Activators of Mulligans,
“What are you reading?”
“A book.”
“I can see that. What is it about?”
This is how the conversation pans out; if the agitator really cared they’d be reading the book and not me. I was only posed this question once whilst reading The Steep Approach to Garbadale, my reply was, “Th
e new one by Iain Banks.” This sufficed because other version goes on:
It’s about a boy whose family owns a board game company and they’re thinking of selling the business and they have a meeting to decide whether to sell.
The plot isn’t much more complicated than above, there are a couple of love interests for our main character, Alban, there’s a mystery over his dead mother and his bewilderment over his role in employment, the family and the landscape of modern life. However, the book doesn’t really go very far from where it seemed it would after the first few pages, I can draw a parallel with the story that’s featured on the television news bulletins last week of the man who set fire to his neighbours garden with a blowtorch whilst weeding, the gist of the story was that a man set fire to a bush; right now, neds up and down the country are torching anything at hand, including hedges, journalists have made a story out of a basic action by creating the story of the mad scientist creating an explosion that wiped out a street. Iain Banks starts with a simple plot here and creates something wonderful.
The book is written, in the main, in the third person but timely interjections of first-person perspective from the leader of the book’s tribe of neds, Tango, are remarkable. The sections don’t really add to the plot greatly, they don’t even add to the characterisation of the main protagonists; I think they only serve to show how the world and people can be viewed differently by different people and illustrate how people can sometimes become entrenched in their own worlds, in this case; Alban becoming consumed by family politics and history.
Since the plot is simple, Banks thickens it by providing depth to the characters through perfectly-timed flashbacks; all the important family members’ lives are recounted superbly so that in time for the big decision at the EGM, suspense and mystery prevails.
“A book.”
“I can see that. What is it about?”
This is how the conversation pans out; if the agitator really cared they’d be reading the book and not me. I was only posed this question once whilst reading The Steep Approach to Garbadale, my reply was, “Th
e new one by Iain Banks.” This sufficed because other version goes on:It’s about a boy whose family owns a board game company and they’re thinking of selling the business and they have a meeting to decide whether to sell.
The plot isn’t much more complicated than above, there are a couple of love interests for our main character, Alban, there’s a mystery over his dead mother and his bewilderment over his role in employment, the family and the landscape of modern life. However, the book doesn’t really go very far from where it seemed it would after the first few pages, I can draw a parallel with the story that’s featured on the television news bulletins last week of the man who set fire to his neighbours garden with a blowtorch whilst weeding, the gist of the story was that a man set fire to a bush; right now, neds up and down the country are torching anything at hand, including hedges, journalists have made a story out of a basic action by creating the story of the mad scientist creating an explosion that wiped out a street. Iain Banks starts with a simple plot here and creates something wonderful.
The book is written, in the main, in the third person but timely interjections of first-person perspective from the leader of the book’s tribe of neds, Tango, are remarkable. The sections don’t really add to the plot greatly, they don’t even add to the characterisation of the main protagonists; I think they only serve to show how the world and people can be viewed differently by different people and illustrate how people can sometimes become entrenched in their own worlds, in this case; Alban becoming consumed by family politics and history.
Since the plot is simple, Banks thickens it by providing depth to the characters through perfectly-timed flashbacks; all the important family members’ lives are recounted superbly so that in time for the big decision at the EGM, suspense and mystery prevails.
Iain Banks is a fantastic author, he again proves in his imaginative plots and characters and successful use of unorthodox structures that he is the best around.
posted by Leif at 6:36 PM
1 Comments:
Steep Approach to Garbadale was my first Iain Banks book and I loved it and went on to read all his others, even science fiction which I had never thought I liked or would ever read! That's what a great author can do.
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