SOURCE: A review of High-Rise, in New Statesman, December 20, 1999, p. 126.

In the following review, Amis offers a generally favorable assessment of High-Rise.

Towards the end of Auden and Isherwood's The Ascent of F6, Ransom, the Oedipal, megalomaniac hero, is about to scale the last heights of the mountain when he is told that the local demon will be awaiting him on the summit. Ransom climbs on alone, and as he reaches the summit unharmed—his great moment of personal and public triumph—he sees a small hooded figure on the crest, facing away from him. He approaches the demon, it turns—and it is his mother. Folding on to the ground, Ransom feels his life begin to drain away, as the demon sings him a tender lullaby which is also his dirge. JG Ballard's High-Rise is a harsh and ingenious reworking of the F6 theme, displaced into the...