Customer Reviews

Canal Dreams

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

Although this is one of his weakest works, it's still Banks. And he really is a good writer.

Notably, there's plenty of reference in the novel to Japan. From my experience of having lived in Japan for some time, learning the language, culture and way of thinking, I notice that sometimes Banks is a little Orientalist in his references to Japanese culture. There are plenty of exotic cultural and by-the-numbers historical references to, for example sumo, samurai, the atomic bombings, student riots of the 60s and some textbook Japanese psychology. However, this seems to me to be like a garnish added to make it more believable to people who know little about Japan. Like another reviewer pointed out, it's like Banks wants to show his knowledge to the reader, but the effect is that the work has been written by Banks without having in-depth experience of the country and people and results in a gentle stereotyping.

However, Banks is an intelligent, reflective and enjoyable writer and I did enjoy the book. It's true that some of the characterisations are rather undeveloped but that doesn't necessarily make it a bad book. In particular, the unusual pacing is such that the narrative lulls for a while, relaxing, and then suddenly surges to an explosive but emotionally-stunted conclusion.

Banks is a writer that doesn't seem to tread old ground, creating surprising and thought-provoking fiction. I reckon that for those who like Banks work, it'll be 50-50 for whether you enjoy this or not, but I do recommend you try it.

Banks' first novel, The Wasp Factory, was a surprise within a surprise--a well-written horror novel that was also a well-written "mainstream" novel. Since then, Banks has continued to surprise mainstream readers with surrealistic novels like Walking on Glass and The Bridge, as well as surprising science fiction readers with intelligent space opera like Consider Phelbas and The Player of Games (Banks' space opera compares favorably with Hyperion by Dan Simmons).

In Canal Dreams, Banks revisits the type of realistic horror found in The Wasp Factory. Hisako Onada is a Japanese cellist who refuses to fly, yet wishes to tour Europe. Her agent books her passage on a Japanese freighter, and she gets caught up in a revolution when her ship becomes trapped in the Panama Canal. That's one part of the story. Another story line explores Hisako's background, from the sacrifices that her mother makes early on as she makes it clear that she wishes to play the cello, through the very rigorous Japanese education process, to joining a major Japanese orchestra. The background serves as an important counterpoint to the other storyline, explaining that her refusal to fly is based on a true phobia. Banks is pointing out that phobias are irrational fears, that have no bearing on the bravery or bearing of the person. When the realtime storyline turns wicked, one isn't surprised at Hisako's actions or her ability to weather hardship.

Banks' horror is like Stephen King's Firestarter without the pyrokinetic, or Thomas Harris' Silence of the Lambs without the psychopaths. Canal Dreams is a novel about the kind of horror seen all too frequently in the news, and occurs even more frequently in the real world. And that is true horror.

I enjoyed reading this book. This was one of the first Iain Banks novels which I read and I really liked it. Now, with hindsight, I must say that my opinion is that it certainly isn't his best, but good nontheless. If you've never read Banks before and enjoy intellectually stimulating novels, then I'd recommend A Song of Stone or State of the Art. If you just want a nice cosy book which is exciting fun to read and which is more intellectually written than you're average Hollywood Movie/Book, then buy this. Good for long journeys.

One other thing. All these people who just say "This book is pants, or bollocks!" to any book, should try writting one themselves. You might not like the book, and there is certainly no author around who can't accept that some people didn't like their book, but I believe each author deserves respect for what they wrote. Especially somebody like Iain Banks who perhaps doesn't writes nice and easy children books, but incredibly fascinating and encapturing books. I certainly enjoy the way when he changes his style of writing. Take Feersum Endjinn, Inversions, A Song of Stone, Use of Weapons, and more.

Iain Banks is cool and I hope he writes many more books in the future.

Sorry, but this is really poor. How disappointed was I? Enormously. This reads like 'Iain would really like one of his books to be made into a film, so keep it nice and simple'. None of the usual dark humuor, or the subtle twists that make him a page turner. Just a dull, 'thriller'. Buy anything else by Banks (trust me!), but avoid this.

You've lived one nightmare. You continually dream other nightmares. Then circumstances put you into a situation that you wish was only... a nightmare.

World famous Japanese cellist Hisako Onoda, afraid of flying, takes the slow boat to her European tour via the Panama Canal. Civil unrest has forced her boat and three others to become marooned in Lake Gatun. Days pass slowly for Hisako... practice, dinner parties between the three crews, scuba diving, and a new love affair.

Then something happens to upset this pleasant order. This event cascades into a life-or-death battle, something skill in cello playing cannot help. Hisako must pull strength from her past, as a student activist, an ostracized youth, and a woman with a secret.

During her time in Lake Gatun, she dreams vividly of passions and trials. The lines between dream and reality become mixed at time, to Hisako's horror.

Banks concocts an engaging story of a woman with a past, and an unpleasant future. This novel, like The Wasp Factory: A Novel, reflects on what people can and will do in trying circumstances. I read the Abacus 1990 Great Britain edition, but I suspect there were no changes in other editions.

Iain Banks' mainstream work usually hinges on some aspect of unreality - psychosis, pseudo-history, the subconscious - and this one apparently centres on dreams, hense the title. You can read about the story and main character elsewhere, but nobody seems to have touched upon the apparent irrelevancy of the dreams, other than to highten the tension that Banks strives (and ultimately fails) to set up during this Panama-based tale of hostage situation. Most writers agree that dream sequences add little to literature, and this is the case with "Canal Dreams"; they seem to be present only to fill out this otherwise very short novel. They reveal nothing about the character, little about her present state of mind and don't advance the story by even a fraction.

The character development is unusually poor for Banks, who in every other novel seems to perform marvelously in this respect. The main character begins to be defined by her directionless childhood and the beginning of her adult like through her skills as a cellist. Then the last 100 pages suddenly reveal extreme and unlikely tragedies in her personal life, one after the other, that are almost totally unseeded during the early chapters of the novel.

It seems that as Banks' thriller turns into a slightly ridiculous action novel, he feels he has to justify his character's extreme actions by constructing a more and more sympathetic history for her. He fails in this respect too - you wonder if her implausible past is another of her dreams. But no. As if the trials during her period of capture by what at first appear to be Panamanian terrorists weren't enough.

The remaining characters are quite poorly drawn, and it hurts me to say it. It's disappointing, as a huge fan of Banks, to be merely distracted rather than wowed by one of his novels. His characters seem only to be defined by their nationality: Japanese, South American, North American, French. They wind up feeling flat, much like the characters in his more recent mainstream novel "Dead Air".

It's a fine read if you have a few long train journeys in your schedule, and its shortness is here a blessing as it means the disappointment is more minor for it. It's beautifully written and there are some imaginative and insightful descriptions, both of the main character in particular and of events as they occur. Otherwise it's unusually forgettable for one of Banks', nowhere near the standard of "The Wasp Factory", "The Crow Road" or "Whit".

5 / 10

Spoiler city: you have been warned.

Banks has pretty much got it all: he can do full-tilt action; he can create authentic characters a mile from stereotype; he can incorporate intelligent themes; he can shock; he can amuse; he can work to a clever structure. Oh, and he can write: his style is enviable. The question (with rare exceptions) isn't whether he can do it, it's what is he going do.

I wonder if this book was a response to all the stupid thrillers out there. Banks saying, sure, you can have the fun of a wronged lone figure taking brutal vengeance on some vile baddies, but you don't have to endure cardboard stereotypes and utterly predictable scenarios. Here he demonstrates this - and how.

For the first third of the book (even more given the constant flashbacks that often dominate the narration) you feel like you're in a slow moving bit of a chick novel (`not that there's anything wrong with that'). I don't know, something like Anne Tyler or Penelope Lively, where the focus is far more on character than action. Hisako is still one of Iain Banks' characters, and he doesn't tend to bother with everyman types, so she is a world famous cellist. But the stellar career is more a backdrop for piece by piece revelations about her life. Panama itself, we think, is also essentially a background: the political events of interest primarily in the way that they give Hisako an unexpected oasis of time (in an exotic location and with a new love interest) to pause and meditate. We learn a lot about Hisako. She's neither idealised nor demonised. Admittedly the other characters are fairly sketchy, and the relationships pretty shallow, but in one way that suits Hisako's perspective: she is fairly detached and introspective/selfish. She's just getting through her life with a mix of being active and passive. Like I said, a bit of a chick thing - ably done.

But then, in as much time as it would take `real' people's normal lives to be shattered by war, we find ourselves in an action novel. But the catch is we know the players a bit too well to `enjoy' it. The baddies are no worse or better than the usual, but far more chilling and nauseating because this doesn't feel like a pantomime (cf. Tom Clancy). Banks' books have some recurring ideas: one is the interaction between wealthy and impoverished cultures; another is warfare atrocities. I wasn't really expecting the latter to pop up again in this book. Thematically it is powerful, and perhaps redressing another misconception resulting from ubiquitous airport thrillers: in giving us wafer thin nasties to defeat, somehow evil people aren't quite real. In uniting a developed character with the sort of appalling abuse common in conflict, Banks makes it far more uncomfortable for the reader to keep the fiction at arms length.

What about the die-hard last few chapters? Does he get away with that? If he was writing this purely as an action sequence, sure. But does it undermine all the authenticity of the previous characterisation and setting? It is absurd for this cellist to become Schwarzenegger, much as it's gratifying for the reader to have her mete out some justice. Although he has gone to the trouble of giving her a plausible martial arts background and level of physical fitness (I don't quite know when she became so familiar with firearms though). I suppose it is a dream, but a site more powerful one than a stack of other thrillers. Also, perhaps, a dream of Banks to unite a meditative novel with an action movie.

But I suspect I enjoyed this book more in hindsight than in the reading. I like the idea of subverting the wildly common thriller format by centring it around the sort of nuanced character you expect in a `realistic' novel. Similarly I acknowledge the cleverness and self-control of his `Inversions', but, to brashly quote my own review of that book: "...I wonder if some of the pleasures for the reader have been sacrificed to Banks' ingenious if perhaps less satisfying structure..." The idea is nice, but is there a good reason these two genres are generally kept separate?

As a novel, Hisako's pre-Bruce Willis story is intellectually interesting but rarely engaging: we have a summaries of events rather than strong evocation (with some exceptions). There is a dreamlike quality to a lot of her story (as well as bona-fide dreams), and we might be surprised but are not really touched by her interactions. Few of us could empathise with her prodigy life, but the way it's told neither is there (consciously) the (hackneyed but evergreen) pleasure of a rags to riches climb.

As a thriller, well, Banks probably lost Forsyth and Follett readers before the action even starts. Even a card-carrying fan like myself found the constant time shifting irritating and forced after a while - but once Banks has decided on a structure, he won't budge. This is probably a strength and a weakness. On the one hand he undermines the thriller style with the realistic blithe massacre: in this situation people - even young Americans! - are powerless. But then he throws that realism out the window with Hisako's Hollywood vengeance.

So I don't think he's pulled off a satisfying thriller with bonus authentic characters, despite Hisako's authenticity and a tight, brutal conclusion that is as well done as any action scenes I've read. I respect the idea, I acknowledge his success in realising it, but I admire this book more than I enjoyed it.

Iain Banks first novel, The Wasp Factory, was published in 1984. In the years since, he's won critical acclaim, topped best-seller lists and has even written Science Fiction books under the cunning nom-de-plume 'Iain M. Banks'. He's also seen this book, "The Crow Road", adapted for television by the BBC in 1996. "Canal Dreams" is his fifth non sci-fi book and was first published in 1989.

The book's central character is Hisako Onoda, a world-famous cellist. As the book opens, Hisako is en-route from Japan to Europe, where she's due to perform in a series of concerts. However, as she's terrified of flying, she's making the journey by boat. Having travelled to Honolulu on the Gassam Maru, she then boarded the Nakodo - which was due to take her to Rotterdam via the Panama Canal. Unfortunately, due to `civil unrest' in the region - armed conflict between guerrilla fighters and government forces - the canal has been closed. Fro the moment, the Nakodo and two other ships are essentially trapped on Gatún Lake. Although they are hoping for the all-clear to continue their journey soon, the conflict I, unfortunately, coming closer.

There are elements of a thriller to "Canal Dreams", but the strength of the book lies in telling Hisako's story. She is a very well-developed character, though her past in only gradually given away - the book jumps backwards and forwards, looking at some of the key events of Hisako's life. It's a method that may take a little getting used to - especially if you haven't read anything by Banks before. However, for me, I felt it really added to the enjoyment of the book. Hisako's travelling companions aren't so well developed, and little is told of their lives, thoughts or motivations. However, as "Canal Dreams" doesn't set out to tell their stories this really isn't a problem - and I would absolutely recommend this book.

It's a testament to Banks' abilities that this book is even readable considering how awkward it feels. As one can see from other reviews, it's probably his least liked book, and while I didn't hate it as much as the others seem to, I'm not going to go and claim that it's his masterpiece. It has an interesting premise, a near future where involves a rather complicated seeming political situation that somehow involves the Panama canal. Why are we at the canal? Because the main character, a Japanese cello player can't bring herself to fly anywhere so she's taking a ship to Europe. The main character is probably where the trouble starts, he does his best to give her some sort of personality through loads of actually rather striking backstory (his plotting skills may be off in this book but he sure can write and pull out a memorable scene) but the character comes off as rather isolated and distant and it's never really explained why she's that way. Even with the backstory, her motivations are a bit clouded (I can understand her fear of flying but why such an extreme reaction?). Also, he keeps throwing in absolutely bizarre dream sequences that while more like most people's dream sequences (ie they make no sense) they also seem to have no relation to the action at hand which makes them interesting reading but rather irrelevant. I haven't even touched on the plot itself . . . basically during the voyage while they're stuck in the canal, a bunch of terrorists take over the ship . . . and without giving too much away it doesn't go well (he gets bonus points for an inventive use for grenades, talk about style) and our cello player suddenly turns into Bruce Willis. Then the book ends. So all the pieces are there, but they just aren't put together well. So what's good about it? The writing itself is excellent, some of his best descriptions are here and as I mentioned earlier, he has a good eye for setting a striking scene. The book itself isn't that long, which means even if you don't enjoy it, it'll be over soon, so he gets points for not dragging out something that wasn't going too well to begin with. So the book mostly succeeds in little moments, flashbacks and small scenes and the like, but when you put it all together, it doesn't hold all that well. Oh well, he can't hit it out of the park every time. Obviously not the book to go for if you're trying to introduce someone to him, it makes for a quick read on its own and there's enough decent stuff to recommend it to fans, even if they'll have no reason to read it more than once.

Surely, when Iain Banks was writing this, he realised that it wasn't working. I've read most of his other books and enjoyed all of them, but this was terrible.
Most Banks books have a likeable or at least sympathetic main character. This book didn't. It didn't even have a character you could dislike. Hisako was a middle-aged, japanese professional cello player. I'm sure we can all identify with that...
Second problem, the cast of other characters. They don't stick around long (avoiding any spoilers) and you don't really miss them when they're gone.
Third problem - the believability test. Hisako is a mild-mannered musician terrified of aeroplanes. By the end of the book she is an action hero, single-handedly killing a small army of men. Even Jack Higgins could do better than that!
Forth problem - the book is too short. Maybe the story could have worked if it had gone on a bit longer. (On the other hand, the shortness of the book was one of the few reasons why I stuck with it to the end.)
Fifth problem - a mixing of styles. It was an attempt to write a cross between a thriller and a horror story. It didn't work. And mixing paragraphs of character development and dream sequences in with the action isn't a sesnsible thing to do.

In short, this is a bad book. It should never have been published and will do no good for Banks' reputation. Read something else of his, but give this one a wide berth.