The Steep Approach to Garbadale
by Iain Banks
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Book Summary Information
Author: Iain BanksEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2007-10-05
ISBN: 1596923032
Number of pages: 390
Publisher: MacAdam/Cage
Book Reviews of The Steep Approach to Garbadale
Book Review: Skilled writing for a pretty slender plot with clumsily overt politics
Summary: 3 Stars
I think Iain Banks is a very talented writer. The characters in this book are quite alive and breathing in a world that seems about as crazy as our own. He is an author capable of great brilliance as this famous passage from the book shows:
"The block's glass-and-metal door looks like people have thrown up on it and then tried to rinse off the mess by pissing all over it. This obviously didn't work because apparently then they tried setting it on fire."
That is vivid, funny, and sticks in the memory, especially when you read it in context.
Banks also captures the shallow narcissism of these very modern characters. Verushka Graef and Alban McGill are in what passes for a love relationship these days. It is certainly strong in lust components, but has only a touch of emotional connection. Maybe you will find it wonderfully touching, but I found it disturbing. After explaining to Alban that she never wants kids, and probably won't even want to settle down, Verushka explains how she loves him: "'I love being with you.' She says this quite quietly. `I miss you. When you're away, and the phone rings, always I hope it's you. Every time. Just in a small way, but always.'"
Other than the confused adolescent passion between Alban and Sophie, this is about as deep as the adult emotions go in this book. If this is the author's view of love in the real world, well, I feel sorry for him. This is a pretty weak example of human connection. But I guess it makes it easier to have lots of sex partners if you don't get too involved with anyone specific. You know, no vows or sacraments to ignore.
Then we get to the parts of the book where I believe either the author is putting his own political philosophy into the mouths of the characters or Banks is much more subtle an ironist than I give him credit for. Here, Alban is talking to his father, Andy, about a conversation they had years earlier:
"We got to talking about how some people were selfish and some weren't, and the difference between right-wing people and left-wing people. You said it came down to imagination. Conservative people don't usually have very much, so they find it hard to imagine what life is like for people who aren't like them. They can only empathise with people just they are: the same sex, the same age, the same class, the same golf club or nation or race or whatever. Liberals can pretty much empathise with anybody else, no matter how different they are. It's all to do with imagination; empathy and imagination are almost the same thing, and it's why artists, creative people are almost all liberals, left-leaning."
And so on. This is such a stupid view of the world that it doesn't really deserve comment. If you were to put similarly bigoted and small-minded words in the mouth of a conservative, the idiocy would be obvious to everyone.
So, what is this story about? Alban is a member of the younger generation of a family that has lived off the popular game "Empire!" that was created by its greatest ancestor, Henry Wopuld in 1880. While the game has been wildly popular all around the world, its fortunes have not been smooth. It took Henry awhile to get a version for America and other countries that sold well. Not long ago the family was on hard financial times and they sold 25% of the company to an American firm called Spraint. Alban was against it, and when the family went ahead with the sale he sold most of his shares back to the family trust and split to cut down trees in Wales.
When the video game version of "Empire!" came along, it became more popular than ever and Spraint now wants to buy the other 75% of the firm. Alban's cousin, Fielding, tracks him down to a shabby apartment in a council tract (public housing) in Scotland. Fielding wants Alban to come back and lead the charge against the sale. The rest of the story builds up to the Extraordinary General Meeting where the family's various factions have it out. It is Alban's memories of his family, his confused passion for his cousin Sophie, and his mother's suicide that he wrestles with on his way back to the family estate, Garbadale. And it is this coming back to reconcile his difficult past with the present that constitutes the steep approach.
It seems quite clear to me that Alban is standing in for Albion, the ancient England that I suppose Banks feels has been lost and its remnants are being sold off to America (which comes in for much predictable bashing in the book). While I am sure that some of the symbolism is lost on me because I don't know enough about daily life and politics in Scotland and the UK, much of the story does seem to be a parable of sorts. You know, the real British Empire is now reduced to a cardboard game or a cartoonish video game. And it is all being sold out to America. That sort of thing. Not exactly Swiftian, but I guess it will have to do for us in 2007.
I do appreciate Banks' talent and his political views (he is Green Party, which is roughly equivalent to the MoveOn and Daily Kos crowd in the US), don't really affect my appreciation of the story. However, I am not really the audience for this book and am not in sympathy with its substance. These characters speak very crudely, but so do many modern people. However, I don't and neither do my friends. And the sex lives of these characters (there is not enough emotional substance to talk about love lives, really) seem awfully shallow. More like rutting animals that seem bewildered about the urge. Either you deny that actual human love exists, or you have to admit that these characters are quite clueless. In any case, actual adult love never shows up here.
However, you may very well be the right audience and I very much hope you enjoy the story.
Reviewed by Craig Matteson, Ann Arbor, MI
Summary of The Steep Approach to Garbadale
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.World Literature Books
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