J. G. BALLARD
The Kindness of Women
Fourth Estate
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 77–85 Fulham Palace Road London W6 8JB 4thestate.co.uk
This edition published by Fourth Estate in 2014
First published in Great Britain by Harper Collins in 1991
Copyright © J. G. Ballard 1991
The right of J. G. Ballard to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988.
Introduction copyright © Michel Faber 2014
‘The Ballard Tradition’ by Will Self copyright © Will Self 2003
‘The Worst of Times’ by J. G. Ballard and Danny Danziger copyright © The Independent 1991
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
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Cover by Stanley Donwood.
Ebook Edition © MAY 2012 ISBN: 9780007381166
Version: 2014-09-25
From the reviews of The Kindness of Women:
‘Is Ballard our best novelist? Perhaps. He’s certainly the most interesting, the one whose account of the last half of this century has the most to tell us. A moving book – stimulating and substantial.’
New Statesman & Society
‘Ballard’s prose is cool, glassy, almost eerily unengaged; but then Jim’s life is in a sense a dreamy one, in which personal trauma and historical event become part of the same dream-scape. The Kindness of Women has a brutal spine – plenty of hardware and violence and graphic and clinical sex scenes. But it is also, in its own chilly way, enormously tender and likeable, with huge vision and ambition.’
NICK HORNBY, Sunday Times
‘Ballard offers us a fugal rather than a chronological version of his life, and readers familiar with his work will encounter the originals of the burdened, magical images that resonate through his novels and stories. A force is operating in this astonishing book that is hard to resist: a rogue intelligence in tandem with a febrile, yet lucid, imagination, that is at once mercilessly honest, trenchant and exhilaratingly extreme.’
Daily Telegraph
‘Ballard’s eye for physical detail has always been superb and it is as good as ever here. He sees the weirdness of things, and can capture that weirdness in odd verbal ways.’
CLAIRE TOMALIN, Guardian
‘Compulsively readable … unbearably moving sequences about domestic contentment, the death of “Jim’s” wife, the pleasures of suburbia, the quiet life; horrifying insights into the madness of sixties drugs and violence; dark glimpses into the strange distortions of Ballard’s mind.’
Financial Times
‘Unexpectedly moving … a worthy sequel.’
Sunday Telegraph
‘Brilliant … Ballard’s wit has never been livelier. Ballard is an eerily visual writer, conjuring up dreams sharp enough to bleed. Ballard fans will relish the book’s masterful synthesis of all the strands of his imagination. Raw and tender in its beauty, and dark in its hilarity, The Kindness of Women is the capstone to a magnificent career.’
San Francisco Chronicle
‘A writer of extraordinarily distinctive vision and power. A raw physicality roils beneath the glacial surfaces of Ballard’s prose, and the novel is taut with tension between “Jim’s” cultivated detachment and Ballard’s wounded humanity. Ballard is a psychic alien, viewing the world from his suburban eyrie with a perspective formed by a unique set of experiences, peering not into the stylised futures and pasts of the sf hacks, but into the real future we already inhabit.’
Literary Review
‘A highly readable novel which looks honestly at the traumatic effects of war and gives a graphic description of the social and cultural upheavals of the past half-century.’
Sunday Times
‘A brilliant writer. The Kindness of Women is a poignantly vivid account of Ballard’s radically dislocated life. Ballard writing at the top of his powers offers an immediacy that is often visceral. His eye has never been more cinematic. The Kindness of Women is full of scenes and moments that linger hauntingly in the mind. A piercingly honest, vibrant record of a very contemporary life.
Publishers Weekly
‘He writes so confoundedly well.’
Mail on Sunday
Contents
Praise
Introduction by Michel Faber
PART ONE A Season for Assassins
CHAPTER ONE Bloody Saturday
CHAPTER TWO Escape Attempts
CHAPTER THREE The Japanese Soldiers
PART TWO The Craze Years
CHAPTER FOUR The Queen of the Night
CHAPTER FIVE The Nato Boys
CHAPTER SIX Magic World
CHAPTER SEVEN The Island
CHAPTER EIGHT The Kindness of Women
CHAPTER NINE Craze People
CHAPTER TEN The Kingdom of Light
CHAPTER ELEVEN The Exhibition