Dark family secrets, a long-lost love affair and a multi-million pound gaming business lie at the heart of Iain Banks' fabulous new novel. The Wopuld family built its fortune on a board game called Empire! now a hugely successful computer game. So successful, the American Spraint Corp wants to buy the firm out. Young renegade Alban, who has been evading the family clutches for years, is run to ground and persuaded to attend the forthcoming family gathering - part birthday party, part Extraordinary General Meeting - convened by Win, Wopuld matriarch and most powerful member of the board, at Garbadale, the family's highland castle. Being drawn back into the bosom of the clan brings an inevitable and disconcerting confrontation with Alban's past. What drove his mother to take her own life? And is he yet ready to see Sophie, his beautiful, enchanting cousin and teenage love, at the EGM Grandmother Win's revelations will radically alter Alban's perspective for ever.
The Steep Approach to Garbadale
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Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
The latest offering from Banks (The Wasp Factory) gives a scion's-eye view of an eccentric, splintering Scottish business family. Having secured immense wealth via the Empire! board game (invented by a relative in 1880) and its various offshoots, the Wopuld family must now decide whether to sell the company: the American Spraint Corporation wants Empire! as a jewel in its crown. As the family gathers to celebrate matriarch Grandma Win's 80th birthday and have a board meeting, Win dispatches grandson Fielding to find his cousin Alban, who has fled the family to become a forester, in order to solidify her vision of the family legacy. Banks flashes back through Alban's painful memories of his mother (who committed suicide) and his cousin Sophie (whom he loved) as he heads home. The book contains a plethora of family secrets, none of which fully drive the plot, but the gothic setting, big passions and light humor suffice. Bank's 23rd book isn't his best, but it carries one all the way up its craggy steeps. (Oct.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
Review
Still a master. Banks's evocation of the tortures and travails of first love is moving and lyrical. --Independent UK
Banks still has the ability to make the reader smile with pleasure --Scotland on Sunday
Banks is at his best in moments of high drama with extremes of human emotions. --Observer UK
Banks still has the ability to make the reader smile with pleasure --Scotland on Sunday
Banks is at his best in moments of high drama with extremes of human emotions. --Observer UK
Banks still has the ability to make the reader smile with pleasure --Scotland on Sunday
Banks is at his best in moments of high drama with extremes of human emotions. --Observer UK
Banks still has the ability to make the reader smile with pleasure --Scotland on Sunday
Banks is at his best in moments of high drama with extremes of human emotions. --Observer UK
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Toy Story,
By
This review is from: The Steep Approach to Garbadale (Paperback)
Since we share a common language and cultural heritage, you'd think Americans and Brits would see the world the same way. Well, we don't, and that's the point of Iain Banks' wry and clever take on globalization and its discontents. This novel celebrates the thorny particularity of its English and Scottish characters, pitting them against the seductions of American-style global capitalism. Alban McGill is a member of the Wopuld family. For over a century, the Wopulds have made a nice living selling the Victorian-era board game Empire! (it resembles Risk) first in cardboard and then in electronic form. When an American videogame company lobs in a bid to buy out the Wopulds, Alban's grandmother, Win, the iron-willed matriarch who runs the company, summons the clan for a meeting at Garbadale, the family estate in Scotland. Alban's conflicted about the sale. The family can't resist so much money, he thinks, but should resist American cultural hegemony on general principles. He's even more conflicted about the Wopuld family: when he was two, his mother killed herself by wading into the loch at Garbadale wearing a stone-filled coat; he has unresolved feelings for his cousin Sophie, with whom he had an adolescent love affair; he climbed the ladder in the family firm, only to lose heart in his early thirties and resign. Since then he's drifted, working as a forester, intermittently touching down in the bed of Verushka, the quirky Glasgow mathematician he may even love, and vaguely trying to align his life with his leftish political sentiments. Banks writes a tight, colloquial prose that deftly captures the inner worlds of Alban and his compatriots. The messy aftermath of Alban and Cousin Sophie's teenage affair is told with a graceful emotional restraint that seems to be the peculiar province of British writers. And he's perceptive about the difficulties of getting a proper emotional grip on a corporate job. Alban wants meaning from his work, but sees that capitalist firms, family-run or otherwise, often squeeze out meaning while they're squeezing out profits. After meeting up with his cousin Fielding, Alban makes a half-hearted attempt to organize family opposition to the Spraint Corporation's buyout offer. The story climaxes at the Garbadale gathering and there the tumblers of the plot click smoothly into place. Alban resolves his feelings for Sophie and figures out what Verushka means to him. The family votes on the sale. When Win unwraps the mystery surrounding the death of Alban's mother, a well-prepared-for plot shock is nicely delivered. Two Spraint executives arrive to convince the family to accept their bid for the company. Unlike the nuanced portraits of the Wopulds and Alban's Scottish mates, the Americans are caricatures. The senior executive is a platitude-spouting capitalist tool; his underling is a born-again, right-wing supporter of America's intervention in Iraq. In his interactions with them, Alban becomes a sock-puppet for Banks' views on global capitalism, the environment, monotheism and the Iraq war. While Banks' frustration with the state of the world is understandable, his loss of writerly sang-froid is somewhat shocking in a novel and a novelist otherwise so accomplished. These political rants mar the novel, but they don't harm it unduly because the particulars of Alban's struggles and the world Banks is trying to honor are crafted with such skill and care. I'm sure many Americans would be happy to sit down with Banks over a pint and commiserate on the damage Americans are doing in the world. Perhaps he'd discover that Brits and Americans can make common cause after all.
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Inconsistently entertaining,
By Nef (Urban east coast, USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Steep Approach to Garbadale (Paperback)
I have given this book three stars to denote that, for me, it was engaging enough that I would read it if again given the chance, but that I would not buy it/add it to my library.
Plot Summary: Alban, member of a family in the board game business, is conflicted about the family line of work, the family itself, and life and love in general. But the prospect of selling out to a foreign corporation reactivates Alban's interest in both the family business and his relationships with its members. Successful elements: 1. Light, funny, skillful writing. Each of the characters' regional accents and personalities are distinctly and deftly developed. The general tone is humorous, a fact perhaps obscured by publicity describing the book as "gothic" (incest subplots and a castle-like estate do not alone constitute "gothic"). A few times, the narrator's voice--always from the POV of one of the characters--even ventures into trenchant social observation. 2. An eccentric cast of characters. From the convincingly conflicted and low-key Alban to his Eastern European-Scottish mathematician love interest and an assortment of elderly relations ranging from tipsy old ladies to shrewd family matriarch, all of the characters interest and engage. 3. An interesting premise. The idea of a family empire built on a Monopoly-like game called, well, Empire! and the subplots involving the business, a young mother's mysterious death, and Alban's obsession with his cousin/teen sweetheart Sophie are all rich with possibility. Problematic elements: 1.Convoluted use of tense and time. Some writers like to play with these aspects, and more power to them--but it's a hard task a writer sets herself or himself, and Banks does not entirely rise to the challenge. It is unclear whether Banks is arbitrarily flinging us between present situations delivered via immediate past tense (3rd person); long past situations delivered in present tense; recently past situations delivered sometimes in past and other times in present; and so forth, OR whether Banks has a complex writerly plan of which the reader is sadly unaware. Either way, the final product is less coherent than is comfortable or desirable, and thus less capable of consistently engaging the reader's interest. 2. An end "twist" almost self-parodic in its dimensions. Grandma Win's final revelations were not so much unexpected (given the related themes made explicit throughout the novel) as over-the-top, perhaps precisely *because* of the subtler thematic elements that precede it. Even worse, Alban's reaction is mild in the extreme, sort of an "oh well" in the face of news that would send most people into a (second) existential crisis. The book ends a few short pages later, with this aspect and its impact on all the characters left unexplored. The reader is left to shrug and say, "Those crazy Wopulds!" 3.Alban's passionate political opinions inserted for the first time, bizarrely, in the last few chapters--pages, even. Banks has not set us up for Alban's political rants at the end of the novel. Until this point, Alban has been a drifter, both emotionally and employment-wise. No one could accuse him of being a social traditionalist, but there is very little discussion of any leftist/progressive political beliefs, or atheistic/irreligious convictions he might have. Further, the laid-back Alban seems to be more of an observer and less of a muscular debater or asserter. The rants are shocking in their unprecedented, out-of-character nature. The theme of imperialism--both old-style European and the perception of a new American sort--is present both in the takeover plotline and even the Scottish family's relationship to specific former colonies in Asia. It is thus not out-of-context for a Wopuld family member to profess these views; it is simply inconsistent with Alban's previous characterization to place him on the soapbox at the very end. These flaws are not fatal to one's enjoyment of the novel, however, they do detract from the overall experience, and make one feel, as I did upon finishing, that one has invested time and attention in an experience that is less than satisfactory. I would recommend this book to people interested in humorous skewerings of family life; books about disillusioned young people; or contemporary Scottish settings in general. If you are like me (with too little shelf space), I would borrow or check out the book before buying it; it will not be a repeat read for me.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Not Quite The Crow Road, But....,
By Mike Fazey (Perth, Western Australia) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Steep Approach to Garbadale (Paperback)
This book hasn't been reviewed too kindly, but I actually enjoyed it quite a lot. I'm a long-time Banks reader and, though I don't much like his SF, his literary fiction always gives me something to think about.
True, it's not as good as some of his earlier novels, but I found myself liking the protagonist, Alban, very much. He's a kind of black sheep who has all but abandoned the family business, but finds himself enmeshed in the debate about the proposed American buy-out as an advocate for not selling. For Alban, who owns so few shares that his voting power is virtually irrelevant, it's a matter of principle. Alban is very much a lefty and resents the commercial imperialism of the Americans. That resentment comes to the fore near the end of the book, when he lets fly at one of the (admittedly stereotypical) American executives about everything he hates about American politics and foreign policy. It's not subtle, but it adds a political dimension to the way you interpret the book. Indeed, you could read it as a leftist political statement against US imperialism - at least partly. Interlaced with the business stuff is the family stuff, notably Alban's obsession with his cousin Sophie. Yes, it's a little soapy, but I found it quite fascinating. The family story is told through narrative that jumps backwards and forwards in time. Time-jumping can be annoying if not done well, and I think Banks does it well enough here. I didn't find it obtrusive or confusing. For me, it progressively built layers of complexity that illuminated the family dynamics. Certainly the novel has its flaws, but nonetheless, I think it's Banks' best effort since Complicity.
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