The Kindness of Women

I read Empire of the Sun many years ago and when it came to the sequel, The Kindness of Women, I wasn't entirely sure what to expect. A continuation of post-war Jim's experiences? Sort of. What Ballard gives us is the story of his post war life after returning to England, a semi-autobiographical novel that serves both as an engrossing story of one man dealing with his own psychological issues, and a wider exploration of the post-war world.

The book is split into three sections. First we get a sort of reprise of Empire, with a chapter set before the war hits Shanghai, one in the camp, and one after liberation. These serve as a reminder of Jim's wartime experiences, the traumas that would haunt the rest of his adult life and inform his fictions.

The second section forms the larger part of the novel and is called “The Craze Years”. It is here that Ballard lays out the rest of Jim's life, a thinly disguised version of his own. From Cambridge, where he studied to be a doctor, to joining the Royal Canadian Air Force, to deciding to become a writer, this part is Ballard laid bare. The damage of the war years is carried both by him and his friends, such as another camp survivor, David Hunter, or TV psychologist Dick Sutherland, or wild American drug addict Sally Mumford, each with their own neuroses and need to come to terms with their respective pasts. How they deal with the aftermath is, in a sense, how the world dealt with the psychic trauma of not just one but two World Wars. Death and sex become intermingled. The drug of television as well as those of a more conventional kind pervade the twentieth century as it lurches from the staid fifties to the psychedelic sixties to the drab seventies.

Jim's marriage ends prematurely with the death of his wife on holiday in Spain, leaving him to raise three children as a single father. Something almost unheard of at that time. But he does it, with the aid of a series of women friends (all of whom he ends up sleeping with at some point. Not sure if that's real or just wish fulfilment on Ballard's part), while he himself, through his writing, tries to make sense not only of the war, but the world and its obsessions: fame, sex, death, celebrity and war. You can play spot the story at certain points: oh there's Crash, or The Atrocity Exhibition, or Concrete Island....

Tellingly, the final section is called “After The War”. It's here that things are resolved not only for Jim, but also for those other survivors of the late twentieth century. Things come full circle with Jim acting a brief cameo role in the film of Empire of The Sun. Peace at last?

A brilliant novel, this is every bit as good as Empire and stands alongside, Crash, The Drowned World and High-Rise as one of Ballard's best. Highly recommended.