Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #50773 in Books
• Published on: 2001-08-06
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 416 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
JG Ballard covers familiar territory in Super-Cannes: new social structures under pressure, new psychopathologies to be explored. As he did in his previous novel Cocaine Nights, he has avoided the more abstract imagery and plot of Rushing to Paradise or The Day of Creation to create, on the surface, a more mainstream novel, clearly concerned with modern issues of racism, random violence and sexuality. But familiar territory is always the most deeply subversive place in a Ballard novel.

Eden-Olympia is more than a mere business park. It is an expensive and intense hive, the modern "Dream Palace" of "a new elite of administrators, enarques and scientific entrepreneurs"; its aim, "to turn Provence into Europe's silicon valley". Paul Sinclair finds himself with time on his hands in this radical environment when his young wife takes a job at Eden-Olympia. She replaces a doctor who killed 10 executives with a rifle before shooting himself. He left no note and no explanation. Sinclair finds himself living in the same house and learning some of the same lessons as the killer.

There are the (un)usual Ballardian motifs; the injured airman, the swimming pools, the cars, the voyeuristic sex and violence, the perverse personal iconography of the central characters (the hothouse social environment even harks back to High-Rise from 1975), but in this new context they are even more profoundly unsettling than before. The apparently slick, professional characters are flawed and ambiguous, while strange events, as in the outstanding novella Running Wild from 1988, lead to extreme conclusions. Ballard is an expert in explaining how what at first appears perverse, amoral or simply wrong, is actually obvious, sensible and sane, and then going even further. From the beginning, the clues are all there. Eventually, both Sinclair and the reader are clear on what must be done. --John Shire

Synopsis
A high-tech business park on the Mediterranean coast is the setting for a crime of the most disturbing kind in this extraordinary bestseller from one of Britain's most important living novelists. After over three decades at the forefront of modern British fiction writing, J.G. Ballard reached a new generation of readers with the bestselling "Cocaine Nights" (1996) - an intriguing murder mystery that was also an unnerving vision of a society with too much time on its hands. In "Super-Cannes", he delves into another closed community - where this time it is claimed that 'work is the new leisure.' A disturbing mystery awaits Paul and Jane Sinclair when they arrive in Eden-Olympia, a high-tech business park in the hills above Cannes. Jane is to work as a doctor for the executives who live in this ultra-modern workers' paradise. But what caused her apparently sane predecessor to set out one morning and murder ten people in a shooting spree that made headlines around the world? As Paul investigates his new surroundings, he begins to uncover a thriving subculture of crime that is spiralling out of control.

From the Publisher
The new novel from the author of COCAINE NIGHTS
‘Thank God for J.G. Ballard’s SUPER-CANNES, by far the most entertaining novel of the year.’ Philip Kerr, INDEPENDENT

A disturbing mystery awaits Paul and Jane Sinclair when they arrive in Eden-Olympia, a high-tech business park in the hills above Cannes. Jane is to work as a doctor for the executives who live in this ultra-modern workers’ paradise. But what caused her apparently sane predecessor to set out one morning and murder ten people in a shooting spree that made headlines around the world? As Paul investigates his new surroundings, he begins to uncover a thriving subculture of crime that is spiralling out of control.

‘Possibly his greatest book. SUPER-CANNES is both a novel of ideas and a compelling thriller that will keep you turning the pages to the shocking denouement. Only Ballard could have produced it.’ Simon Hinde, SUNDAY EXPRESS

‘In this tautly paced thriller he brilliantly details how man’s darker side derails a vast experiment in living, and shows the dangers of a near-future in which going mad is the only way of staying sane.’ Charlotte Mosley, DAILY MAIL

‘A companion piece to COCAINE NIGHTS . . . vintage Ballard, a gripping blend of stylised thriller and fantastic imaginings.’ Alex Clark, GUARDIAN

‘Like watching a slow-motion action replay of a spectacular collision, you can’t take your eyes away from SUPER-CANNES.’ Mike Pattenden, THE TIMES

Customer Reviews

Pretentious Moi?
The sterile paranoia of Stepford Wives merges with LA Confidential to give us Supercannes. Ballard is unquestionably a brilliant writer with vivid imagery that is incredibly unique and refreshing, however for all that I still find his stories childishly simplistic and easy to anticipate. I hate being spoon fed information via clunky explanatory dialogue (no matter how well woven the choice of words are) and finished this book feeling like I'd been mugged off. The clues are all too transparent and in actual fact the story (corporate bankers work hard and then take on the criminal underworld of France as a release) is stoopid, stoopid, stoopid. I didnt actually realise how much I failed to enjoy this book until I started this mindless typing...but I really didnt. If you have hours in your life to idle away go for it, for everyone else; remember, life is short.

More Ludlum than Orwell
This was a disappointment. Ballard had the basis for a very interesting book, but has sailed off into light entertainment; unfortunately he is not a great thriller writer. The story-line is implausible, and the resolution assumes the kind of haplessness on the part of the state that made me weary of Robert Ludlum. A hero's dilemma has to be plausible and the actions needed to confront it rational. Even in a tragedy, the action and outcome should have some consistency with what we know about the hero and his world. Steinbeck's "Of Mice and Men" is tragedy: you can see it coming and there is now way out of it. Similarly you can see doom early in "A Streetcar Named Desire", but Blanche's fragility shapes it. Ballard's hero is caught up in a situation only through persistent stupidity. Ballard had the stuff for a great book and wrote pulp instead.

Super-Cannes & Cocaine Nights . A New Novel?
J.G. Ballard is back with his usual brilliance, passion, extremes and cynicism in his 2000 novel "Super-Cannes" which the sceptics could call a re-write of his masterly written previous (1996) novel "Cocaine Nights".

This time, the setting is Cote d'Azure instead of Costa del Sol, and the mystery of the newly entered surroundings are almost similar for the Englishmen arriving at the scene. In Cocaine Nights, Ballard showed the "useful" side of violence and its revitalising influence on people who seem to think a peaceful, secure, rich and luxurious lifestyle is just what they need in retirement. Cocaine Nights was the story of violence and excess which began harmlessly with a string of car thefts and smash-ins. But Ballard never stops at that, things soon get out of hand. You will read this fantastic story by Britain's top living novelist and devour every page with a rising pulse.

In Super-Cannes however, Ballard tackles globalisation and the new corporate world's ruthless rule over the surrounding peoples and societies, its outbreaks of violence over ethnic communities and the obscenity of its perverse top directors and bureaucrats. At the French Riviera version of California's silicon valley (Super-Cannes) violence, racism and out of the ordinary sexual indulgence are already at gross proportions. The story unfolds as the middle aged husband (Paul Sinclair) of a young and pretty doctor (Jane) who is appointed to Eden-Olympia; high-tech business district with all the luxury, security and top directors; begins to investigate the mystery surrounding his wife's predecessor and ex-lover's (David Greenwood) mass killings and eventual suicide. As Paul follows the deceased doctor's (David Greenwood) footsteps to tragic end, he discovers the dark world lying beneath the gloss of Eden-Olympia. Alain and Simone Delages, a Belgian top executive and his bisexual wife are at the centre of perverse activities led by Eden-Olympia's resident psychiatrist Wilder Penrose, who is the brains behind acts of "psychopathy", a remedy to soothe the stresses of executive lifestyle. But then there is Frances Baring, a glamorously attractive woman in a sensual zebra-striped cocktail dress...

Super-Cannes is fantastic read but by and large lacks the surreal, shocking impact and originality of Cocaine Nights. Perhaps Ballard did not want to give a miss to the prospect of challenging globalisation using bits of his fantastic journey in Cocaine Nights.