Rating: 
Summary: Vintage Ballard psych-noir
Review: "Cocaine Nights" is a return to Ballard's psychological preoccupations. We're ushered into the quintessential Ballardian scenario: the microcosmic "culture" of the wealthy and retired. We quickly learn that all is not well, and follow the quasi-hard-boiled narrator as he succumbs to the community's visceral core. Bloody and provocative, "Cocaine Nights" is an excellent compliment to Ballard's other "landscape" novels ("Crash," "High-Rise," "Concrete Island"), in which he plumbs the apocalyptic interface between desire and environment, turning the psyche inside-out with the steely objectivity of a lab tech. "Cocaine Nights" is vintage Ballard psych-noir and won't disappoint.
Rating: 
Summary: Sun Baked
Review: Ballard's attempt to "expose" the seedy underbelly of English retirement communities under the guise of mystery ultimately fails to deliver on its initial promise. The beginning, with whispered conspiracies and country club cliques, sets the stage for a scandal-laced, brutally honest look at leisure society and its inability and unwillingness to think outside the box without prompting. Unfortunately, the characters are ultimately shallow, the situations familiar (cocaine in discotheques, oh my), and, the mark of death for any mystery, predictable. The prose and Ballard's ability to breathe life into the strangest and far fetched situation shines through as usual, but this neither ranks as a good mystery, nor as good Ballard.
Rating: 
Summary: best ballard i've read - modern & ultra hip dark satire
Review: i have always been intrigued with the themes and topics ballards works have been dealing with. nevertheless, most of his novels could not satisfy me completely. COCAINE NIGHTS changed that. ballards' amazingly beautiful and poetic descriptive way of writing, a story about tomorrow's society set in our present, the dark side that lurks in each one of us. all of the above come together in this novel, and make COCAINE NIGHTS wahat i would consider ballards flagship work. reminiscent of FIGHT CLUB. great stuff.
Rating:
Summary: The sins of the Sun
Review: In his quest for a wider audience, Ballard turns to the mystery and scores a moderate success. Yet Cocaine Nights has something in it to disappoint nearly everyone. It's sexual content is quite tame by current standards. It makes the lives of the rich and famous seem as monotonous as ours. As a mystery, it looses no real surprises; and it fails to deliver a penultimate punch. The social theory it explores, while interesting, is not likely to excite anyone. And his prose, the area in which Ballard is in a class all his own, is oddly muted. Still, I enjoyed this book greatly. I found the characters convincing, even sympathetic. Ballard's stylistic flashes, those strangely beautiful perspectives that charge his work, are strewn unexpectedly in the path of the reader. The book moves along at a steady clip. Finishing one of Ballard's novels is something akin to waking up from a dream. And for me at least, Cocaine Nights was an invigorating dream.
Rating:
Summary: The sins of the Sun
Review: In his quest for a wider audience, Ballard turns to the mystery and scores a moderate success. Yet Cocaine Nights has something in it to disappoint nearly everyone. It's sexual content is quite tame by current standards. It makes the lives of the rich and famous seem as monotonous as ours. As a mystery, it looses no real surprises; and it fails to deliver a penultimate punch. The social theory it explores, while interesting, is not likely to excite anyone. And his prose, the area in which Ballard is in a class all his own, is oddly muted. Still, I enjoyed this book greatly. I found the characters convincing, even sympathetic. Ballard's stylistic flashes, those strangely beautiful perspectives that charge his work, are strewn unexpectedly in the path of the reader. The book moves along at a steady clip. Finishing one of Ballard's novels is something akin to waking up from a dream. And for me at least, Cocaine Nights was an invigorating dream.
Rating:
Summary: Ballard is a genius
Review: The most exciting part of this book was the cover, with its imaginative use of a line of coke spattered across a reflective metal surface, set over a background thermal image. What this story lacked was drive, something that should have been, since this is a first person, present tense narrative. Ballard is supposed to be avant-garde, but comes across like a so, so Agatha Christie. And Will Self, The Observer contributor, who grandly states that Ballard's writing `knocks the work of other avant-garde writers work into a hatted cock', should know better. Then again, probably not from what I've read of his. Now if only Iain Banks had written this book, then you'd have been treated to some real avant-garde writing. Go read Complicity, and you'll see what I mean.
Rating:
Summary: Hugely over rated.
Review: The most exciting part of this book was the cover, with its imaginative use of a line of coke spattered across a reflective metal surface, set over a background thermal image. What this story lacked was drive, something that should have been, since this is a first person, present tense narrative. Ballard is supposed to be avant-garde, but comes across like a so, so Agatha Christie. And Will Self, The Observer contributor, who grandly states that Ballard's writing 'knocks the work of other avant-garde writers work into a hatted cock', should know better. Then again, probably not from what I've read of his. Now if only Iain Banks had written this book, then you'd have been treated to some real avant-garde writing. Go read Complicity, and you'll see what I mean.
Rating:
Summary: Sustaining the dream
Review: This was the first J.G. ballard novel I had read, and first impressions of are of a curiously old fashioned novelist writing about very modern ideas. Cocaine nights deals with important issues, but in a slightly detached and at times dull way. With this kind of source material, one expects the ice-cold prose of Easton Ellis or the ultra-hip youthful voice of Douglas Coupland, but Ballard deals with it in a typically reserved 'English' way. A good novel, if ultimately disapointing, it nonetheless glitters with beautiful poetry, albeit uneasily out of place.
Rating:
Summary: This is modern literature
Review: Very disappointing, especially after the rave reviews on the back cover. The book is little more than a vehicle for Ballard's much aired views on suburban alienation. These views are done to death in this book. The dialogue is absurd, the plot is risible, the characters cardboard and the prose style is tired. I don't recommend it.
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Summary: Liberation, freedom, sarcasm, brilliance.........
Review: Well if you understood fight club, this is a book written before and based on the same ideals. Loving other humans, bringing people together, giving up as a liberation, lack of property as the way to ascend and more. This book is about waking people up, about putting a meaning to everything. It is an utterly symbolic book so most of the narrow minded and people without fantasy will never be able to read it. It is also a humorous book, sarcastic as hell, full of ideas alternatives and above all sooooooo entertaining.
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