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Loading... Cocaine Nights (1996)by J. G. Ballard
1   Eyejaybee | Feb 2, 2013 |  He seized me from behind. There was a strange smell on his hands, perhaps some sort of special oil that professional stranglers use. When travel-writer Charles Prentice is summoned to Spain after his brother Frank is arrested, he assumes that he has been fitted up by the Spanish police, but on arrival he is stunned to discover to find that Frank has been charged with murdering five people, and has pleaded guilty. Frank is the manager of a sports club in Estrella de Mar, a community of northern European ex-pats near Marbella and Charles decides to stay there and try to find out what really happened, since no-one, not even the Spanish police, seems to believe he is guilty. Charles Prentice is not so much an unreliable narrator, as an unobservant, easily led and obtuse narrator. He veers from wildly over-imaginative (see above) to willfully blind: 'I've watched him at work, Paula. He genuinely wants to help everyone. He's stumbled on this strange way of getting people to make the most of themselves. It's touching to see such simple faith. He's really some kind of saint.' 'He's a psychotic.' 'Not fair. He gets carried away sometimes, but there's no viciousness in the man.' 'Pure psycho.' She turned her back on the mirror and stared critically at me. 'You can't see it.'. I first read this book when it came out in paperback and I think I preferred it then, when the dark underbelly of Estrella de Mar came as a surprise, as it was the first of J.G. Ballard's books on that theme that I had read. (  ) isabelx | Feb 13, 2011 | * NO Spoilers were used in the writing of this review! * An unconvincing but engrossing suspense story told in sharp, fast-paced writing. Ballard's economical and precise language offers a creepy contrast to an outlandish plot: five people are murdered and crime is rampant at a resort community off the Spanish coast, yet the close-knit residents aren't talking and local police seem satisfied with charging an innocent man. "The loose corners of too many carpets had begun to curl under my feet. The more I nailed down, the less likely was I to trip as I moved from one darkened room to the next," muses the main character as he investigates the murders, a reflection that describes this entire book. Although the central premise is improbable, it still offers some interesting insights on the connections between society, leisure and crime. My advice is to read this as a parable, and not take the events too literally. Those sensitive to graphic descriptions of sexuality or depravity: beware! ( ) PrincessPaulina | Jan 12, 2009 | Quite a tense thriller, though I thought it was obvious from early on that the solution to the whodunnit element was some kind of collective guilt. The underlying psychology behind Crawford's actions was I thought a bit implausible, especially the rapid change in the community in chapter 22, and I just don't think most people would react this way. This is a pacier read than some of his others that I have tried, though. (  ) john257hopper | Aug 31, 2008 | I finally got around to buying a book by Ballard and reading it. I hope I bought the wrong one and this silly book isn't a measure of the rest he has written. Wildly drawn and completely absurd premise written in a completely pedestrian manner. Reading this book was a waste of my time. (  ) J.v.d.A. | Aug 22, 2008 | no reviews | add a review
Amazon.com Amazon.com Review (ISBN 0006550649, Paperback)When travel writer Charles Prentice arrives at Estrella de Mar, a resort town near Gibraltar populated primarily by British retirees, to find out why his brother Frank has been jailed, he's shocked to find that Frank has confessed to a spectacular act of arson that left five people dead. Charles tries to find the real culprit by hanging around Estrella de Mar, which one resident describes as "like Chelsea or Greenwich Village in the 1960s. There are theatre and film clubs, a choral society, cordon blue classes.... Stand still for a moment and you find yourself roped into a revival of Waiting for Godot." But the longer he stays, the more confused Charles is by the residents' breezy lack of concern about the constant background of vandalism, rape, prostitution, and drug dealing.Things become clearer as Charles makes the acquaintance of local tennis pro Bobby Crawford, who has some interesting hypotheses about how to maintain the quality of the inner life in the age of affluence. As another of the locals explains, "Leisure societies lie ahead of us, like those you see on this coast. People ... will retire in their late thirties, with fifty years of idleness in front of them.... But how do you energize people, give them some sense of community?" Bobby's succinct answer, provided to Charles in another context: "There's nothing like a violent reflex now and then to tune up the nervous system." Bobby convinces Charles to help him replicate his social experiment in an adjacent retirement community, slowly convincing him that crime and creativity really do go hand in hand. But who, if anybody, takes the responsibility? Cocaine Nights resonates quite neatly with Ballard's earlier science fiction and experimental stories. As early as The Atrocity Exhibition, Ballard was speculating about the salubrious effects of transgression, and his science fiction novel High Rise also deals with the introduction of violence to a self-contained paradise. Cocaine Nights differs from that earlier work primarily in that it is a naturalistic fiction set in a world that is much more ostensibly real, a world that, with a little less detached theorizing (even at his most natural, it seems, Ballard cannot help but be clinical) on the part of its characters, might even be mistaken for real. --Ron Hogan (retrieved from Amazon Thu, 14 Feb 2013 13:49:43 -0500) On the Spanish Riviera, an English discotheque manager is falsely accused of setting fire to a villa which killed its occupants. The man's brother arrives from England to clear his name and in the process uncovers a drugs and pornography ring. |
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Wikipedia in English (1)
5
Priding itself on being very different from some of the down-market Costa Brava or Costa del Sol resorts, Estrella de Mar is actually rather a sinister place for all its self-consciously arty pretensions. most strikingly, there doesn't seem to be even one person for whom the reader might feel any empathy.
Ballard takes us under the veneer of respectability covering the ex-pat community and we encounter drug dealings, infidelity and pornography, as well as dubious psychiatrists and ruthless property developers.
The novel is not without its faults - it is occasionally disjointed, and it does sometimes stretch the reader's credibility. However, Ballard maintains the tension excellently - throughout the novel the reader has no idea where the resolution might lie. (