Acquired via BookCrossing 30 May 2009 - bags from Julie & Barry

my review:
I enjoyed this easy-to-read novel about a family busines in - perhaps - its death throes. It was a little more slight than I'd expected; I did enjoy the enrichening effect of the dialect sections narrated by Tango, who served as a chorus, commenting on the main action. Although parts were "male" and how I imagined Banks would write (the suicide etc being a case in point), some of the writing and themes seemed curiously feminine - or perhaps this kind of family novel is more usually written by women. Like Matth3w, I didn't appreciate the political lecture sudee3nly inserted into Alban's dialogue at one stage; also the concentration on bands, ipods and the Tsunami seemed inserted in order to ground the book in popular culture rather than for a literary purpose.

A good example of BookCrossing encouraging me to read a book I wouldn't naturally have picked up, and a good holiday read.

Matthew's review (he read it first and I didn't read his review before reading the book/writing mine!):
This book is a perfect example of the lucid and erudite prose typical of Iain Banks non-sf output. Whilst the story might seem slight it is nevertheless gripping and the characters of the main protagonist and his family are very well drawn and easy to identify with even if they are a little "Dynasty"-ish in their portrayal.

My only two (minor) concerns are the rather blunt politicizing of the main character which Banks rather too obviously uses as a mouthpiece for his own political views. Also the denoument, although not entirely laid out for all to see in the book is nevertheless not too hard to guess and rather lessened the impact of the end of the book for me.

Other than that I found the rest of the book as amusing and engrossing as any other in the Bank's oeuvre. ( )

Link to a review on my personal website. ( )

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 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. ( )

I did feel that this wasn't up to the standard of The Crow Road or Espedair Street but once I got past the first few chapters I started to enjoy it. Iain Banks does the dysfunctional family plot very well, if several times already, and once again he produced a good page turning novel. ( )

That it's not as bad as 'Dead Air', is about the best that can be said of this work. Where, oh where is the Banks that wrote the original 'The Bridge', 'Whit', 'Canal Dreams' and 'The Wasp Factory'.
This rehash of 'The Crow' Road and 'The Business': the tale of an extensive and eccentric Scottish family told from the point of view of a partially disgraced and wayward younger clan-member in love with his cousin. The cousin, this time called Sophie, is the exact same character as the cousin called Verity in 'The Crow Road'. Yawn. Like 'Dead Air's' 9/11 beginning, the novel makes a poor attempt at being current by involving current event, in this case the 2004 Boxing Day Tsunami. Yawn x10. ( )