Books of the Month

'Millennium People' by J. G. Ballard

September 2004 

For a while I've been thinking Ballard was a writer I ought to read. Without having picked up a single one of his many books, I found I'd amassed a few preconceptions about the kind of things I might find inside the covers: conspiracy theories, proto-modernist landscapes, urban decay, that sort of thing. None of which was exactly ringing my bell.

But I've made the leap this month and plumped for Millennium People, Ballard's latest novel, set in a roughly contemporary London. The story's narrated by David Markham, a psychologist living a cosy bourgeois life in leafy St John's Wood, until a bomb at Heathrow airport kills his first wife. Markham feels compelled to investigate, and is drawn into a world of protests and middle class rebellion centering on Chelsea Marina, an estate of professional houses where the residents are getting discontented with all the luxury and leisure they once strove for. He takes part in various actions - storming Broadcasting House, burning down the National Film Theatre - but comes to realise that these childish protests are only a hint of something darker beneath the surface. Markham meets the curiously compelling paediatrician Richard Gould, one-time leader of the Chelsea Marina rebellion, who is now searching for more meaning in these meaningless times - but in a much more sinister way.

Ballard's style seems to be to juggle the easy and the difficult. His writing is pacy and easy to read, though through it he gradually teases out some difficult concepts. In the narrative, he introduces a 'simple' plot of middle class dissatisfaction, almost but not quite mocking it, and then teases out a more disturbing tale where meaningless violence becomes part of a quest for significance. He's often been heralded as a sage and a clairvoyant, creating plots which presage world events, and Millennium People is definitely in this mould.

Susan Tranter

Online Reader in Residence

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