to Norman Mailer's Armies of the Night. Here he continues his own story, using the first person this time out and extending the narrative past World War II and nearly into his present. The beginning is a bit off for those who have read Empire of the Sun since some of the details gone over don't seem to coincide with the events we learned in the previous book but he manages to again evoke its' dreamlike qualities. From there it's mostly episodic and carried by Ballard's keen eye for events and gift for description, through his eyes the sixties and beyond become almost a shared hallucination, something that you wake up from and you're not sure if it really happened or not. There's no overarching narrative to the book, though his quest to overcome the wounds that were opened by his time in the internment camp is a running theme that partly gets resolved in the end, during the time of the making of the Empire of the Sun movie. Still, like real life there are jagged loose ends, lost characters and a graceful melancholy that holds everything together well. Perhaps the only complaint are the sex scenes, far from offensive, they seem almost cold and sterile, like Ballard was sitting there taking notes during the acts themselves, which could be the point for all I know. Because it covers so much more time it doesn't have the searing focus that the previous novel did, but the wide variety of events and times are engaging in their own right and just when you think Ballard has exhausted his ability to put a new spin on describing things, he pulls another effortless phrase out that can't help but stick in your head. A book you probably have to experience more than read, those coming out of Empire of the Sun wanting to see more will probably come away satisfied.

A starburst in your imagination.
'The Kindness of Women' is one of the most extraordinary books I have ever read - it gripped me with the shock of seeing deep into a man's hurt but inspired psyche, it left me weeping in pity for Ballard and marvelling at his survival. And laughing out loud. The account of Ballard's life after Singapore, this is no ordinary narrative autobiography - rather, a series of chapters each of which might stand as a small masterpiece alone, each like the fragment of a smashed mirror reflecting a piece of Ballard's life in microcosm - his wife and her tragic death, his friends, his children (the chapter called 'Magic World' should open every 'anthology of happiness' ever published), his involvement with the 60s through his crashed car exhibition (out of which came Crash, the basis of Cronenburg's film) and his fascination with television. Women provide the linking thread through it all - the ones who Ballard loved, made love to, or in turn loved him - his wife, Miriam, most unforgettably. But the key is an account of a man coming to terms with himself and his violent childhood - in the end what one leaves this book with is a sense of the kindness of Ballard. For this beautiful, modest, deceptively simple book, shot through with images and symbols of suffering, pain, madness and death, is in the end, more than any of his other books, a celebration of life, of love, of friends and of people. Towards the end, Ballard remarks how it had taken him most of his life to realise how these simple things were what made him happy - the rest were just dross. For anyone who has ever questioned their life, or felt great pain in their heart or in their soul, or experienced suffering of any kind - this book offeres the promise of redemption and catharsis. READ IT. It is a work for us all, a book of which one can truly say it has enriched the world. Thank you, James.

Important for Ballard fans....
I got this book in a used bookstore in Vermont and perhaps it illuminated Ballard moreso than criticism, etc. ever could. This tells about his life from the end of "Empire..." until the eighties and.... hmmm.... well... explains a lot about where he was drawing source material from for books like "The Atrocity Exhibition" which, without this, seems a little bit more extreme than perhaps with it it is.

Aside from that, it is an engaging story. You care about the characters, and you care about the author. You meet people and see things and have a good time.....

I would suggest this book as not something for someone who is just looking for a read but more for someone who is into Ballard and wants clarification... and details... about him....