I really enjoyed [The Business], but this was much more thoughtful and deep, in my opinion. A tense story of a family that is bound by its ancestor's invention of a successful board game. The protagonist struggles with his feelings the whole way, fights against the seemingly omnipresent familial bonds. From his teenage dalliance with his cousin to his discovery of the truth around his mother's suicide. I wouldn't say the ending is a cop-out, but it did seem a little artificial and predictable. Other than that, beautifully written and very witty and entertaining. ( )

Any book about a board games business is going to catch my interest and Banks' rich prose was more than enough compensation for the echoes of his previous novels. ( )

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. ( )

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 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. ( )

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 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. ( )

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. ( )

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. ( )

The Steep Approach To Garbadale has been compared by many to The Crow Road, and - as if in recognition of his recent inconsistencies - the Sunday Telegraph blurb proclaims it, "as good as anything Banks has ever written, if not better'.

It's certainly an enjoyable book, and comparisons are unavoidable as, like TCR, it deals with a large, eccentric Scottish family gathering together after many years estranged when a huge American company attempts to buy out all rights to the board game that made them wealthy. Simmering passions and creaky old family secrets are unearthed at the reunion - and its these that provide the novel with its drive. The hero, Alban, seeks to solve the mystery of why his mother committed suicide many years ago, whilst also hoping for a reconciliation with his cousin Sophie, with whom he once had a torrid teenage affair... until the family found out and tore them apart. The flashbacks to Alban and Sophie's 80's romance give the book its heart - though the looming twist is obvious to anyone who's paying attention. Still, Banks writes relationships extremely well and creates another quirky-yet-believable family of oddballs to keep the reader entertained. Personally I found the business aspects of the story dragged - perhaps because I have little interest in such things... and as themes are my theme of the moment, I have to say I found the game metaphor about as subtle as the snakes & ladders cover.

Read the full review at my blog. ( )

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 move forward and merge. I never considered it to be a superb or exceptional offering, though. ( )

I've read all Iain (M) Banks' scifi novels and most of his mainstream ones. It seems to me that it is the most ordinary ones - the ones with no Culture, or spaceflight, or endless Bridges, are the ones that are hardest to believe in. This book is no exception - perfectly nicely written, if rather cliched in places and a twist at the end that I saw a mile off.

The tragic suicide at the heart of the story is a wonderfully written few pages - an emotional, moving, yet chilling passage which served as a timely reminder that Banks can be just fantastic when the mood takes him. However, the main story line (about the main characters’ forbidden romance) is extremely weak and the denouement can be guessed at a very early stage. The secondary story line, about the attempted takeover of an old family business, is nothing but padding and an excuse for the author to express some deeply tiresome anti-American views.

It all ends rather too suddenly - it reminded me of the strange, sudden end to Patricia Cornwell's Blow Fly, where I had the clear impression of the author becoming bored with whole thing and just wanting to finish.

When I finish a Banks novel, I want to close the book with a sigh, sit back and go "wow". With Garbadale, I certainly sighed, but it was more of a "so that's IT then?"

It is obvious that Banks’ story telling skills are still there, but this book gives the impression of still being a work in progress and with some decent editing and character development could have been brilliant. ( )

http://tamaranth.blogspot.com/2008/06... ( )

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, 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. ( )

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 corporation. As he becomes involved again, we discover his past and in particular his first love Sophie, who happens to be his cousin. ( )

"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 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. ( )

not his normal style (then again what is??)this book is fun it remeinds me of my rebelious side and we could all do with that ( )

http://nhw.livejournal.com/957189.htm...

This was great fun: memories of teenage lust, complex families with long-hidden secrets, games and business connections, and an excuse for the occasional political rant. It reminded me a lot of three of my favourite other Banks books, in particular The Crow Road and The Player of Games, with a certain amount of Whit thrown in as well. I think it's a fair bet that if you liked those ones you will like this as well. ( )

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 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. ( )

Not one of his best. ( )

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 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. ( )