Espedair Street
by Iain Banks
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Daniel Weir used to be a famous - not to say infamous - rock star. Maybe still is. At thirty-one he has been both a brilliant failure and a dull success. He's made a lot of mistakes that have paid off and a lot of smart moves he'll regret forever (however long that turns out to be). Daniel Weir has gone from rags to riches and back, and managed to hold onto them both, though not much else. His friends all seem to be dead, fed up with him or just disgusted - and who can blame them? And now show more Daniel Weir is all alone. As he contemplates his life, Daniel realises he only has two problems: the past and the future. He knows how bad the past has been. But the future - well, the future is something else. show lessTags
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Member Reviews
This is a heartwarming and uplifting book. By describing the rise of Daniel Weir, his insecurities and many challenges with personal relationships, Banks gives a surprisingly deep analysis of 70s Rock star life from a first person perspective. I've read a good number of rock autobiographies and biographies that are almost always vacuous and shallow by comparison.
The descent of the band into excess and the unintended consequences are amusing and have a whiff of truth about them. The anonymous alcoholic existence thereafter sounded all to familiar.
For me these aspects of the narrative carried on slightly too long after I had got the message. However, Banks was clearly having huge fun, and many of the comic pay offs were well worth it.
The show more last quarter of the book was virtually impossible to put down. Not only did he completely nail the ending, for my money this is some of Banks' most beautiful and profound prose. show less
The descent of the band into excess and the unintended consequences are amusing and have a whiff of truth about them. The anonymous alcoholic existence thereafter sounded all to familiar.
For me these aspects of the narrative carried on slightly too long after I had got the message. However, Banks was clearly having huge fun, and many of the comic pay offs were well worth it.
The show more last quarter of the book was virtually impossible to put down. Not only did he completely nail the ending, for my money this is some of Banks' most beautiful and profound prose. show less
Daniel Weir - Weird to his friends, and to some that aren't his friends - is a rock star. Or was one. Or will become one. This novel is his story told, as Banks often likes to do, in a style that lurches from present to far past to intermediate time, hovering ever close to an Event that seems to define the character's present life and troubles. We do find out what the Event is, it isn't as central to everything as it might be and Mr Weir has a lot more story to tell.
This novel is a real achievement; easy to read, funny and poignant in equal parts and somehow managing to avoid the many cliches of the tortured life of the rock star who comes from nowhere, messes up, loses it all and finds fulfilment. It does this despite the fact that the show more cliches are there but they flit past without you noticing and somehow Banks manages to say something different while they do so. There's cliches from elsewhere as well, including McCann, one of Danny's many drinking partners who could have walked out of the life of Rab C Nesbitt. But here they're fresh or they're funny or seemingly original.
You'll care a lot about Danny in ways you won't expect to and you'll be willing everything to turn out OK for him. That's not always the case with Bank's lead characters but it's certainly so here.
There's some of the real sounds of Glasgow speech in this book although Banks does a good job of making it clear to those who don't have the ear, only lapsing once or twice into the need for direct translation.
A real pleasure of a book in many ways. show less
This novel is a real achievement; easy to read, funny and poignant in equal parts and somehow managing to avoid the many cliches of the tortured life of the rock star who comes from nowhere, messes up, loses it all and finds fulfilment. It does this despite the fact that the show more cliches are there but they flit past without you noticing and somehow Banks manages to say something different while they do so. There's cliches from elsewhere as well, including McCann, one of Danny's many drinking partners who could have walked out of the life of Rab C Nesbitt. But here they're fresh or they're funny or seemingly original.
You'll care a lot about Danny in ways you won't expect to and you'll be willing everything to turn out OK for him. That's not always the case with Bank's lead characters but it's certainly so here.
There's some of the real sounds of Glasgow speech in this book although Banks does a good job of making it clear to those who don't have the ear, only lapsing once or twice into the need for direct translation.
A real pleasure of a book in many ways. show less
A novel about the rise and fall of a Scottish rock bank, told from the perspective of its bass player, Daniel Weir (nickname: Weird). Nothing revelatory, but since I’m fascinated by band dynamics and performance personas, there was a lot for me to enjoy in this. Especially since Banks’ opening description of Danny states that he’s tall, with lank, greasy black hair, and a hooked nose—it’s Snape in a band! (Seriously, I could not shake this image for the entire rest of the book.) But oddly, what I think I enjoyed most was the descriptions of Danny (once he’s retired and gone into hiding, pretending to be somebody else) getting drunk and wandering around Glasgow with his buddies. The aimless drunk Scottish banter—that’s show more what I loved. Perhaps because it seemed the most real? show less
A novel of wish fulfillment, where the aspiring (but as yet niche) novelist writes down his dream of having been a rock star instead. But it's Banks, so the "rock star" lifestyle is the sort of prog rock that electronic engineering students end up listening to and then playing. And of course, it all goes horribly wrong.
Great writing, but I never loved this, in the way I loved most of his writing in the same era.
Great writing, but I never loved this, in the way I loved most of his writing in the same era.
In the 90s I was shagging left and right but after a while I wanted to spend some time on Christmas without girl distractions because of my exams in January. I knew that the TV would be dreadful for the Christmas period. So I decided to go to the library for some books. Looking through the shelves I tried to pick things that would not be more upsetting. Then I came across “Espedair Street”. Iain Banks! I thought, just the thing. At least there won't be some happy ending that would be quite unbearable. At least I can depend on Banks not to inflict that on me. So I read it, drank plenty of beer, was getting through Christmas pretty well all round. And then, at the end, he sets off on the train to Mallaig to try to find his long lost show more love...I said to myself: WTF? And then he gets to the little village she is living in she is not home. But someone tells him that she is in the village hall. So he goes there and she is putting up Christmas decorations. And it turns out that she had been hoping he would ask her to go away with him when the band took off... And they have a happy every after re-union... AT FUCKING CHRISTMAS!!!! I was laughing my ass off. But I had genuinely taken it out of the library because I thought it was a safe bet not to have a romantic happy ending. What are the chances, and all that?
I've always viewed it as being like a mirror to 'It's a Wonderful Life'. The one where George got out of Bedford Falls and made something of himself. But what he made wasn't what it could have been if he'd never left... Or something. It's a quite grey and downbeat in mood novel, as the narrator looks back over his life ... but that final image, of the small child riding around on a tricycle festooned with multi-coloured ribbons…
NB: I should have read the "M"-Banks, and not the without-"M"-Banks… show less
I've always viewed it as being like a mirror to 'It's a Wonderful Life'. The one where George got out of Bedford Falls and made something of himself. But what he made wasn't what it could have been if he'd never left... Or something. It's a quite grey and downbeat in mood novel, as the narrator looks back over his life ... but that final image, of the small child riding around on a tricycle festooned with multi-coloured ribbons…
NB: I should have read the "M"-Banks, and not the without-"M"-Banks… show less
Book is set in Paisley, my home town. Loved the detail, but what really frustrated me was that he got one bit wrong re local geography, which completely lost me. if I hadn't known the area it wouldn't have bothered me. Great characterisatiion, drawn with a fine brush.
quietly introspective look at a man who gets carried away on the tide of his own life, until it stops. and then he's got to decide what he wants, what he's responsible for, and how to get there.
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- Original publication date
- 1987
- People/Characters
- Daniel Weir; Dave Balfour; Christine Brice
- Important places
- Paisley, Renfrewshire, Scotland, UK; Glasgow, Scotland, UK
- Dedication
- For Les, and all the People's Republic of Glenfinnan
- First words
- Two days ago I decided to kill myself.
- Quotations
- Guilt. The Big G, the Catholic faith's greatest gift to humankind and its subspecies, psychiatrists ... well, I guess that's putting it a little too harshly; I've met a lot of Jews, and they seem to have just as hard a time ... (show all)of it as we do, and they've been around longer, so maybe it wasn't the Church's invention ... but I maintain it developed the concept more fully than anybody else; it was the Japan of guilt, taking somebody else's product and mass-producing it, refining it, fine-tuning it, optimising its performance and giving it a life-time guarantee.
- Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)I'm sitting back, rubbing my bristly chin and feeling happy again, and wondering if it'll last, and watching the bairn on the trike, the streamers flowing behind him like a rainbow wake, whizzing round and round and round.
- Disambiguation notice
- Please distinguish between this Work, Iain Banks' novel Espedair Street (1987), and its BBC radio adaptation directed by Dave Batchelor (1998). Thank you.
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