15 - Rushing to Paradise

With all of the books I have read this year, I haven't found it particularly hard to find something to say about them. Each time I enter the final third, be it of a novel or a non-fiction work, the direction my following blog post will take is already becoming clear.

J. G. Ballard's Rushing to Paradise has been the first exception - a book so truly bizarre and confusing that I realised the only way I would be able to write about it would be to discuss how I couldn't work out how to write about it.

The premise is simple enough. While attempting a sabotage mission on a French nuclear testing island in the Pacific with environmentalist acquaintance Dr. Barbara Rafferty, a young British chap named Neil is shot in the foot by soldiers. The incident is caught on camera and subsequently becomes a global news story, meaning that the pair are able to return to the island with a team in an attempt to claim it fully from the French. In doing so one of their team is killed - again on camera - and this immortalises their campaign. They decide to turn the island into a wildlife reserve for any and all endangered species on the planet, and donations from around the world start flooding in.

So far, so satirical critique of the flawed idealism of the environmentalist movement and the callousness of national governments in trying to suppress it in favour of profits. But it is after this that the book descends into chaos. Having initially been portrayed as someone who just really cares about the environment, man, Dr. Rafferty quickly develops into a sinister cult leader, transforming her team into a fanatical army willing to die to defend their newly-created sanctuary. Except that they don't need to - the world loses interest in their plight fairly quickly. Nor do they seem to want to, becoming instead more devoted to the menial tasks they first took up upon arrival: repairing the island's radio tower, documenting its many plant species, destroying the endless supply of gifts that have been sent from around the world. And in the end it's not even a sanctuary, as the animals are killed for food and the inhabitants end up at war with each other.

My main issue with all of this was that the book struggles to settle on making any particular point. It starts out well enough as a commentary on environmentalism, but that thread is dropped well before the halfway point. It could be seen as an insight into the formation of cults and the motivations of people who join them, except it doesn't really explain this beyond saying "they just... do". Perhaps Ballard was aiming for a Lord of the Flies style microcosm of society and human nature, but his characters are so bizarre and exaggerated that it's hardly a realistic one. And speaking of characters, we are left questioning the motives of pretty much everyone at the end, meaning it doesn't work as an examination of madness, cultism or anything much else.

But as dissatisfying as the plot was, Ballard still manages to create a wonderfully dark, brooding atmosphere for its many twists and turns. His prose lurches between the whimsical and the grotesque, often within the same sentence, and he ramps up the weirdness and tension to an almost unbearable level as the truth about what is happening on the island is gradually revealed.

Certainly, it has left me wanting to read more of his work. But Rushing to Paradise feels like something of a missed opportunity, somehow both overdeveloped and underdeveloped all at once.

3/5

I've never seen or experienced the Pacific Ocean, and I think I may have been missing out on some commentary on how it can change people. But musically it sounds significantly more relaxing than in this book.