After a short time, Ballard comes to recognize that he and his new lover, Helen Remington, only make love in his car.

When they meet again after the inquest investigating the accident, she and Ballard begin an affair. Ballard also thinks often of the widow who survived the car crash along with him. Ballard drives obsessively now, returning to the scene of his accident on multiple occasions. With this in mind, Ballard returns to work and begins renting every car the studio lot where he works has to offer. Ballard begins to believe that all of humanity is destined to die in one large car accident. Ballard recuperates in the hospital for several days where he discovers his once aloof and disinterested wife has suddenly found new interest in him.Īfter returning home after the accident, Ballard begins to notice how large a part of the city roads and cars have become. A woman and her husband are in the other car the man does not survive. Ballard's car misses two oncoming cars, but cannot get out of the way of a third. Driving home from an encounter with his mistress, Ballard loses control of his car and ends up driving the wrong way up a flyover. Robert Vaughan, an acquaintance of Ballard's who planned to die this day along with the American actress Elizabeth Taylor.īallard met Vaughan several months before after he experienced an accident of his own. Ballard knows the intended target was the young actress in the car ahead of the bus, an actress who is now watching the emergency vehicles administer to the injured. The crash was caused when a man drove his car over the edge of a flyover onto a bus passing below. James Ballard has arrived at the scene of a car crash at London Airport. Crash is a unique novel that explores the effects of modern technology on human relationships, leaving the reader breathless and wondering just how far these characters will go. As the behavior of his new friend escalates, Ballard goes along for the ride, anxious to feel as alive as he does near a car crash. Ballard has become obsessed himself, allowing all aspects of his own car crash influence everything in his life from his marriage, to his extramarital affairs, to his expectations in regards to his own mortality.

Ballard looks up to this obsessed man and follows him as he chases after one car crash to the next. Crash is told through the eyes of James Ballard, a young man who becomes acquainted with a man obsessed with car crashes after Ballard experiences a crash of his own.

Crash by J.G. Ballard