Life must be filled up

A lot of people seem to have had what they call a bad reading month, by which they mean they haven’t read much. We’re not all in some Stakhanovite competition to see who can read the most books. One might read a lot of bad books or just one superlative one; which is more worthwhile? (rhetorical question). I only managed half a dozen but the first was very good indeed.

Miracles of Life by J G Ballard. Lent to me by huskyteer and finished within twenty four hours. Ballard is not really my kind of writer but I loved Empire of the Sun. It still bugs me that Hotel du Lac won the Booker prize in 1984 when Ballard’s wonderful novel was on the shortlist. Ballard was brought up in Shanghai, the privileged child of a prosperous expat. community surrounded by the appalling filth and poverty of the native Chinese. He spent two and a half years in a Japanese internment camp then after the war travelled to a depressing, defeated-seeming England, where he felt like an alien. These events help to explain how in spite of a public school education and Cambridge, despite living in the same suburban house for fifty years, he has managed to remain an outsider in his head. This autobiography is beautifully written and reads like a novel. Highly recommended.
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