Concrete Island
Ratings23
Average rating3.7
On a day in April, just after three o'clock in the afternoon, Robert Maitland's car crashes over the concrete parapet of a high-speed highway onto the island below, where he is injured and, finally, trapped. What begins as an almost ludicrous predicament soon turns into horror as Maitland—a wickedly modern Robinson Crusoe—realizes that, despite evidence of other inhabitants, this doomed terrain has become a mirror of his own mind. Seeking the dark outer rim of the everyday, Ballard weaves private catastrophe into an intensely specular allegory.
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A gritty, slightly dystopian Robinson Crusoe story of a man being stranded on a desolate trashy traffic island between highways outside London. He is stuck in limbo, fights hunger, pain, a fevered mind, and starts a 2-3 week adventure with/against the island and it's Mad-Maxian inhabitants. Several times he self-sabotages his own escape, and seemingly alternates between despair and fascination for the effects the island has on him.
