Drowning in its own verbose exposition, racism, and sexism.
I don’t normally write reviews for books I’ve read that I score less than three stars (this got one), but for The Drowned World by J. G. Ballard, I couldn’t ignore the deep, deep problems with the narrative.
I read it after reading Downward to the Earth, and prior to that, Heart of Darkness which inspired both books. Heart of Darkness famously has its problems regarding racism and imperial colonialism which I felt Downward to the Earth wrote back to and redressed well, aside from the unfortunate pulpy objectification of the one female character in the story. With that redress mind, if DttE righted some issues present in HoD, then The Drowned World compounds them.
Firstly, from a writing perspective, I feel The Drowned World lacks any solid direction in its opening, taking 50 pages before it really gets going. The hook seems to be missing, and the MC’s goals are not clear.
Secondly, and most importantly, the latter half of the book suffers from blatant racism in its treatment of black characters reducing them to sub-human caricatures under the command of a “white devil” Kurtz-inspired megalomaniac. The one female character is very two-dimensional (literally only doing her make-up, wearing pretty dresses, and swooning) and serves only as a damsel-in-distress plot device to raise the tension by giving the male MC someone to rescue.
The “science” of how London suddenly becomes an African jungle simply because of global warming and the rising of sea levels stretches suspension of disbelief to its limits and the haunting inherited million-year-old memories of the primordial past is a dubious subplot. The redeeming features of the book could have been the vivid descriptions of the apocalyptic setting if they weren’t so over laboured and laborious to read.
That being said, I think it’s an important book to read if you are interested in the science fiction, dystopia, post-apocalypse genres, and/or the original tale on which it draws inspiration: Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. Important because it demonstrates through the uncomfortable, cringy racism and misogyny how far we’ve come (hopefully) in modern writing.
That it has earned the title “SF Masterwork” and that the racist slurs got past editors and publishers raises a lot of questions about the industry. I’ve read many reviews of this book since reading it and what concerns me greatly is the majority are lacking any comment on these contentious issues concerning the narrative. It is important that these issues aren’t overlooked simply because this story was deemed a classic. Whether it be aversion to tackling these uncomfortable issues or a concern for rocking the boat.
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