A Song of Stone: A Novel (Paperback)

~ Iain Banks (Author) "Winter always was my favourite season..." (more)
Key Phrases: burning van, tall truck, Long Room

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

This brutal tale starts in a bleak, brutal European any-war. Abel and Morgan live in a forboding castle, alone and isolated, until the conflict intrudes on their numb lives in the form of a cruel mercenary lieutenant and her violent, ravaging men who take up residence. From there, the tale disintegrates into darkness and atrocity, punctuated by Abel's memories of earlier joy and pain. Iain Banks pushes the story steadily downward, dragging the morbidly fascinated reader into the depths of human despair. Gang rape, torture, and incest are seen through Abel's uncaring eyes--this book is not for the squeamish. And although Banks strives for a Passion play in the end, what's missing is even the tiniest kernel of real redemption. Fans of The Wasp Factory and Banks's other non-science fiction works will find familiar details here, but A Song of Stone stands alone as a fable of hopelessness. --Therese Littleton

From Publishers Weekly

"This could be any place or time," observes the narrator of this near-future fable, summing up the universality of its antiwar sentiments. Although vague in the details of geography and history, Banks's latest U.S. release (after Excession) is sharp and perceptive in its philosophical exploration of the dehumanizing potential of armed conflict. Set in a Brechtian landscape of revolution and depleted resources, it follows the tribulations of Abel, an aristocrat forced to billet Lieutenant Lute and her guerrilla army in his castle. Initially, the two treat each other with a strained civility that allows Abel to gloat secretly at the profane hordes who "commonise... what should be free from vulgar threat." As the battle draws threateningly nearer, the pretense of mutual respect dissolves and Abel finds the increasingly barbaric behavior of his captors resonating with a savagery in his own soul. Like J.G. Ballard and Anthony Burgess, Banks is a visionary whose depictions of the strange forms morality, politics and social relationships assume under the pressure of extreme circumstances fall almost by default into the realm of science fiction and horror. His impeccable prose undulates with a poetry and sensuality that transform the most ordinary movements of his tale into resonant images of beauty and terror. In less skilled hands, Abel's reluctant acknowledgment of his class's complicity in the despoliation of the country might have been just another war-is-hell story. Banks makes it the fulcrum of an emotionally intense odyssey of self-revelation. (Sept.) FYI: Simon & Schuster will simultaneously reissue Banks's first novel, The Wasp Factory (1984), in trade paper.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster; 1st U.S. edition edition (September 10, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0684853531
• ISBN-13: 978-0684853536
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (39 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #2,112,274 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Boring rubbish, October 23, 2000

By	Marty (Sydney) - See all my reviews

Although the use of language is most eloquent, the story doesn't go anywhwere. What story there might be is interrupted by chapters about the main character's sex life, which couldn't possibly be more out of context. This is one of the worst books I've ever read. I stuck to the end, even on the last chapter hoping there would be some redemption. But there wasn't. Not only that but it is a very dark and depressing story, to which I failed to see any point.

Loved The Wasp Factory, The Bridge, Complicity. Hated this one and Whit.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Least impressive Banks' book I've read so far..., February 9, 1999

By	P. Robert Paustian "P. Robert Paustian" (Whitehall, Pennsylvania, USA) - See all my reviews

While Ian Banks is one of the most interesting writers I've come across in the last few years, unfortunately "A Song of Stone" is one of the least engaging novels I've ever finished. Muted, yet overwrought, this tale of dissolution is less shocking than turgid. The extended and tedious stretches of "purple prose" in this disappointing book, which were apparently consciously intended to embody the self-absorbed and effete mental state of the protagonist and narrator, did little but lose my flagging interest repeatedly. Coyly lurid, and basically quite unsatisfying, this dim variation on an apocalyptic, Road Warrior-ish theme goes nowhere and then dies...Read anything else by Banks before or instead of "A Song of Stone". Though I do rather enthusiastically recommend Banks as an author, I can't in good conscience give thumbs up to this book.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Avoid this wretched book., May 16, 1998

By	Doug Muir ([e-mail]) (Thailand) - See all my reviews

Let me start by saying that I'm normally a fairly big fan of author Banks stuff, both SF and mainstream. So I brought some expectations to this book. Rarely have I been so miserably disappointed. ? Overall this seemed like a dumbed-down version of "Canal Dreams", a war story by someone who has never been in a war, but thinks it's A Bad Thing, but "Dreams" was vastly the better book. Why? Well, for starters, there is not a single remotely sympathetic character in the book... well, okay, I could live with that. Banks indulges in his usual wholesale torture and slaughter, with characters being dropped down wells and then p***d on, gang-raped and then dangled into a moat to drown, and decapitated by millstones; well, okay, I'm not squeamish. If Banks wants to show us a bleak war scene, where ugly decadence meets uglier barbarism, all right; ugly can be interesting. But what broke me, what made this book an utter chore to read, was that it *wasn't* interesting. One dislikes the characters and so feels no sympathy for the various nasty things that happen to them. Worse yet, Banks writes in the first person, and the protagonist's narrative voice is almost unbearably tedious. I know Banks can write crisp, clever, interesting prose, but in this book he has chosen not to. He seems to have been trying to write a Kafkaesque parable of war and decadence (all geographical and temporal references are quite pointedly omitted; the story could be taking place anywhere in Europe in the present or near future), but the unnecessarily convoluted language destroys any chance of success. Another problem is that Banks seems to have written a war story without bothering to learn about war. In one scene, an artillery piece shells the castle to no great effect; the next day, the soldiers in the castle sortie out to where the shots came from, ambush the artillery crew, and capture the piece. Right... the crew, having fired a few shots to announce their presence (but not enough to do any real! damage), and having no air support or other protection, just sat there for a day? Uh huh. Oh, and there are some minor irritants -- a villain who talks American English while everyone else seems to be speaking English English; flashbacks to the narrator's misspent youth that have no relevance at all to the rest of the book; a female character who almost never talks but is inexplicably the object of much desire... oh, I could go on, but why bother? I can deal with Banks writing an ugly book -- hey, I loved "The Wasp Factory" -- but an ugly, boring, and stupid book, no. Do yourself a favor, and don't waste your time with this one.