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benny_n's review against another edition
3.0
This is a really well-written book that cracks through a familiar Banksian world of flashbacks, parties and awkward encounters, hitting some familiar themes and beats. I enjoyed it but I'd describe it as a comfort read for Banks fans not a challenging or surprising one.
reading_on_the_road's review against another edition
4.0
Anyone who has ever briefly returned to the small town they grew up in and found everything to be more or less exactly as they left it will find a lot to enjoy in this novel. Would have been 5 stars but for a few annoyingly unanswered questions.
jeremyhornik's review against another edition
2.0
I think I might have read this before? Anyway, I usually like Iain Banks but this time I wasn’t feeling it. Not BAD exactly, but I just never connected.
chukg's review against another edition
4.0
Good book, a little more low-key than some of his other stuff (kind of basically a love story with some complications). It's more the individual moments than the plot as a whole that make this good, vividly drawn characters and setting.
cupstobroil's review
first of all it was a library book and i was going on vacation but i couldnt read more because it was so hard to understand the dialect (as an american) which was probably half the text i had read up to that point so it took from the story. it would make sense to someone who is from there or near people who talk like that but since im not exposed to Irish culture it was just difficult to read.
rufferto's review against another edition
4.0
A grower. But a very enjoyable one. Read the last two hundred pages in one sitting. Couldn't put it down.
elisabethbeck's review against another edition
adventurous
emotional
funny
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.75
ahmad_adnan's review against another edition
4.0
Amazing writing skills, it makes hocked from the first page. And the way he described places are out of this world, which let fell that your standing next to the main character.
The most thing that i loved in this book, how the narrator takes you back and forth in his memories smoothly.
Highly recommended
The most thing that i loved in this book, how the narrator takes you back and forth in his memories smoothly.
Highly recommended
house_of_scatha's review
4.0
Great book. Sharp and enjoyable even when you feel on familiar ground of Banks's work: dealing with friends, love, drugs, morality and truth versus the lies of society, the law, and (in this case), the criminal underworld.
It can't make as much impact to me as The Crow Road and Complicity --- but that is because of the age I read them and the impact on me as a reader. But this book had me hooked, and dragged me along, and slyly, at the end, although there is a denouement, all the conspiracies of the past are NOT explained in all their glory. And the nice thing is that it doesn't matter that there wasn't an explanation of every characters action and reaction.
It can't make as much impact to me as The Crow Road and Complicity --- but that is because of the age I read them and the impact on me as a reader. But this book had me hooked, and dragged me along, and slyly, at the end, although there is a denouement, all the conspiracies of the past are NOT explained in all their glory. And the nice thing is that it doesn't matter that there wasn't an explanation of every characters action and reaction.
litdoes's review
2.0
A young man, Stewart, returns to the small town that he grew up in to attend the funeral of an elder of an influential and shady family and revisits old wounds and the act of indiscretion that causes him to leave his childhood home in the first place. The premise is interesting enough, but the patchy writing and stilted dialogue are letdowns to an otherwise promising story.
Perhaps Banks tries too hard to make the setting and the youth of the protagonist credible - e.g. isn't it always the young ones who lament that they are old? and therefore incessant instances of characters who hurl themselves over bridges or are misfits, and a little off-the-hinge. However, Banks is no Brett Easton Ellis or Chuck Palahniuk, and he fails to convince us that the characters are as conflicted as they claim to be, perhaps because they lack strong, plausible motivation to be the way they are. There is also overly enthusiastic (and unnecessary) references to modern tech gadgetry, which shows up the writer's anxiety to remind the reader that the characters are truly of the 21st century.
The spurts of caustic humour that dot the exchanges between Stewart and his gay/bisexual friend Ferg (his sexuality a character trait that the writer throws up presumably to titillate rather than illuminate) doesn't sound authentic when they seem to head nowhere. Most of the action of the novel takes place over a weekend, and there are numerous chance meetings with old school friends and meetings at pubs and someone's house, where above-mentioned stilted dialogue takes place.
To Banks's credit, there are some spots of brilliance when he tries to draw out an action sequence - eg at the pool room when Stewart is accosted by some ruffians, but unfortunately it becomes tedious, rather than engaging in the way perhaps another Brit author, Ian McEwan, styles his prolonged moments of suspense.
In brief, Stewart is embroiled with a druglord in a small town through his entanglement with the druglord's daughters, but Banks fails to keep the reader's interest when there is a whole host of other characters who make little impression, and who appear to assemble and disperse for no observable reason but for them to be there just in order for the protagonist to relate to in order for some action to take place. This is most apparent in what is supposed to be an explosive, violent climax near the end of the book.
I must say I am disappointed by this novel, when I had high hopes from such a prolific author.
Perhaps Banks tries too hard to make the setting and the youth of the protagonist credible - e.g. isn't it always the young ones who lament that they are old? and therefore incessant instances of characters who hurl themselves over bridges or are misfits, and a little off-the-hinge. However, Banks is no Brett Easton Ellis or Chuck Palahniuk, and he fails to convince us that the characters are as conflicted as they claim to be, perhaps because they lack strong, plausible motivation to be the way they are. There is also overly enthusiastic (and unnecessary) references to modern tech gadgetry, which shows up the writer's anxiety to remind the reader that the characters are truly of the 21st century.
The spurts of caustic humour that dot the exchanges between Stewart and his gay/bisexual friend Ferg (his sexuality a character trait that the writer throws up presumably to titillate rather than illuminate) doesn't sound authentic when they seem to head nowhere. Most of the action of the novel takes place over a weekend, and there are numerous chance meetings with old school friends and meetings at pubs and someone's house, where above-mentioned stilted dialogue takes place.
To Banks's credit, there are some spots of brilliance when he tries to draw out an action sequence - eg at the pool room when Stewart is accosted by some ruffians, but unfortunately it becomes tedious, rather than engaging in the way perhaps another Brit author, Ian McEwan, styles his prolonged moments of suspense.
In brief, Stewart is embroiled with a druglord in a small town through his entanglement with the druglord's daughters, but Banks fails to keep the reader's interest when there is a whole host of other characters who make little impression, and who appear to assemble and disperse for no observable reason but for them to be there just in order for the protagonist to relate to in order for some action to take place. This is most apparent in what is supposed to be an explosive, violent climax near the end of the book.
I must say I am disappointed by this novel, when I had high hopes from such a prolific author.