Review of 'Miracles Of Life Shanghai To Shepperton An Autobiography' on 'Goodreads'
3 stars
An eminently readable autobiography from a man who's fiction can sometimes be enigmatic, sometimes deliberately intended to shock, showing numerous repeated themes and tropes. Where did those themes come from? Since the publication of Empire of the Sun it has been clear that the strongest and most overt of them relate to his childhood experiences of Shanghai during WWII. This book demonstrates that most of the others date back to the same period of his life - and most of the remainder to no later than when he left formal education behind.
Despite a frank description of the important events in his life, Ballard remains himself an enigma to me after reading this. I don't know or understand the character of the man a lot better than before I started. I usually find letters reveal character more readily than biography and it turns out this is no exception. Nevertheless, this …
An eminently readable autobiography from a man who's fiction can sometimes be enigmatic, sometimes deliberately intended to shock, showing numerous repeated themes and tropes. Where did those themes come from? Since the publication of Empire of the Sun it has been clear that the strongest and most overt of them relate to his childhood experiences of Shanghai during WWII. This book demonstrates that most of the others date back to the same period of his life - and most of the remainder to no later than when he left formal education behind.
Despite a frank description of the important events in his life, Ballard remains himself an enigma to me after reading this. I don't know or understand the character of the man a lot better than before I started. I usually find letters reveal character more readily than biography and it turns out this is no exception. Nevertheless, this is an interesting work for its childhood eyewitness account of 1930s Shanghai and wartime internment as well as the impressions of post-war Britain through the eyes of an ex-pat child going to the old country for the first time.