The Day of Creation

A reverie of great rivers had overwhelmed me, moments marked by the measures of dream and myth. I sat under the canvas awning in the bows of the ferry, as the hours and days slid us through the copper haze that lay over the distant channel of the Mallory.

Mallory is a WHO doctor in the arid African town of Port-la-Nouvelle, which is threatened by the encroachment of the Sahara and an anti-government guerrilla army of General Harare. As well as running a clinic, he has taken charge of a drilling project searching for underground water. When he accidentally uncovers a spring that rapidly develops into a wide river and fills the long-dry lake bed, he is dismayed that it will ruin his drilling project. After initial attempts to stem its flow show more fail he steals a boat and heads upstream, with his head filled with conflicting dreams of greening the Sahara, and destroying 'his' river at its source, which is now hundreds of miles north of the spring where it first broke through.

This is one of Ballard's books that has a very dream-like feel to it, for the reader as much as for the increasingly crazed characters. show less

Uno dei più onirici libri di Ballard, un ibrido tra la genesi e Cuore di tenebra.
C'è la creazione di un fiume, che sgorga in mezzo al deserto dalla voragine lasciata dalla rimozione di una mostruosa radice, c'è il viaggio lungo il fiume e la prograssiva perdita dell'innocenza dell'uomo che, nella suo cieca arroganza di bianco è convinto di aver fatto nascere il fiume, e del fiume stesso.
E c'è una piccola Eva primitiva, che non si coungiungerà con l'Adamo bianco, decretando la fine di tutto.

I think, on reflection, that this is a minor Ballard novel. He seems at times to be recycling well-worn Ballardian tropes (abandoned airfields, a protagonist on the edge of psychosis, disturbing sexual imagery) with no clear purpose.

The "hero" Dr. Mallory somehow conjures a mighty river from the dust of the African desert and we are never quite sure if this and his subsequent adventures are real or the product of a diseased mind. The supporting cast are barely fleshed out, even the object of his obsession, teenage girl soldier Noon, is more of a metaphor than a real person.

Don't get me wrong, the quality of Ballard's writing never falters and some of the hallucinatory images are vivid and disturbing. But the plot is weak, the story show more drags and you never quite connect with Mallory and his river.

Ballard has written better novels, both before and after this one. So, three stars for the writing, but it's not one of his best. show less

Definitely not my favourite Ballard, this book starts well and I was thinking "wow, 25 years on and still an accurate picture of fringe Saharan Africa" with army, guerrillas, aid workers and economic leeches from the North. But once the river appears we are off into the realms of "the meaning of life" with echoes of "Heart of Darkness". Oddly enough I have recently seen "Mud" and some of the descriptive passages reminded me of that film and it's source.
But as I goes on, it begins to drag and as the water ran out so did my enthusiasm for this book. I don't need to worry about whether or not to read any more Ballard; finishing this means I have read them all and they have generally been more rewarding than this.

The Day of Creation by J.G. Ballard takes the reader on a journey up an imaginary third Nile River. The journey is one part Homer, one part Conrad, a dash or two of Hemingway, lots of J.G. Ballard.

The scene opens in the deserted desert town of Port-la-Nouvelle on the shore of a dried up lake in the middle of Northern Africa. Dr. Mallory, our narrator, is just barely managing to hang on to his work and his sanity in the nearly empty town where he runs a clinic and manages a WHO irrigation project while trying to negotiate his way among the warring rebel and government factions that are fighting over the few buildings, grounded ferry boats and yachts that make up Port-la-Nouvelle.

One day a tractor removing a tree stump for the irrigation show more project uncorks a river. At first just a small pool, the river soon grows in size and strength, threatening Dr. Mallory's irrigation project, floating the abandoned boats and flooding the nearby animal reserve. Dr. Mallory steals the ferry and sets off up-river to find the source of what the locals are already calling the Red Nile. The desert blooms as Mallory travels. fields and then jungles grow almost over night along the shore of the new river. Birds, fish and other animals return to the banks that the river is soon overflowing. Dr. Mallory is pursued by government officials who want their boat back and accompanied by Noon, a local girl and former guerrilla who is learning English by listening to taped lectures on the car stereo of the government Mercedes parked on the ferry.

There is plenty of interesting stuff in The Day of Creation, as you can probably see. As a new Homeric journey the book works quite well, though the ending is more Joseph Conrad than Homer. But I felt it all went on too long, at 254 pages. The events along the river, attacks by various groups and discoveries of new growth in the desert for the most part, quickly began to feel repetitious to me. The premise is a good one, but it's also one that wears thinner and thinner as the pages pass. I kept thinking this would make a great novella. Too bad it's so difficult to publish a novella these days.

I'm giving The Day of Creation by J.G. Ballard three out of five stars. If you read one J.G. Ballard book, I recommend Crash. (I've not read Empire of the Sun but I hear good things.) show less

A spring becomes a stream becomes a mighty river in an impoverished and rebel-strewn area of North Africa. A doctor, a widow, a filmmaker and others are drawn up the river towards its source.

This is not amongst my favourite Ballard works. It contains many of the motifs familiar from much of his writing, including doctors, drained pools, abandoned airstrips, decaying social structures, asexual characters who nonetheless lust vaguely and a dreamlike quality. Although it contained many fine passages of writing and some interesting perspectives on some of its subject matter, I wasn't drawn to its end as I expect to be with a good novel. I found it difficult to care what happened in the end, and it was somewhat of an effort to finish.

Dated in places and feeling very reminiscent of [Heart of Darkness]. Creation of a river with parallels to the impact of colonial and neo-colonial works in Africa.