My sister read J.G. Ballard’s High-Rise and then wrote a rave review on Goodreads, calling it a sort of adult version of Lord of the Flies, set in a high-rise apartment building. I was sufficiently intrigued, and also by the news of a recent movie adaptation. You know me—read book first, then watch movie. So I read this book in an evening, while The Chancellor was under an enormous time crunch to get his final grades in. I decided to stay up and be supportive, […]
See, this is why we can’t have nice things
“Without knowing it, he had constructed a gigantic vertical zoo, its hundreds of cages stacked above each other. All the events of the past few months made sense if one realised that these brilliant and exotic creatures had learned to open the doors.” Not far from where I live, across the border into Belgium, you’ll find yourself in the Ardennes, a collection of rugged forests, ragged mountains and quaint, picturesque towns where it’s perfectly okay to have a beer at 11 AM and where French […]