Rating: 
Summary: An Awakening Experience
Review: Ballard's Crash is truly a piece of work! While I have never been a big reader, I must say that I thoroughly enjoyed this particular book. It is a very interesting examination of how technology can prevent intimacy from person to person. Almost to say that technology is preventing people from showing and using their senses because it destroys the need for them and gives us "artificial" senses. I have recently seen the movie Crash and find that it does not truly represent what the book shows. The series of crashes continues the "destructiveness" of the previous and we see how James Ballard, the main character is no longer able to control the results of getting back his senses, in particular, his sex drive. The book really provides some extremes of how one might try to regain his path in life and come back to the world he has known in a life with his wife. Overall, the book is very well written and allows one to visualize all that is taking place. It almost puts you in the head of Ballard and you begin to realize what technology can prevent us from doing. I must admit that there is plenty of reason that one could find the book to be revolting, but I think that in just looking at the way it was written and understanding that it is an extreme, I think it is anyway, it is the type of book that is tough to put down. I recommend the book over the movie if you like to imagine things in your own way.
Rating: 
Summary: powerful and graphic
Review: I bought this book with full knowledge of its controversial subject matter and I was not dissappointed. The book immediately opens with graphic descriptions that made me cringe and hesitate, for a moment, to read on. This is something many do not enjoy. I, however, did enjoy the novel and its graphic nature. I found the book to be slightly confusing though one must take into account the way in which J.G. Ballard wrote it, with a hallucinatory feel. The book itself is a whirlwind of eroticism and violence that caused me to see the link between the two, made so apparent by Ballard, that would have been unrecognizable prior to reading the novel. It was a great read and I fully intend to read more works of this skilled and powerful author.
Rating: 
Summary: In Defense of James Ballard
Review: First of all to the half-wits who keep comparing this to Chuck Palahniuk novels- if you had any sense of time-space you would realize that this book was written a full 20 years before CP ever put pen to paper and a full 30 years before you discovered CP last week. That being said, I think this is an amazing work of British literature. The repetition, the mechanical quality of the sex, the emotional flattening and detatchment, all of this drives the narrative forward and makes the total environment more mechanized which, genius, is the point. This is a heavily stylized work of fiction and any of the alleged "shortcomings" of the novel are not mistakes or flaws in Ballard's design, but rather a comprehensive theme of mechanization, depersonalization and the destruction of even transgressive sexual acts as passionate, warm, and human. This is not a book about the process of depersonalization. It is a book about people who have already been depersonalized and only relate to other human beings as they would machines. Even that most vibrant of life forces- semen- from arguably the most human charachter in the book- Vaughn- takes on the smell of engine coolant. If the book has any shortcoming at all, it is the tendency of Ballard to hit the reader over the head repeatedly with his metaphor as if he were trying to kill the proverbial fly with the proverbial sledgehammer. However, I think that among those who "get it" his point is well received and the repetition of these themes is certainly not accidental or a ploy to expand the length of the book (which clocks in at a paltry 250 some odd pages in my edition). The story arc moves slowly, like the cars engaged in gridlock on the M-5 during rush hour. Disturing? Yes. I found that there was one paragraph in particular (essentially a list of genital injuries which are commonly sustained in car crashes) took two weeks to read because it was just so hard to get through. But hey, if you don't like disturbing literature there's plenty of Oprah's Book Club and Reading With Ripa selections for you to check out...
Rating:
Summary: Collision Course
Review: Crash is brutal. There, I said it. Being that it was written over 30 years ago is equally disturbing. The vulgar fantasies that came out of Ballard's head while writing this book continue to astonish me. There is, in fact, a message that the author is trying to get across. Getting to it is the problem. Do not make the mistake of judging this book by the back cover. "A classic work of cutting-edge fiction, Crash explores the disturbing potentialities of contemporary society's increasing dependence on technology as an intermediary in human relations." No doubt about it, J. G. Ballard was ahead of his time. That particular blurb alone has persuaded many to pick this one off the shelves. Inside the book, however, is not exactly the same story. The author doesn't simply explore the effects technology might someday have on society. No, Ballard's vision of the future seems more like an extremely perverted pipe dream. Of course, that probably was the intention to begin with. The reader is constantly bombarded with violently sexual material, but in an almost scientific method. No slang. Everything presented in black and white. The novel is about as sexy as a prostate exam. So if you are able to see past the explicit content, Crash can be a truly thought-provoking journey even (and possibly more so) in this day and age. Ballard just makes it highly difficult to do so. Therefore, the average reader will most likely be too repulsed to really dig into the plot and see the novel for what it really is. The other flaw that I noticed while reading Crash were the characters. None of them the slightest bit likeable, the only personality trait I shared with the narrator was his curiosity. However, in the end, it was this that kept me turning the page. Not pondering the subject matter as much as wondering how far off the edge the author was going to go. I was not disappointed. If there is anything close to genius in Crash, it is the author's unparalleled originality. Ballard has an amazingly gifted mind and shifts his wicked imagination to its darkest side here. No promises, though. As described, Crash is an exploration. Every reader will find something different hiding between the lines of this cult classic. I've mentioned as few specifics as possible on this one. So the book, in it's entirety, is waiting. The only question is... Can you take it? 4 stars + a big warning label.
Rating: 
Summary: Don't Be Fooled
Review: I've read a lot of books from various genres and written by crazy authors. I have to say though, that this book is without a doubt the worst book I have ever read. The story is completely disjointed, and you have no connection to the characters (you neither hate them, nor love them). I absolutely did not care what happened at the end of this novel. Given all this, the reason I allowed this novel to have two stars is because of the lack of emotions in the characters and the storyline - this seems to be a central theme. All the characters are striving to have some kind of emotional attachment to SOMETHING, whether it be cars, or people, or whatever. The author has done a spectacular job of extracting emotion from the characters and the story. This being said, the story is so terrible that I would never recommend this novel to anyone.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting theme, but poorly written
Review: This is my first, and probably last, experience in reading J.G. Ballard. I gave this book three stars because this book does have significant value in its' exploration of the effect technology has on humankind. This book revolves around a small group of bored Londonites who seem to have gone completely numb, both emotionally and sexually, in the wake of an over-technologized world. The characters in this book don't question why they've become so bored with their lives and don't care to probe into any great existential questions. Rather, they muddle through one day at a time, trying to enliven themselves through a variety of sexual adventures. To these characters, normal, intimate, monogamous intercourse is not even worth getting undressed for. Rather, they all become obssessed with a "new sexuality" that involves technologizing the sex act. Specifically, these people enjoy sexual experience revolving around cars and car accidents. This book makes a powerful statement about how technology has pervaded our lives to the point that sex, which is literally the most natural act, can become dependent upon technology. (Real life example of this principle: internet porn addicts). It also shows how in our bigger-better-larger-more modern mentality, we lose all appreciation and ability to be gratified by the things that are natural. Natural now needs to be New and Improved, or it is not good enough. The downside to this book is that it is very poorly written. The language and imagery are unbelievably repetitive. By about the tenth time Ballard describes dried semen on the control panel of a car, I wanted to throw the book in the garbage. Rather than investing more time into developing a plot, Ballard expends all his energy into describing, in excruciating detail, one car-related sex scene after another. I tend to agree with a previous reviewer who stated that this book would have been better as a short story, since much of the middle part of this book seems to be dedicated only to Ballard trying to come up with every possible scenario involving sex and cars. The middle part of this book is boring and full of very repulsive and graphic acts of sex and (automobile-related) violence. This book is not for anyone with a weak stomach. I really believe that in the hands of a more skilled writer this book could have been both more interesting and could have expressed the same thematic points with a fraction of the gore and gratuitous sex.
Rating:
Summary: Sccccrrrreeeeccchhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!AAaaaahhhhhhh.....
Review: Sexual...mechanical...beautiful. The best words to describe this novel. An erotic essay on man made machinery and the deformities caused by the misplaced actions therein. The tender wounds inflicted on the human body and description of many objects as orifices leads one to believe that this is either the work of a sick mind or one so intrigued by what the mind can do to its vehicle. In many aspects it appears as a love story between man, machine and the rifts that rise between those affected and hoping to affect crashes upon their own bodies. It would be cheap to label their experiments as an extreme sport but correct to label it as extreme art. Art that is inflicted on the human body leaving scars to remember the experience. Now its your turn to buy this book and take the ride.
Rating: 
Summary: ...
Review: I usually don't review books, but I disliked this book so intensely that I feel I have to warn people. I bought this book because Amazon recommended it after I gave some Chuck Palahniuk books good ratings. Their writing shouldn't even be compared if the rest of Ballard's novels are as bad as this one. The writing style isn't that bad, but it is monotonous and the plot is beyond lacking. Basically, I could have read the first few pages and known what the whole book was about and saved myself the hour or so it took to finish it. It tells you in the beginning pages that Vaughan dies in an attempt at a car crash with Elizabeth Taylor, at the end of the novel Vaughan dies as said, and in between: SEX. That is all this novel really is. Sex in cars while thinking of car crashes and feeling detached. There are no plot twists, no surprises, and absolutely nothing worth $$$ and nothing to justify the time you might waste reading it. I really wanted to like this book, but I couldn't. It wasn't how sickening one might find the subject matter; it was how redundant and predictable it was.
Rating:
Summary: Ever had the feeling you just didn't want to know
Review: This book is an uncomfortable read at best. The book is monotonous but that's because the main character ( Ballard ) feels that his life is boring and that when he has this car crash one night, it reawakens him from what he sees as a dead end life that he has been living. He almost sees this car crash in such a romantic light that it is what makes this book an uncomfortable read. Cronenberg stayed true to the books contents ( well almost ) and it is to his credit that he had the guts to make this into a film. For those interested in reading this book, they should probably watch the movie first. Or if they have already then I don't think any review is going to stop them - unless they were truly revolted by the movie. I'd say this book is either for Ballard fans or true diehard sickos ( or are they both the same )
Rating:
Summary: It would have been much better as a short story
Review: I tried hard to get into this. The idea of man's fusion with technology, his dehumanization by said technology, the consequences of man becoming more feeling and attracted to technology than to other people, etc. is all a great promise for a good story. With one problem: It's just too long and over-wrought. The dead monotone narration might be good to convey a dehumanizing aspect, but it's hell to slog through it for 220+ pages. The constant repetition of certain words and phrases ("a new violence", "gobbs of semen", etc.) gets old fast. The descriptions of the crashes and sex acts are laborious, weighed down by the dead-pan narration. The characters appear to be drones, repeating the same acts and words over and over.... I agree with a previous reviewer who said that this would be better served as a short story. At 1/10th its current length you'd have a strange, disturbing meditation on modern technology and society, and this book's aforementioned sins would be forgivable. But as a novel, it's about as interesting as watching paint dry. Thank God Ballard has written better. ~D
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