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Jon Maloney (USA: NC) (2009/01/13):
The Drowned World is my first book by J. G. Ballard. It was published in 1962. According to an interview with Ballard at the back of the book, this is his first novel (although Wikipedia lists one earlier novel). I thoroughly disliked this book. I like hard science fictions with complex plots. The Drowned World is a soft science fiction with very little plot. It is the surreal story of a man's devolution toward his primordial beginnings.Reading this book's 175 pages took me twelve days, because the author's style literally put me to sleep. I did not average reading even fifteen pages a night. The sentences were written in such a way that I constantly found my mind wandering as I read. I only stuck with it because it was short and I was curious how it would end. Most of the text was the main character's thinking, or visual descriptions. The characters were poorly developed, their motivations were unclear, and they acted in ways that people do not act. Although the physical locations were described in great detail, I could not visualize several important locations. Much of the story was written more like a dream or hallucination than a narration. Since Ballard says The Drowned World was his first novel, I have not given up on him. The Drought is still on my list of books I want to read.
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