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Summary: The Sun as electromagnetic metaphor
Review: It's a curious irony that Ballard, the author of numerous surreal/futuristic books is probably best known for this semi-autobiographical account of his experiences as a prisoner of the Japanese during WWII. Whatever limits such a work may have placed on Ballard's imaginative gifts, Empire of the Sun brims with his customary touches; a fascination with the cosmology of decay; cool, detached narrative coupled with strikingly vivid imagery; a fluid, elegant prose style that frequently reaches great height. Ballard's imaginative fiction e.g., Crash, High Rise, Cocaine Nights may not be for everyone; but does anyone write better? Or even as well? Empire of The Sun is a great book. One that can be read and re-read without any regret for the time involved.
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Summary: Shanghaid Jim
Review: J.G. Ballard wrote this semi-autobiographical novel, or fictionalized memoir (whatever genre it fits into)about his boyhood in China during the Second World War. He witnesses world-altering events as he is transformed from a rich little schoolboy into a street rat, surviving separation from his parents, near-starvation, illness, imprisonment and hideous emotional trauma. Jim overcomes all of this because he is smart and opportunistic, but he never loses his humanity, and he never becomes bitter. This is also an interesting glimpse into the expatriate British (or Western) community in China during the war. It made me realize that there's a lot about WWII I don't know much about. Ballard is a master story teller, no matter how much of this is factual and how much is part of his subjective memories. I would highly recommend this book to any high school student studying 20th Century history. The Spielberg movie is good, too, but this book has so much more depth and texture.
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Summary: Numbed by War
Review: J.G. Ballard's very unique, and especially trying, childhood is detailed in this autobiographical novel that offers powerful insights into war and history. Ballard, represented by "Jim" here, was a pre-teen living with his British expatriate parents in Shanghai on the eve of World War II. When war reached the city, Jim was separated from his parents and spent the next three years in a Japanese internment camp, learning to fend for himself under the most brutal conditions. Thus Ballard's distinct life experience leads to one of the most fascinating and terrifying stories you are likely to find on the horrors and miseries of war. Jim is so preoccupied with survival that he describes the most outlandish horrors with bland matter-of-fact understatement, including multitudes of corpses floating in rivers, scores of his fellow prisoners dying of starvation and disease, public executions, and even watching human bones being made into concrete. Along the way, the human psychological factors of war are revealed as Jim grows apart from his parents, loses affinity for his own countrymen, identifies with his oppressors, and wishes for the war to continue so he doesn't have to face the unknown future. Through Ballard's powerful writing, we can see exactly why Jim (and the young Ballard in real life) would reach these states of mind. This story also offers many intuitions on the futile nature of war itself, as shifting loyalties and factionalism blur the lines between friend and foe, and post-war anarchy becomes even more dangerous than the actual war. These are all hugely enlightening insights into war from a man who experienced it himself in a very distinct way. [~doomsdayer520~]
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Summary: Page turner
Review: My friend recommended this book to me because I'd read the color purple so she thought I'd like it. I did! The books about a young boy who is abandoned in Shanghi during world war II. The events that follow the boy through finding himself alone and to eventually, being held in a prison of war camp by the Japanese are breath-taking. Some parts of the book were a little drawn out for my liking but all in all, this is a great book for your collection.
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Summary: Page turner
Review: My friend recommended this book to me because I'd read the color purple so she thought I'd like it. I did! The books about a young boy who is abandoned in Shanghi during world war II. The events that follow the boy through finding himself alone and to eventually, being held in a prison of war camp by the Japanese are breath-taking. Some parts of the book were a little drawn out for my liking but all in all, this is a great book for your collection.
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Summary: It touched me like no other book
Review: The book is absolutely amazing. While there is a war going on in the distance beyond the fences of Lunghua camp, Jamie goes through an amazing transformation. From the very start of the book to the end, Jamie is like a mirror image of me. The green gardens, the choir, the Chopin and then the growing up are all very familliar to me. I cannot guarantee that the book will do the same for you, but it is definitely worth reading.
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Summary: It was like a mirror image of me
Review: The book was absolutely amazing. True, I was born a few decades later and true, I did not spend my childhood in a prisoner camp, but I did go through the same metamorphosis from an arogant child to an adult child (the best way I can describe Jamie/Jim after the war) When Jamie's childhood is described, I wept and longed for my childhood years which were so much alike; the Chopin, the choir, the toy planes, the green garden. I can't say that it will do the same for you, but I can still recommend the book - do read it, it is excellent.
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Summary: Great Book!
Review: This is a wonderful book about a boy growing up during WWII. Even better tahn the movie!!
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Summary: Not what you expect
Review: This is an account of JG Ballard's childhood in Shanghai during World War II when he was imprisoned in an internment camp away from his parents but just knowing that alone tells you nothing about the book. Yes, it takes place in WWII but that's almost irrelevant to the book, Jim is barely aware of the war as far as most people would conceive it and the entire war seems to take place mostly on the periphery . . . if it doesn't affect him directly than he doesn't care. On one level this is a nicely detailed account of life in Shanghai, especially in the beginning. Ballard is a good enough writer that he can describe such mundane events with enough flair that they take on another ambiance entirely. This becomes more pronounced as Jim winds deeper into the war itself, with the book becoming almost dream like in its quality. A lot of people I think object to the actions of Jim, which are very much what we don't expect. He's fairly self centered and makes a lot of weird rationalizations but I had no trouble understanding his POV, even if I didn't totally agree with it. He's a kid caught in something he can barely understand, so he has to break it down into something he can understand and sometimes that means making it a game and sometimes that means doing some things that most of us would interpret as cruel. That was the most interesting part of the novel for me, watching Jim trying to cope with the events around him, deal with the fact that he can barely remember his parents, with the fact that the only life he can really remember after a while are in the camp itself. With everything filtered through his perceptions the reader has to evaluate for him or herself what exactly the truth is . . . Jim's perception of some characters can change over and over, or maybe not even agree with what the character is doing, but that's because he's looking at it through the eyes of a child and by way of Jim, so is the reader as well. The white flash of the atom bomb that comes toward the end isn't even a climax, it's just another strange event in a war where everything strange is normal and for Jim it doesn't even signify the end of the war, for him the war never really seems to end. Haunting in its grim depiction of reality, this stands as one of the better books to come out about WWII simply for its personal perspective.
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Summary: A harrowing coming-of-age story
Review: While captioned a novel, J. G. Ballard's Empire of the Sun is very much a true life memoir. In this book (made into a film by Steven Spielberg), Ballard first tells the life of a boy ("Jim") in pre-Pearl Harbor Shanghai, the privileged young son of an English business executive. When the war begins, Jim and his parents are separated, and Jim survives for weeks on his own, living of the food left in his and his neighbors' abandoned mansions. Most of the book is set in the Lunghua prison camp, where Jim is forced to grow up under circumstances no boy should endure. Finally, the war ends, and he is reunited with his parents under the shadow of nascent Chinese communism. Ballard tells a compelling story, and pulls no punches. Much of what Jim experiences is shocking, and Ballard neither embellishes nor understates Jim's experiences. Flies, death, and decomposition are everywhere, as are avarice and (occasionally) kindness. This is a very different "coming of age" story, but one I thing a high-schooler would enjoy. (Query: Ballard assumes from his reader a fairly good grounding in World War II and cold war history, which I have. I understand that many young people lack such knowledge. Would such young people understand and appreciate Ballard's story and artistry? I don't know). I suspect this book will be read and recommended for many years to come.
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