Rushing to Paradise

by J.G. Ballard

Book Overview

Led by a charismatic and slightly unhinged woman, a group of environmentalists win control over a small atoll in the Pacific and sets up a utopian community. Breeding other threatened species and among themselves, these homesteaders slowly transform an Eden of their very own into a much darker place.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 031213164X
• ISBN13: 9780312131647
• Release Date: January 1995
• Publisher: Picador USA
• Length: 238 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.8" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Ballard bites off a big chunk with this one

And I'm glad to say it was easy for him to chew. This is a perceptive and actually pretty nasty take on the more extreme ends of enviromentalism and feminism, the points where the former becomes psychosis and the latter becomes sexism of a virulent and violent sort. What I love most about Ballard is his willingness to probe the darker corners of the human psyche. It's a rare gift to want to explore these places, let alone use them to comment on our society. This is an excellent book and worth your cash!

An important book about Political Correctness.

An extremely important work and one that should be read by anyone interested in the uses of Political Correctness for repression. In ordinary circumstances a person like Dr. Barbara would either remain harmless or would swiftly be judged an intellectual fraud and a homocidal maniac. What this woman succeeds in doing, however, is to use the "liberal" predilections of other people against them to contrive dystopic circumstances that are extraordinary, putting her outside the possibility of judgment and allowing her to murder at will. The models for Dr. Barbara derive from such ancient sources as the myth of the Women of Lemnos and such modern ones as Moby Dick: she is a feminist Captain Ahab and is endowed with all of Melville's madman's persuasiveness and executive skills. A brilliant book, which belongs on the same shellf with Brave New World, 1984, Fahrenheit 451, and Lord of the Flies.

Not your average book

I really liked Rushing to Paradise and I don't see how it generated such negative reviews; except to say that it IS a "politically incorrect" book. Author Ballard has strange, almost hallucinatory descriptive powers which he delivers in cool, matter of fact language. Above all, the book resonates with a twilight of the gods atmosphere. Maybe not for everyone, but this doesn't make it a bad book. Quite the contrary.

Rushing to purgatory

In Rushing to Paradise, J.G. Ballard paints a memorable and disturbing picture of idealism run amok within the paradise of a Pacific atoll. It is a book that glitters with dark ironies; from the opening paragraphs, with deranged femme-fatale Dr. Rafferty bullhorning slogans to the deserted beaches of Saint-Esprit, to her commune's timely rescue from this obsessed woman by the hated French military. Rushing to Paradise is likely to outrage some with its dry send-ups of environmentalism and feminism. Nonetheless, it is worthy book; strange, vivid, unpredictable, and at times...wonderful. I recommend buying two copies in the event one is lost.

Worth reading, but not a must read

I actually enjoyed reading the book even though I wasn't very impresses. It is, well, mind entertaining... I am interested in reading more Ballard's books now