Miracles of Life by J.G. Ballard

 

A fascinating memoir. Ballard beautifully and deeply engages with his vivid memories of his childhood in Shanghai - first idyllic and strange, then blinkered and strange in a Japanese internment camp during WWII. Reading this with pleasure at the same time I'm struggling to finish his 1975 novel HIGH-RISE (and as I have struggled over the years with his science fiction.)

As a young boy Ballard writes he constructed a large plywood frame screen with a peephole and put it at the center of the table so he would not have to look at his younger sister the whole time.

All in all, a remarkably sane, measured account of a happy life, ending with Ballard announcing he has metastized prostate cancer but is in the care of a good doctor, awaiting his death.

I suspect that it's no longer possible to stir or outrage spectators by aesthetic means alone... A psychological challenge is needed that threatens one of our dearer delusions... a bisected cow forced to endure a second death in order to remind us of the illusions to which we cling about the first.

As every parent knows, infancy and childhood seem to last for ever. Then adolescence arrives and promptly leaves on the next bus, and one is sharing the family home with likeable young adults who are more intelligent, better company and in many ways wiser than oneself. But childhood has gone, and in the silence one stares at the empty whisky bottles in the pantry and wonders if any number of drinks will fill the void. (220)