Let the psychotics take over. They alone understood what was happening.
This book is why Good Omens has the quote, “It has been said that civilization is twenty-four hours and two meals away from barbarism” in it. It opens with someone eating an Alsatian, which tells you all you need to know about where this is going.
The first time I had anything to do with High Rise is when I was laid up with Bell’s palsy and listened to the audiobook narrated by Tom Hiddleston. Which may I say, hearing him pronounce the word “condoms” is worth the price of admission alone. Then my mother and I listened to it while taking our yearly trip cross-country; which was maybe not the smartest idea because we stayed in a hotel in Nashville that was practically the spitting image of the building in High Rise. (Wandering down a hallway at 11 at night hoping we weren’t going to hear a dog bark because we would have just lost it.) But I had never actually read it, so I figured I should rectify that. Which tells you that if I actually want to go through it three times, I must enjoy it. (I do need to watch the movie someday, though.)
High Rise is as good (and disturbing) a book reading yourself as it is hearing it read to you. Dystopian to the extreme (no surprise it’s set during Thatcher-era England), it’s what happens when the veneer of civility is peeled away and humanity is left with what’s at its core, which frankly, is not something any of us would probably be proud of. There’s animal death (see the opening line), there’s cannibalism, there’s rape, there’s eating of babies, there’s murder, there’s developmental regression, there’s mariticide to feed children; this is a roller coaster. It’s all very nihilistic; when there’s no power, no fresh food, and no hope, most people (we hope) might call to complain, or think about moving. Not the people here; they settle down and start raiding parties. High Rise is basically what The Purge would look like if it was British and confined to one apartment building. No one is likable, no one is sympathetic, you don’t root for anyone to win, if you even can figure out what winning in this book would potentially look like.
Do not read this book if you want to be cheered up, or you want to keep hope in humanity. However, if you delight in thinking about just how nasty humans can be to each other, then pick it up. Or give it a listen; Tom Hiddleston makes an enjoyable (if sick) book even better.