Customer Reviews

The Bridge

5 star:		(23)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

This is one of Banks' less readable outings. The use of language is just too complex for The Bridge to be considered a page-turner, but it is a book well worth the work for Banks fans. That said, it is perhaps a bad place to start with this author (I would recomend Complicity or The Player of Games, both captivating, well writen books, and considerably easier reads). It involves a man in a dreamscape while lying in a coma (maybe). He has had an accident on a large road/rail bridge and now finds himself on an endless, self-sufficient bridge covered with cities and farmland. He has no memories of his past, but knows that he doesn't fit in. And then things start to get complex and sureal, with bloodthirsty barbarians, war criminals, missing libraries, and a few Banks in-jokes (this book was his third published, but he had already written five [I think] SF books that hadn't sold, a couple of them about the Culture, and that's the why of the knife-missile).

An earlier reviewer commented on this book's similarity to Marabou Stork Nightmares by Welsh. The comment that this book seems to draw on Welsh as an influence would be reasonable, except that The Bridge was written ten years before Marabou.

Happy reading.

My only previous experience with Banks's work was his twisted first novel, The Wasp Factory, so this surreal and complex work was initially a bit of a surprise. However, having since learned that he also writes science fiction under a slightly different name, this book's style makes more sense. The story here is of an amnesiac man who finds himself on The Bridge, a giant structure and society that seemingly has no end. However, there's also the parallel story of apparently the same man, set in a more recognizable reality. It appears this "real" man is in a coma, and his existence in the world of "The Bridge" is a coma-induced dream state. Further complicating the matter are chapters featuring a barbarian warrior who is wandering around a fantastical realm battling wizards and monsters, looting towers, and tupping wenches, all the while recounting his adventures in a thick Scots dialect (think James Kelman or Irvine Welsh).

Some (indeed, many) readers will find this crosscutting and the lack of traditional sequential narrative rather frustrating. However once one accepts that this is not going to be a conventional novel, the ride is rather invigorating. The chapters with the warrior are some of the funniest stuff I've read in a long time. Bank's ultimate aim seems to be merely to provoke questions about reality, memory, imagination, and the like (cf. films like Jacob's Ladder or The Sixth Sense). First published in 1986, the book is a clear influence on Irvine Welsh's Marabou Stork Nightmares. And oh yeah, the fictional Bridge is based on the Forth Rail Bridge, which was built about ten miles west of Edinburgh just before the turn of the last century.

I don't easily give a book 5 stars, but this piece of writing showed how Iain Banks was not a one-off with the success of the Wasp Factory. In fact, no matter how good the wasp factory wasm, this is better.

The narrative follows an individual as he slips into a coma after an accident and the stories of the two parrallel lives in either. It is interspaced by the bizzare adventures of the most wicked, foul, scots-tounged knight ever to exist. Follow his narrative at your peril.

The story would be fine as it stands, but where the story unfolds in the parrallel world is a giant city built on an endless bridge. What really made the story for me was what the bridge was modelled on in real life - the Forth Bridge in Scotland. One thing that i'm interested in was whether or not other readers of the book who have not seen the forth bridge and it's surroundings felt the story had the same edge. Readers?

To conclude, a book that opened my eyes, and definately Bank's best. Just don't make this the first Banks book that you read - start on the wasp factory, a free tip!

I read this book when it came out a long time ago, after reading Wasp Factory. I couldn't wait. It is to this day the most involving and mind wrenching of love stories I've ever read. A mix of the brooding spaces of the English Patient, the never-quite-get-her-angst of John Le Carre, and the building adrenaline rush of early Robert Ludlum, oh, and add a big bucket of Italo Calvino, Philip K. Dick and Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I just can't think of anybody else that can twist it all together like Mr Banks. I can't look at the Forth Rail Bridge the same way again, it is now a big labyrinth built by Banks. This is a must buy book, if you like any of the above (well maybe not Ludlum...) go get it.

Numerous tales intertwine here, each intriguing and pulling the reader onward. I felt like I was bobbing in a troubled sea, waves and currents increasing from many directions until they finally generated a great concluding waterspout.

All of the curious characters are finely wrought; John Orr and his dreams real and made up, his temptress Abberlaine Arrol, the barbarian swordsman and his familiar, Andrea and her lover(s).

Not unlike seeing some movies of late ("The 6th Sense" comes to mind) I felt ready and needing to reread "The Bridge" upon its conclusion. To help settle the images, ideas and plots that it had planted in my imagination, and because the delicious texture and pace of the novel invites the wish that it wouldn't end quite yet.

I can't call this CyberPunk, but it feels familiarly like it. I can't say that it's post-apocolyptic but it feels that way too. Two of my favorite genres disguised as the dark world of Iain Banks' "The Bridge".

An intense compelling read indeed!

THis is great. Really enjoyable. His description is so vivid and amusing. Good one for the tokers out there. Easy and enjoyable to read. Do it!

As many of the others Banks reviewers, this is my favorite Banks book.

This book overcomes the classical genre distinction between fantasy, science fiction and mainstream novels: it's the novel of a complete artist, transcending categories to write without the limits of the traditional forms, playing with them all in a delicate fugue.

It mingles themes from Kafka and Freud (who makes a guest star apparition as Dr Joyce), with Banks own obsessions (war, Scotland, 19th century steel architecture), plays with the greek and middle-age mythology in a very modern way, with a funny link to the Culture.

I've been twice in Scotland: the spirit of this land is so well captured (I happen to live in Paris, where the heroin flies away: I can't understand her) !
The postmodern love story is also excellent. It moved me deeply.

A very absorbing book: like another reader, I keep an excellent memory of the period I read it, just because I read it at that time.

P@

If you're mostly familiar with Banks' science fiction (the Culture novels, Feersum Endjinn, etc.), this novel will come as something of a surprise. It reads like science fiction -- sometimes. And sometimes a more mundane reality intrudes.

It's the story of John Orr, rescued from the sea with no memory of who he is or where he comes from. He finds himself on the Bridge, a structure that apparently leads from nowhere to nowhere, and where everyone lives. It soon becomes apparent, however, that this fantastic reality is only part of the story.

What is the dream, and what is the reality? What is memory, and what is imagined? As our protagonist searches his own dreams and memories for clues, the true quest emerges from the undercurrents. This is the major strength of every Banks novel I've ever read -- the reader makes her discoveries along with the protagonist. Even when you've figured out what's going on, Banks somehow manages to surprise you

This was my introduction to Iain Banks and believe it or not I picked it up because I liked the cover. What greeted my inside, however, was much more brilliant. In retrospect (and its been two years or so since I read The Bridge), I have to credit Banks with my obsession for Scottish fiction.

The Bridge is a unique work. Its very surreal and yet it remains compelling. It is simply hard not to read. As I've now learned after reading several of his other works, both science fiction and "regular" fiction, Banks likes to inject a moral lesson or two as well. The Bridge is no exception.

Do yourself a favor and read The Bridge. Then buy all the Iain Banks you can!

This is the first Iain Banks novel I have read and needless to say I'll be back for more.

Banks takes on a surreal rollercoaster ride through the human mind. The setting is a is a mythical place called "The Bridge" located inside the mind of a coma victim we know as John Orr.

Banks' changing narrative gives added personality to the various characters. An example is the Barbaian, his use of scottish vinacular combined with a mystical underworld setting makes him one of the funniest and most memorable characters ever created.

Banks makes us question ourselves, has our means become our ends in themselves? This is alluded to especially towards the end of the book. A paralell is drawn between "The bridge" and life. "...a thing become a place, a means become end, a route become detination..." Surely a bridge is used to take us somewhere but what happens when it has no beginning and no end?

Banks has clearly had an affect on other scottish writers such as Irvine Welsh, one can't help but see the similarties with "Marabou Stork Nightmares".

What ever you take from this book one can't look past the outstanding talent that is Iain Banks, I relish the thought of starting another of his novels.