The same goes for Strangman, the villain who shows up for the second half. Her hair was always dressed immaculately, the make-up on her mouth and eyes exquisitely applied, but her withdrawn, isolated gaze gave her the waxen, glacé beauty of an inanimate mannequin. On the few occasions when Kerans called she would be sitting on the patio or before a mirror in her bedroom, automatically applying endless layers of patina, like a blind painter forever retouching a portrait he can barely remember for fear that otherwise he will forget it completely. Although the apartment was beginning to look ramshackle and untidy, Beatrice continued to tend her own appearance devotedly. Even when Kerans looks at her, he has a “tacit awareness of their symbolic roles.” (100) She eventually becomes a jewel-bedecked trophy, but before then:īeatrice stood beside him, nervously fingering the collar of the jade silk shirt she wore over her black swim-suit.
Her scenes only work so long as the reader understands that they’re not about portraying a person so much as what she represents. It’s unclear how this has lasted as long as it has, and it’s bizarre that she feels no stress about how it must end (even with all her drinking). Her place is a rare spot of cool, drunken opulence. Her apartment has a generator and well-stocked freezer, but it’s full of unexpectedly lush things like foie gras. Most curious is Beatrice, a woman living alone in the drowned city where Dr. I’d get into the plot, but it’s too trippy to summarize. In High-Rise and Concrete Island, the absurdity felt well-earned as everyone slid inexorably into madness and depravity, but there’s no baseline here where the characters have recognizable motives. But while Ballard’s characters have always been cold and glassy, they’re absurd here.
In terms of creeping psychological horror, these spreading dreams-everyone dreams of the same apocalyptic landscape-are appropriately skin-crawling. Kerans, and his team are exploring a flooded city and afflicted by nightmares. The heat is oppressive and the few people left live on the poles.
The world has returned to its prehistoric settings with massive jungles, gigantic lizards, and swarms of bugs. The Drowned World takes place in 2145, after the ice caps have melted and flooded Earth. In the past, I’ve admired that Ballard writes stories that work on multiple levels, but The Drowned World is primarily a riff on Conrad’s The Heart of Darkness. They’re buried under so much allegory that they lack surface-level believability or function. The writing is spectacular, but the characters are too flat for my taste. Ballard’s High-Rise and Concrete Island are both creepily brilliant, but The Drowned World doesn’t meet their high bar.
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