Books Read: 23 of 52 in '08
I prefer Banks writing Science Fiction, so decided to wait for Garbadale to come out in paperback. Which it did.
I bought this a while ago, and decided to save it for my holiday by the sea (in February, for fucks sake!). So buying Matter was a no-brainer when I saw it. Then I decided I could not read two Banks back to back, so left this till last.
Most reviewers compare this favourably with The Crow Road, reckoned (by the same reviewers) to be his best work to date. I would disagree with that, but not with this being a fuck of a good read.
I suspect Iain must have come from a more privileged background than your average person. I know from his whiskey book (yes, he got paid for travelling around Scotland visiting all - ALL - the distilleries then writing a book about it. Why can't this sort of thing happen to me! Cos I can't write for shite - got it) that he thinks nothing of spending £100 on a bottle of wine (that might not be an accurate figure, but it's close. Whatever figure it was, I went WFT! For ONE bottle! so you get the gist) and his depiction of people with money reads like the sort of true you get from living it growing up, not just acquiring the dosh later in life.
And that is the story here. Should a family sell the family shares for a large (very large) amount of cash, or not. There is the sub-plot of maternal suicide and the working out of a teenage love affair to puzzle over.
Loved it.
From the cover: 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 living wild and evading the family tentacles for years, is run to ground and persuaded to attend the forthcoming gathering - part birthday celebration, part Extraordinary General Meeting - convened by Win, the Wopuld matriarch and most powerful member of the board.
Alban, at first reluctant to involve himself in the buyout, increasingly thinks Spraint Corp and its executives, Fromlax and Feaguing, should be treated with suspicion. But he also has other things on his mind. Being drawn back into the bosom of the clan brings inevitable and disconcerting confrontation with his past. What drove his mother to take her own life? And is he yet over Sophie, his beautiful enchanting cousin and teenage love? Grandmother Win's revelations will radically alter Alban's perspective for ever.
I am confused. When I went to the website to lift the cover blurb, rather than typing it in, I noticed Garbadale was released on 28th February in paperback. So how the fuck did I have the book in Great Yarmouth on 15th February, then? Huh? I is not mad.
