Book 39: "Running Wild" by J. G. Ballard
Tuesday, August 23rd, 2011 20:17![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kittiwakeThe camera leaves the gatehouse and sets off along The Avenue, the tree-lined central drive of the estate. The handsome mansions sit above their ample front lawns, separated from each other by screens of ornamental shrubs and dry-stone walls. The light is flat but remarkably even, a consequence of the generous zoning densities (approx. two acres per house) and the absence of those cheap silver firs which cast their bleak shadows across the mock-Tudor facades of so many executive estates in the Thames Valley.
As well, though, there is an antiseptic quality about Pangbourne Village, as if these company directors, financiers and television tycoons have succeeded in ridding their private Parnassus of every strain of dirt and untidiness. Here, even the drifting leaves look as if they have too much freedom. Thirteen children once lived in these houses, but it is hard to visualize them at play.
The murders and kidnappings that take place an exclusive gated estate in the commuter belt of Southern England stun the whole country. When police psychiatrist Dr. Richard Greville starts investigating the mysterious murders and kidnappings at the Pangbourne Village estate, he realises that the policeman who shows him round the estate has a bizarre theory about what happened that morning, and slowly comes to agree with him. Neither of them, however, is keen to push this unpopular theory too strongly as the authorities appear willfully blind in their refusal to countenance it, ignoring even the strongest evidence pointing towards it such as the link between Mark Sanger's hobby of making box-kites and the strange contraption used to murder one of the security guards.
This unnerving novella is probably even more relevant now than when it was written, with helicopter parents filling every minute of their children's time with school-work and improving hobbies, too afraid to let them out of the house on their own.
As well, though, there is an antiseptic quality about Pangbourne Village, as if these company directors, financiers and television tycoons have succeeded in ridding their private Parnassus of every strain of dirt and untidiness. Here, even the drifting leaves look as if they have too much freedom. Thirteen children once lived in these houses, but it is hard to visualize them at play.
The murders and kidnappings that take place an exclusive gated estate in the commuter belt of Southern England stun the whole country. When police psychiatrist Dr. Richard Greville starts investigating the mysterious murders and kidnappings at the Pangbourne Village estate, he realises that the policeman who shows him round the estate has a bizarre theory about what happened that morning, and slowly comes to agree with him. Neither of them, however, is keen to push this unpopular theory too strongly as the authorities appear willfully blind in their refusal to countenance it, ignoring even the strongest evidence pointing towards it such as the link between Mark Sanger's hobby of making box-kites and the strange contraption used to murder one of the security guards.
This unnerving novella is probably even more relevant now than when it was written, with helicopter parents filling every minute of their children's time with school-work and improving hobbies, too afraid to let them out of the house on their own.
