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Publication
LITTLE, BROWN & COMPANY (2007), Edition: First Edition, Hardcover, 400 pages
Description
Dark family secrets and a long-lost love affair lie at the heart of Iain Banks's fabulous new novel. The Wopuld family built its fortune on a board game called Empire! - now a hugely successful computer game. So successful, the American Spraint Corp wants to buy the firm out. Young renegade Alban, who has been evading the family clutches for years, is run to ground and persuded to attend the forthcoming family gathering - part birthday party, part Extraordinary General Meeting - convened by Win, Wopuld matriarch and most powerful member of the board, at Garbadale, the family's highland castle. Being drawn back into the bosom of the clan brings a disconcerting confrontation with Alban's past. What drove his mother to take her own life? And is he ready to see Sophie, his beautiful cousin and teenage love? Grandmother Win's revelations wll radically alter Alban's perspective for ever.… (more)
User reviews
LibraryThing member MikeFarquhar
And I've just spent a contented two hours in the bath finishing Iain Banks' new book, The Steep Approach to Garbadale, with the bottle of very special whisky conveniently close by. Banks' novels always seem to demand whisky.
I was disappointed with Banks' last fiction outing, Dead Air, which for me
With Garbadale Banks has returned to more stereotypical territory. The advance copy and marketing have explicitly compared it to The Crow Road, still Banks' most satisfying work of fiction (for me anyway), and it's blatantly obvious that this novel is structured in a very similar manner to that book. As with The Crow Road we have at the heart of the book a deeply eccentric family, splintered into a variety of septs and branches, with an interweaving history linking its members together on a variety of levels, and a deeply hidden dark secret that is still affects the family today, even if they don't realise it.
Garbadale is the story of the Wopuld family, the sprawling descendants of Great-Great-Grandfather Henry who, in the glory days of the British Empire in Victoria's reign, created Empire! an intricate board game which mimicked the British Empire's rise to world dominance. As the generations have gone on, Empire! has remained a hugely influential game (sort of a cross between Civilisation and Monopoly), which has made the Wopulds a very rich family indeed. At the head of the family is the matriarch Granny Win, undisputed master of both the family and the business, rapidly approaching her 80th birthday, presiding as the business receives an offer from the American Spraint Corporation to buy the family business lock, stock and barrel. Win's 80th Birthday Party, and the Extraordinary General Meeting of the family (all shareholders) to determine their response to Spraint, are drawing the extended family together for the first time in an age.
On that background, Banks tells the story of Alban, a Wopuld who got away; having served his time as a suited executive in his 20s, he has given it all up and is now - in his mid 30s - floating around somewhat aimlessly chopping down trees in the Highlands for a living. Alban's life was somewhat coloured by two events; for mysterious reasons, his mother committed suicide when he was very young; and in his teens he had a brief love affair with his beautiful cousin Sophie, and has remained somewhat trapped and obsessed by the ramifications of this ever since. The drawing together of the family forces Alban to investigate and deal with both of these events. The plot is somewhat formulaic, and the deeply held dark family secret is fairly easily worked out long before Grandmother Win makes her final revelations as the book draws to a close, but it's not really the point. Banks' strength here, as it always is when he's on form, is in the warmth and energy of his characters, quickly but fully developed into believable and entertaining real-feeling people (albeit somewhat larger than life in many regards - the Great-Aunts are wonderful, even if somewhat cliched).
There's nothing particularly innovative in the writing, but it made me laugh a few times, there are a few genuinely sad scenes too (particularly when Banks describes Alban's mother's suicide in probably the single most powerful scene in the book) and I actually cared what happened to the main characters in the end. Its only real flaw is a carry-over from Dead Air; there are a few - though blessedly few really - passages where Alban in particular opens his mouth and rants with Banks' voice (an anti-Bush's America bit; a bit about religion; a bit about global warming), but they read like brief indulgences rather than the crippling millstones that hobbled the last fiction book.
Fun. Lying in the bath with a steady supply of drams to hand was the perfect place to read this.
At some point though, Banks' fiction stopped being innovative and became comfortable. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it is a shame from at least one perspective. I think his SF still has more originality to it.
I was disappointed with Banks' last fiction outing, Dead Air, which for me
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was too much simply a vehicle where the main character spoke with Banks' own voice. It was a ranty, shouty, overly-politicised book, and while I usually agree with Banks' politics (to a degree anyway), it was tedious for what it was. In days gone by, Banks did a book a year, alternating a non-M fiction book with an M SF one, but he's slowed that pace in recent years. I enjoyed his last M book (The Algebraist) and had high hopes for this one.With Garbadale Banks has returned to more stereotypical territory. The advance copy and marketing have explicitly compared it to The Crow Road, still Banks' most satisfying work of fiction (for me anyway), and it's blatantly obvious that this novel is structured in a very similar manner to that book. As with The Crow Road we have at the heart of the book a deeply eccentric family, splintered into a variety of septs and branches, with an interweaving history linking its members together on a variety of levels, and a deeply hidden dark secret that is still affects the family today, even if they don't realise it.
Garbadale is the story of the Wopuld family, the sprawling descendants of Great-Great-Grandfather Henry who, in the glory days of the British Empire in Victoria's reign, created Empire! an intricate board game which mimicked the British Empire's rise to world dominance. As the generations have gone on, Empire! has remained a hugely influential game (sort of a cross between Civilisation and Monopoly), which has made the Wopulds a very rich family indeed. At the head of the family is the matriarch Granny Win, undisputed master of both the family and the business, rapidly approaching her 80th birthday, presiding as the business receives an offer from the American Spraint Corporation to buy the family business lock, stock and barrel. Win's 80th Birthday Party, and the Extraordinary General Meeting of the family (all shareholders) to determine their response to Spraint, are drawing the extended family together for the first time in an age.
On that background, Banks tells the story of Alban, a Wopuld who got away; having served his time as a suited executive in his 20s, he has given it all up and is now - in his mid 30s - floating around somewhat aimlessly chopping down trees in the Highlands for a living. Alban's life was somewhat coloured by two events; for mysterious reasons, his mother committed suicide when he was very young; and in his teens he had a brief love affair with his beautiful cousin Sophie, and has remained somewhat trapped and obsessed by the ramifications of this ever since. The drawing together of the family forces Alban to investigate and deal with both of these events. The plot is somewhat formulaic, and the deeply held dark family secret is fairly easily worked out long before Grandmother Win makes her final revelations as the book draws to a close, but it's not really the point. Banks' strength here, as it always is when he's on form, is in the warmth and energy of his characters, quickly but fully developed into believable and entertaining real-feeling people (albeit somewhat larger than life in many regards - the Great-Aunts are wonderful, even if somewhat cliched).
There's nothing particularly innovative in the writing, but it made me laugh a few times, there are a few genuinely sad scenes too (particularly when Banks describes Alban's mother's suicide in probably the single most powerful scene in the book) and I actually cared what happened to the main characters in the end. Its only real flaw is a carry-over from Dead Air; there are a few - though blessedly few really - passages where Alban in particular opens his mouth and rants with Banks' voice (an anti-Bush's America bit; a bit about religion; a bit about global warming), but they read like brief indulgences rather than the crippling millstones that hobbled the last fiction book.
Fun. Lying in the bath with a steady supply of drams to hand was the perfect place to read this.
At some point though, Banks' fiction stopped being innovative and became comfortable. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it is a shame from at least one perspective. I think his SF still has more originality to it.
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LibraryThing member RobertDay
This mainstream novel from Iain (no-'M') Banks rather divides opinion. A significant number of reviewers had a low opinion of the book; and indeed, looking at the (badly-written) blurb on my copy, I did wonder what I was getting myself into. Another Scottish family saga, with a business empire - in
So I had low expectations when I started the book - which Banks proceeded to blow away. At the outset, we are treated to an excursion into 'Trainspotting' territory - that's Irvine Welsh, not Ian Allan - through the point of view being shared with two subsidiary characters, one a suited exec from the family firm, the other a small-time hustler who is only identified as 'Tango'. The suited exec is the central character's cousin; he plays a supporting role in the rest of the novel. Tango is another matter: he surfaces from time to time in the course of the novel, commenting on events from a total outsider's perspective. The central character, Alban McGill, is a drop-out from the family and has been in retreat from the business for a while, sofa-surfing and working as an itinerant forester with his first love, trees.
Well, not his first actual love; for that, we get flashbacks to his teenage years and his relationship with another of his cousins. That relationship has repercussions throughout the book, as McGill comes back to the family seat, the Gormenghastly Victorian pile of Garbadale, in the far north-west of Scotland, for a family reunion which will decide the future of the firm.
In between, we get to do a lot of globe-trotting. McGill travels a lot, both in his gap year and later, when he is working for the firm. This often involves far-flung family members, on whose hospitality he sometimes forces himself and on others he is sometimes forced, when running company errands. We begin to piece together McGill's own history, and to pick at one particular scab that has been concerning him for a long time. Eventually, all the strings come together; personal and corporate crises come to a head, and the air is cleared in many ways.
Throughout we have Banks' robust Scots wit, together with a eye for detail which is likely drawn from real life. (His account of a mathematicians' conference sounds very much like some of the science fiction conventions Banks attended - I know, 'coz I was there.) Some reviewers felt that McGill was not a convincing character; but he is a man in search of himself, driven by events in his teenage years that skewed his character and outlook right up until the end of the novel. I found him quite convincing; I suspect he, too, was drawn from life in many ways.
Others have complained about Banks' political diatribes. (Including one of the other characters.) Well, this is an Iain Banks novel. The politics is a part of the package, and if the message is a bit in yer face, well, there are plenty of other writers who ignore or acquiesce with the state of the world as they see it (if they see it). To take the politics out of an Iain Banks novel would be to stifle the voice of the man. Perhaps those who saw Alban McGill as one-dimensional have not spoken to enough Scots people.
As with other Banks novels, the sense of place is quite palpable. It is possible to take a good map of the north-west of Scotland and make a fair guess as to where Garbadale supposedly is. (There are a few geographical red herrings in the text, though.) The "steep approach" of the title does make an appearance, though there is metaphor here as well.
Perhaps i didn't have the moments of sheer delight I've had in other Banks novels. Nothing I read in here made me burst out loud with cries of "You naughty, naughty author!" (which has happened with other Banks novels); but this is far from the disaster some have painted it as. A solid four stars from me.
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more ways than one - at stake, seen from the point of view of one of the black sheep of the family. For such a fervent socialist, Banks spent a lot of time writing about capitalists, and not (always) painting them in lurid tones, though the family matriarch, Win, is given an acid tongue; I kept hearing the voice of veteran British actor Stephanie Cole, and knowing Banks I suspect that this was deliberate. (It wouldn't be the first time this sort of thing has cropped up in Banks' books, and I correctly identified the actor Iain had in mind then, so I'll go with my hunch here, too.)So I had low expectations when I started the book - which Banks proceeded to blow away. At the outset, we are treated to an excursion into 'Trainspotting' territory - that's Irvine Welsh, not Ian Allan - through the point of view being shared with two subsidiary characters, one a suited exec from the family firm, the other a small-time hustler who is only identified as 'Tango'. The suited exec is the central character's cousin; he plays a supporting role in the rest of the novel. Tango is another matter: he surfaces from time to time in the course of the novel, commenting on events from a total outsider's perspective. The central character, Alban McGill, is a drop-out from the family and has been in retreat from the business for a while, sofa-surfing and working as an itinerant forester with his first love, trees.
Well, not his first actual love; for that, we get flashbacks to his teenage years and his relationship with another of his cousins. That relationship has repercussions throughout the book, as McGill comes back to the family seat, the Gormenghastly Victorian pile of Garbadale, in the far north-west of Scotland, for a family reunion which will decide the future of the firm.
In between, we get to do a lot of globe-trotting. McGill travels a lot, both in his gap year and later, when he is working for the firm. This often involves far-flung family members, on whose hospitality he sometimes forces himself and on others he is sometimes forced, when running company errands. We begin to piece together McGill's own history, and to pick at one particular scab that has been concerning him for a long time. Eventually, all the strings come together; personal and corporate crises come to a head, and the air is cleared in many ways.
Throughout we have Banks' robust Scots wit, together with a eye for detail which is likely drawn from real life. (His account of a mathematicians' conference sounds very much like some of the science fiction conventions Banks attended - I know, 'coz I was there.) Some reviewers felt that McGill was not a convincing character; but he is a man in search of himself, driven by events in his teenage years that skewed his character and outlook right up until the end of the novel. I found him quite convincing; I suspect he, too, was drawn from life in many ways.
Others have complained about Banks' political diatribes. (Including one of the other characters.) Well, this is an Iain Banks novel. The politics is a part of the package, and if the message is a bit in yer face, well, there are plenty of other writers who ignore or acquiesce with the state of the world as they see it (if they see it). To take the politics out of an Iain Banks novel would be to stifle the voice of the man. Perhaps those who saw Alban McGill as one-dimensional have not spoken to enough Scots people.
As with other Banks novels, the sense of place is quite palpable. It is possible to take a good map of the north-west of Scotland and make a fair guess as to where Garbadale supposedly is. (There are a few geographical red herrings in the text, though.) The "steep approach" of the title does make an appearance, though there is metaphor here as well.
Perhaps i didn't have the moments of sheer delight I've had in other Banks novels. Nothing I read in here made me burst out loud with cries of "You naughty, naughty author!" (which has happened with other Banks novels); but this is far from the disaster some have painted it as. A solid four stars from me.
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LibraryThing member RoboSchro
"It's as though one needs permission from somebody -- parents, God, a committee of one's peers; I don't bloody know -- to finally take responsibility for one's own actions, one's own life. Only the permission never comes, and gradually... gradually you realise that it will never come, that the way
As I read this book, I felt that it was Banks pleasingly back on form. All the things that characterise his style at his best are here: a light touch with the narrative voice, even when dealing with troubling emotional issues; an obvious love of the Scottish setting; a twisted, extended family, with its own jesters and monsters; a few digs at capitalist America; sex, drugs, and whisky; and confused youth, trying to find out who they are and what they can have in this world.
This is fairly similar in subject and tone to his outstanding novel The Crow Road. This time around, though, the writer is more mature, and the pace more sedate. While there is a semblance of the trademark Banks twist at the end, for once it doesn't come as a great surprise. There are some dark obsessions here -- and one suicide scene that is particularly intense -- but they never overwhelm the story.
So, while there's perhaps nothing here that leaps out and proclaims this book's greatness, it's a delightful and solid piece of writing.
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you've lived your life, stumbling through it, winging it half the time, is all there really is, all there ever was. I feel cheated, because of that."As I read this book, I felt that it was Banks pleasingly back on form. All the things that characterise his style at his best are here: a light touch with the narrative voice, even when dealing with troubling emotional issues; an obvious love of the Scottish setting; a twisted, extended family, with its own jesters and monsters; a few digs at capitalist America; sex, drugs, and whisky; and confused youth, trying to find out who they are and what they can have in this world.
This is fairly similar in subject and tone to his outstanding novel The Crow Road. This time around, though, the writer is more mature, and the pace more sedate. While there is a semblance of the trademark Banks twist at the end, for once it doesn't come as a great surprise. There are some dark obsessions here -- and one suicide scene that is particularly intense -- but they never overwhelm the story.
So, while there's perhaps nothing here that leaps out and proclaims this book's greatness, it's a delightful and solid piece of writing.
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LibraryThing member lloydshep
I thought this was hopelessly self-indulgent, I'm afraid. It kept promising to be something greater than it was, but in the end it's just the story of a fairly unimpressive character with A-level politics and a mild streak of rebellion. And the ending is about as obvious as they come. For me,
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Banks' books are either amazing (Wasp Factory, Crow Road, Espedair Street) or lame (this, Whit, Walking on Glass). Just personal taste, I guess. If you loved the Crow Road, you'll possibly quite like this. But you won't love it. Show Less
LibraryThing member tchelyzt
The appearance of an Iain Banks novel (with or without the “M”) is an event to look forward to. Or was. This disaster is a great dose of disillusion for me and could make me think twice about the next one. The story is unoriginal and without interest and the characters are dull and
Based around a family whose wealth is founded on a board game, we’re supposed to care if the business is sold to an American game editor. Worse, we’re supposed to understand why likeable black-sheep-of-the-family Alban, who has already sold out his interest in the business, now wants to take a stand, and why anybody else is interested in his opinion. Empire!Banks has used games in previous books and they always suggested modern strategic pursuits. Not this time; this time we get the impression of a dull pre-Monopoly kind of game and we couldn’t care less about it.
Alban is the most wooden Banks’ character of all time. Painted as charming, decent, honest, cynical he is a goody-goody quite beyond belief. With a negligible shareholding in the family business, we’re expected to accept that they hang on his every word and listen with reverence to his foolish company-saving speech (more about American imperialism than business as it happens!). He’s living with down and outs in a tenement when we meet him (presumably just to show how liberal and decent he is) one of whom gets an inexplicable (and plaintive) first person voice in the novel. For some reason (a typo perhaps?) the first person voice slipped into the visit to Doris and Beryl when our drug addict was absent!
The book has some of Banks’ usual wit and imagination (I especially liked girlfriend VG’s background as a tsunami survivor and the “School Bus Siege”) but overall this is a trite heap of rubbish not worthy of the author of such masterpieces as The Bridge and The Algebraist. If you’ve loved everything he has written so far, do yourself a favour and pretend this one never appeared.
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insipid.Based around a family whose wealth is founded on a board game, we’re supposed to care if the business is sold to an American game editor. Worse, we’re supposed to understand why likeable black-sheep-of-the-family Alban, who has already sold out his interest in the business, now wants to take a stand, and why anybody else is interested in his opinion. Empire!Banks has used games in previous books and they always suggested modern strategic pursuits. Not this time; this time we get the impression of a dull pre-Monopoly kind of game and we couldn’t care less about it.
Alban is the most wooden Banks’ character of all time. Painted as charming, decent, honest, cynical he is a goody-goody quite beyond belief. With a negligible shareholding in the family business, we’re expected to accept that they hang on his every word and listen with reverence to his foolish company-saving speech (more about American imperialism than business as it happens!). He’s living with down and outs in a tenement when we meet him (presumably just to show how liberal and decent he is) one of whom gets an inexplicable (and plaintive) first person voice in the novel. For some reason (a typo perhaps?) the first person voice slipped into the visit to Doris and Beryl when our drug addict was absent!
The book has some of Banks’ usual wit and imagination (I especially liked girlfriend VG’s background as a tsunami survivor and the “School Bus Siege”) but overall this is a trite heap of rubbish not worthy of the author of such masterpieces as The Bridge and The Algebraist. If you’ve loved everything he has written so far, do yourself a favour and pretend this one never appeared.
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LibraryThing member Noisy
Sublime. Banks on top form. Hints of a love story, or a mystery, but in the end so much more than that.
A dynasty (or even a Dallas) - a family with its wealth based on the fortune accumulated through a board game, and the exploitation of that game's development - is observed through the eyes one
For me, my enjoyment is derived primarily from the writing style, which seems so fluid. His descriptions are wonderful: normally I never deface my books, but I made a dogear especially for "She played squash 'like a lethally disjointed cheetah on speed' ...". I just bask in the way that he strings words together, but the story just pulls me along as well. I made a leap to the resolution we were heading for fairly early on, but my speculations fell well short of the actual revelation. In the end, the story is tied up neatly ... and that is something that I now value a lot: other well written books that I've enjoyed have been marked down quite harshly because of the ragged ending.
The cover blurb quotes the Sunday Telegraph saying 'As good as anything Banks has ever written, if not better'. Amen to that.
A dynasty (or even a Dallas) - a family with its wealth based on the fortune accumulated through a board game, and the exploitation of that game's development - is observed through the eyes one
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of the family members who seems only loosely tied in. His story is not told linearly, but through snapshots that jump around in time and from observer to observer. This is at times distracting while you try to figure out when and who but it works well overall. There are two central events that shape the person of Alban McGill, and the resolutions that he seeks are tied up with the family matriarch, who seems a pretty malign figure. The story builds to the denouement at a family gather in Scotland. For me, my enjoyment is derived primarily from the writing style, which seems so fluid. His descriptions are wonderful: normally I never deface my books, but I made a dogear especially for "She played squash 'like a lethally disjointed cheetah on speed' ...". I just bask in the way that he strings words together, but the story just pulls me along as well. I made a leap to the resolution we were heading for fairly early on, but my speculations fell well short of the actual revelation. In the end, the story is tied up neatly ... and that is something that I now value a lot: other well written books that I've enjoyed have been marked down quite harshly because of the ragged ending.
The cover blurb quotes the Sunday Telegraph saying 'As good as anything Banks has ever written, if not better'. Amen to that.
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LibraryThing member veronicay
Well, it's not as bad as the teeth-gnashingly bad Dead Air, but a long way below his best work. One Amazon review even retitled it The Steep Decline Towards Garbage. It revisits a lot of old ground: extensive and eccentric Scottish family ruled by a patriarch (as in both Whit and Complicity), and
It has that now trendy structure where the story constantly jumps back and forth in time and you are never sure how each bit relates to the rest. That worked in The House at Riverton, but it doesn't work here; it just seems like a gimmick to mask the absence of plot or suspense. You can see the shock revelation coming miles away. Some passages, including the final chapter, are narrated by an extremely minor character in a rather irritating Scots accent, with greengrocer's apostrophes galore -- why??
The ending is a damp squib, as if Banks just got tired of writing and decided it was long enough already (it could indeed have been cut by 100 pages or so). There is some good writing in places, notably describing two suicides, as always there are some laughs too, and I did finish it. But I was disappointed Banks didn't make more of Alban's girlfriend Verushka, a really strong female character who just disappears from the story until the very end. Nothing I've read has matched up to Whit -- still my favourite.
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the growing pains of the usual young male protagonist, torn between two loves (also features in Complicity), what seems now to be an obligatory anti-American rant, as in Dead Air (though it is perfectly in character for Alban). Here the protagonist, Alban, is almost thirty, yet he's still mooning over his long-lost cousin Sophie, with whom he had a brief fling aged 15 and has barely seen since. I ended up thinking that it is really time Iain Banks grew up; how old is he now anyway? Maybe the whole thing is supposed to be a reflection on the special relationship between the US and the UK, cousins drifting apart, but if so it isn't very profound.It has that now trendy structure where the story constantly jumps back and forth in time and you are never sure how each bit relates to the rest. That worked in The House at Riverton, but it doesn't work here; it just seems like a gimmick to mask the absence of plot or suspense. You can see the shock revelation coming miles away. Some passages, including the final chapter, are narrated by an extremely minor character in a rather irritating Scots accent, with greengrocer's apostrophes galore -- why??
The ending is a damp squib, as if Banks just got tired of writing and decided it was long enough already (it could indeed have been cut by 100 pages or so). There is some good writing in places, notably describing two suicides, as always there are some laughs too, and I did finish it. But I was disappointed Banks didn't make more of Alban's girlfriend Verushka, a really strong female character who just disappears from the story until the very end. Nothing I've read has matched up to Whit -- still my favourite.
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LibraryThing member cliffagogo
The publisher is at pains to promote this book as a worthy successor to The Crow Road, Iain Banks' best loved (and regarded) novel. It's a comfortable comparison to make - dysfunctional relatives, dark family secrets, rolling Scottish highlands...all very familiar, all very readable. Somewhere
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along the line though, it all seems to lose the edge that his best stories have always been renowned for. Previous works by Banks often have a dark, unpleasant plot twist that makes you gasp and applaud. Here, the novel ends with a whimper, the plot resolved almost as an afterthought. I hope Mr. Banks hasn't lost his bite in his old age. Show Less
LibraryThing member dwate
Alban McGill, a member of the Wopuld family which owns a highly successful board game business, is summoned to take part in a family meeting at their Scottish retreat, called to consider selling the company to a big US rival. Alban is disinclined to take part, having resigned from the company and
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taken up an alternative lifestyle (involving alcohol and other substances) some years earlier. However, he is persuaded, and Banks skilfully builds a depiction of Alban’s former life, including the suicide of his mother, and his relationship with his cousin, Sophie, which, when discovered by his family, is firmly squashed. This well-written novel shrewdly observes a particular facet of British society and comments with insight and humour on a number of social and environmental issues. Show Less
LibraryThing member ascapola
Another engaging read from Banks - though it draws on family and love themes from the Crow Road and business themes from the Business.
Alban, the self-exiled young man of the Wopuld family, gets involved with his family again as he argues against them selling the family game business to an American
Alban, the self-exiled young man of the Wopuld family, gets involved with his family again as he argues against them selling the family game business to an American
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corporation. As he becomes involved again, we discover his past and in particular his first love Sophie, who happens to be his cousin. Show Less
LibraryThing member spacely
Fairly clever in parts. The real family secret is pretty creepy, but underscores the main character's unease with the family. Good sense of place re descriptions of Scotland. What I really liked was the concurrent development of two timelines towards a convergence in the story's present; both lines
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move forward and merge. I never considered it to be a superb or exceptional offering, though. Show Less
LibraryThing member frank_oconnor
A great historical sweep of the eighties, and a nice story with some Tom Wolfe flavor. At the same time, a somewhat predictable re-tread of Bank's older themes. Impossible for him to write a bad book, though, and well worth the reading.
LibraryThing member emitnick
I do love lengthy sagas about eccentric British families, particularly if the members are wealthy and therefore get to globe-trot and indulge their vices and whims. Banks is a fine SF writer, and he does the "straight" stuff well, too.
LibraryThing member AltheaAnn
Alban McGill is a member of the wealthy Scottish Wopuld family, who have built a fortune on a game called Empire! (which resembles Risk, and involves taking over the world). Alban has abdicated his place in the family, and has been slumming for the past few years, working as a forester, hanging out
As the novel progresses, we gradually learn more about Alban, his relationship with Sophie, the complexities, oddities, and dark secrets of the Wopuld family - and not least, the repercussions involved with the possibility of giving up Empire! (With some quite blatant but rather wonderful political metaphors and outright rants.)
Banks is one of my favorite authors, so my expectations for one of his books are always high - but this novel did not disappoint. I do think he should have gone with its working title (Empire!), though.
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with decidedly non-upper-class friends, and slowly building a relationship with a commitment-phobic math-genius outdoorswoman/professor. However, a big family reunion is calling him back into the fold. An American corporation wants to buy out the Wopulds, and they need to vote on whether or not to go through with the deal. Alban is reluctant to go - not least because it will mean seeing his cousin Sophie again - the girl who was his first love, and who still stirs up all kinds of nasty whirlpools of emotion whenever Alban encounters her.As the novel progresses, we gradually learn more about Alban, his relationship with Sophie, the complexities, oddities, and dark secrets of the Wopuld family - and not least, the repercussions involved with the possibility of giving up Empire! (With some quite blatant but rather wonderful political metaphors and outright rants.)
Banks is one of my favorite authors, so my expectations for one of his books are always high - but this novel did not disappoint. I do think he should have gone with its working title (Empire!), though.
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LibraryThing member psiloiordinary
He is good. But I prefer the Sci-Fi of Iain M Banks.
Beautifully written, insightful, by turns amusing and sickening.
I guess I feel a bit disappointed as I think that I should have guessed the plot twist long before I did. Shouldn't that make me more appreciative of the writers craft in managing to
I think all of this says more about me than it does the author. Silly, moody me.
He still manages to bring the grotesqueness of reality into sharp focus and this is a skill for which he is justly revered.
Still prefer the Sci-Fi though. Sulk.
Beautifully written, insightful, by turns amusing and sickening.
I guess I feel a bit disappointed as I think that I should have guessed the plot twist long before I did. Shouldn't that make me more appreciative of the writers craft in managing to
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surprise me? Well I think he over did it. I feel like I have fallen for a silly street trader rather than an elegant piece of slight of hand. I was too easy for him and somehow that left me annoyed with myself as well as him.I think all of this says more about me than it does the author. Silly, moody me.
He still manages to bring the grotesqueness of reality into sharp focus and this is a skill for which he is justly revered.
Still prefer the Sci-Fi though. Sulk.
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LibraryThing member mojacobs
Matt Thorne of the Literary Review says this is Banks's most accomplished novel since The Crow Road and I must agree. Once again Banks transports his readers into the complex world of a sprawling Scottish family, and I loved it. A great tale, expertly told, with lots of dry humour to make the
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bitter medicine (what is the point of everything? is there a point?) go down smoothly.” Show Less
LibraryThing member AndrewBlackman
A book about resistance to change. It starts with everything stuck: the Wopulds still owners of the family board-game business as they have been for a century, Alban still obsessed with his childhood love for his cousin Sophie, still stuck in self-destructive rebellion, and his mother's suicide
As the book progresses, things slowly begin to change, even though most of the characters fight to keep things the way they are. An American company bids to take over the company, and Alban makes discoveries about his mother. The clues to the resolution of the family issues were, for me, a little too obvious, so that about halfway through I guessed more or less what would happen. But still the ending was well handled and satisfying.
In any case, don't want to give away the resolution of these issues, but the way Iain Banks resolves the more political side is interesting and can be described without giving away too much. Alban has rejected his family and everything they stand for (the board game they're famous for is called "Empire!" and they've partly sold out already to the US company, which Alban associates with US policies of war, extreme capitalism and globalisation). He "cuts off his nose to spite his face" - he is homeless in a Perth council estate, having worked as a forester where he cut off his own finger (accidentally) with a chainsaw. At the end he goes on a walk near Garbadale and, while on the mountaintop, realises that "Some hopes and ambitions were mainfest only as a direction, not as a destination. Maybe the trick was to realise you were involved in a process, not aiming at a completely achievable end result, and accept that, but travel hopefully anyway."
The narrative jumps around abruptly between times and places, progressing in the "present" while also weaving in episodes from Alban's childhood and early adulthood. There's usually no pretence of a reason for the flashback, such as a character remembering - it's just done abruptly, like a cinematic jump cut. Mostly it works, although a couple of times the tenses seem confused - can't find the examples now, of course!
I particularly liked that although most of the story is told from Alban's point of view, he is described at first from the outside, first from his cousin Fielding's perspective, then from that of Tango, the man he is staying with in Perth. It immediately creates the sense of Alban as a slightly mysterious, unknowable character, and this feeling persists through the rest of the book, even as we are told much more about him and given access to his thoughts. It's a clever device, and the book is full of similar effects. If the clues to the ending had been a little less heavy-handed, this would have been an excellent book.
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when he was two years old still a mystery.As the book progresses, things slowly begin to change, even though most of the characters fight to keep things the way they are. An American company bids to take over the company, and Alban makes discoveries about his mother. The clues to the resolution of the family issues were, for me, a little too obvious, so that about halfway through I guessed more or less what would happen. But still the ending was well handled and satisfying.
In any case, don't want to give away the resolution of these issues, but the way Iain Banks resolves the more political side is interesting and can be described without giving away too much. Alban has rejected his family and everything they stand for (the board game they're famous for is called "Empire!" and they've partly sold out already to the US company, which Alban associates with US policies of war, extreme capitalism and globalisation). He "cuts off his nose to spite his face" - he is homeless in a Perth council estate, having worked as a forester where he cut off his own finger (accidentally) with a chainsaw. At the end he goes on a walk near Garbadale and, while on the mountaintop, realises that "Some hopes and ambitions were mainfest only as a direction, not as a destination. Maybe the trick was to realise you were involved in a process, not aiming at a completely achievable end result, and accept that, but travel hopefully anyway."
The narrative jumps around abruptly between times and places, progressing in the "present" while also weaving in episodes from Alban's childhood and early adulthood. There's usually no pretence of a reason for the flashback, such as a character remembering - it's just done abruptly, like a cinematic jump cut. Mostly it works, although a couple of times the tenses seem confused - can't find the examples now, of course!
I particularly liked that although most of the story is told from Alban's point of view, he is described at first from the outside, first from his cousin Fielding's perspective, then from that of Tango, the man he is staying with in Perth. It immediately creates the sense of Alban as a slightly mysterious, unknowable character, and this feeling persists through the rest of the book, even as we are told much more about him and given access to his thoughts. It's a clever device, and the book is full of similar effects. If the clues to the ending had been a little less heavy-handed, this would have been an excellent book.
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LibraryThing member darushawehm
I like reading Banks' mainstream novels, as they always remind me why I should write more mainstream fiction. This was an enjoyable glimpse into a family, though the big reveal at the end kind of made me roll my eyes. But the writing was silky as always, which is a joy to read.
LibraryThing member chicjohn
Brilliant Banks
LibraryThing member Eyejaybee
Iain Banks seems always to be at his best when dealing with dysfunctional families, and he certainly returns to form here. The main protagonist is Alban McGill, part of the Wopuld family which owns the rights to "Empire!", an extremely successful game (fairly loosely based upon "Risk", I think). A
Another aspect of the novel at which Banks has always excelled is the use of flashback, often nested within other flashbacks. This can be disconcerting, but it does offer a useful means of conveying a lot of necessary background material without requiring tedious explanatory sections. Through the dextrous application of flashbacks we learn that Alban had been (and possibly still is) madly in love with his cousin Sophie, through he has only seen her two or three times over the last twenty years. He does, however, also have a long-term occasional relationship with Verushka Graef, an academic mathematician based at Glasgow University.
All of the characters are eminently credible, and while the plot unwinds in Banks's characteristically chaotic manner it is never less than engrossing.
He completely sold me the dummy over the ending, too.
All in all a very enjoyable book.
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few years before the novel starts the family had sold a significant portion to the American conglomerate Spraint who now wants to buy out the rest of the family holding. Alban had become dissatisfied with corporate life and had left the firm to work as a logger working on conifer plantations all over Wales and Scotland. As the novel opens his more commercially savvy cousin Fielding has tracked him down to a squat in Perth, and persuades him to come back into the family fold, at least temporarily, to try to lead the opposition to the sale.Another aspect of the novel at which Banks has always excelled is the use of flashback, often nested within other flashbacks. This can be disconcerting, but it does offer a useful means of conveying a lot of necessary background material without requiring tedious explanatory sections. Through the dextrous application of flashbacks we learn that Alban had been (and possibly still is) madly in love with his cousin Sophie, through he has only seen her two or three times over the last twenty years. He does, however, also have a long-term occasional relationship with Verushka Graef, an academic mathematician based at Glasgow University.
All of the characters are eminently credible, and while the plot unwinds in Banks's characteristically chaotic manner it is never less than engrossing.
He completely sold me the dummy over the ending, too.
All in all a very enjoyable book.
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LibraryThing member baswood
I blasted through this novel in a couple of days. It kept me reading and it kept me entertained. This is an Iain Banks novel without the M between his christian and surnames and so the reader is assured it is not one of his science fiction books. It is a family saga and the family Wopuld have made
Banks starts his story in a Glasgow tenement where Alban is living in typical squalor in a household of poor misfits. His cousin Fielding digs him out of the chaotic flat in order to get him to support his attempts to repulse the takeover bid from the American company. As the two men prepare for the big meeting Albans story is told in a series of flashbacks during a trip up to the family estate in the north of Scotland. Alban is still puzzled by some of the family history, not the least by his own birthright and through meetings with current family members he tries to piece together his story.
Alban's story takes the reader on a whirlwind tour of California, Singapore, Hong Kong, the Indonesian Tsunami and Scotland with plenty of sex, drugs and rock and roll. (It is an Iain Banks novel). Readers familiar with some of Banks earlier novel's: [Crow Road] or [Espedair street] will know how good a story teller Banks can be. There are plenty of witty asides and some thought provoking moments. There is also Bank's socialist agenda which comes in handy in this novel where he can let rip against the George W Bush loving republicans who are the senior representatives of the American takeover company. Banks even manages to parade his credentials as a climate change activist and this was back in 2007.
The downside to all this marvellous entertainment is that the character although not quite caricatures can come across as stock characters. The matriarchal head of the Wopuld family, the extended family members of the Glasgow tenement, almost all the American representatives and to some extent Alban McGill himself. The star-crossed lovers theme is a very old one and in this novel it holds the key to the story, and it is not difficult to guess the denouement way before the end. I enjoy Banks when he is writing in this vein and especially when he has a story to tell, even if some of the scenarios are set up purely for entertainment: 3.5 stars.
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a fortune on a board game 'Empire'. It has been successfully re launched as a computer game and the family corporation are about to hold an extraordinary annual general meeting as a result of a takeover bid from an American company. Alban McGill a third generation member of the family has tried to extricate himself from the business, but is persuaded to attend the A G M by one of his cousins still working for the firm. Alban as a fifteen year old had disgraced himself by being caught 'in flagrante delicto' with his first cousin Sophie at a previous family get together. He had through his own endeavours been accepted back into the family fold, but for the last five years had been working as a lumberjack in the Scottish lowlands. He is still carrying a torch for Sophie and has never forgiven the family for forcibly separating them as teenagers. Banks starts his story in a Glasgow tenement where Alban is living in typical squalor in a household of poor misfits. His cousin Fielding digs him out of the chaotic flat in order to get him to support his attempts to repulse the takeover bid from the American company. As the two men prepare for the big meeting Albans story is told in a series of flashbacks during a trip up to the family estate in the north of Scotland. Alban is still puzzled by some of the family history, not the least by his own birthright and through meetings with current family members he tries to piece together his story.
Alban's story takes the reader on a whirlwind tour of California, Singapore, Hong Kong, the Indonesian Tsunami and Scotland with plenty of sex, drugs and rock and roll. (It is an Iain Banks novel). Readers familiar with some of Banks earlier novel's: [Crow Road] or [Espedair street] will know how good a story teller Banks can be. There are plenty of witty asides and some thought provoking moments. There is also Bank's socialist agenda which comes in handy in this novel where he can let rip against the George W Bush loving republicans who are the senior representatives of the American takeover company. Banks even manages to parade his credentials as a climate change activist and this was back in 2007.
The downside to all this marvellous entertainment is that the character although not quite caricatures can come across as stock characters. The matriarchal head of the Wopuld family, the extended family members of the Glasgow tenement, almost all the American representatives and to some extent Alban McGill himself. The star-crossed lovers theme is a very old one and in this novel it holds the key to the story, and it is not difficult to guess the denouement way before the end. I enjoy Banks when he is writing in this vein and especially when he has a story to tell, even if some of the scenarios are set up purely for entertainment: 3.5 stars.
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Subjects
Awards
Clare Maclean Prize for Scottish Fiction (Shortlist — 2008)
Original publication date
2007
Physical description
400 p.; 9.13 inches
ISBN
0316731056 / 9780316731058
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