Another recently-finished book
Aug. 20th, 2007 02:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lprovenIain no-M Banks: Walking on Glass
I seem to have acquired a few "no-M" books recently. He gets lots of kudos for these; even SF-loving friends of mine evangelise them to me. People say things like "I read SF but I think Banks' non-SF is so much better than his SF". So, every few years I wade through another one.
I really do not agree. So far, I've tried:
- Complicity: a reasonable literary whodunnit with several interesting twists, but nothing special.
- The Bridge: an interesting hallucinatory fantasy with some nice touches, but well below what he's capable of.
- Canal Dreams: a load of introspective toss that I couldn't force myself to finish
- I have to include The Wasp Factory: Banks' first novel, a fascinating, horrible, horrifying novel that I managed to sneak onto my 'A'-level English Lit course by dint of its inclusion on the Booker shortlist. (I had been specifically forbidden to include any of my nasty trashy SF.) Uniquely unpleasant but a very interesting book and in some way an enjoyable read, if one or two of its nastiest images live with me still, 25+ years later, especially at 3am after rich meals.
The only one I rate at all is The Wasp Factory. The rest, I could have lived without, though The Bridge was at least interesting and moderately good fun.
Now, I have added Walking on Glass to that fairly short list.
Again, an interesting novel. I found the start unpromising but I was drawn in. The characters are all rather unsympathetic; after a while I wanted something horrible to befall all of them. I was, in some ways, thus satisfied or gratified. It has interesting writing; Banks has a knack for showing you the insides of even weird heads. I enjoyed it, somewhat. But again, I came away dissatisfied.
Banks is probably the biggest literary name in modern SF, and this seems largely because he also writes mainstream fiction. (And the wonderful, rollicking Raw Spirit, a birthday gift from Nadin, which is nonfiction and which I adored.)
And yet, his non-genre fiction leaves me cold, or at best, tepid. What do people see in this stuff?
His SF is wondrous. Vast imagination, epic scope, masterful storytelling, immaculate craftsmanship in use of language. It's great writing and it's great SF, and something that's not true of all great books, it's also really good, really fun. He loves doing it and it shows. The non-genre stuff seems to me to be a great writer showing off his pyrotechnic skill by doing something he doesn't really seriously care about and thus does not give his all to. The fact that mostly the non-genre novels are substantially shorter is another clue, I think.
Whit and Espedair Street are still on the to-be-read shelves, but I have to say, I'm not looking forward to them.
I seem to have acquired a few "no-M" books recently. He gets lots of kudos for these; even SF-loving friends of mine evangelise them to me. People say things like "I read SF but I think Banks' non-SF is so much better than his SF". So, every few years I wade through another one.
I really do not agree. So far, I've tried:
- Complicity: a reasonable literary whodunnit with several interesting twists, but nothing special.
- The Bridge: an interesting hallucinatory fantasy with some nice touches, but well below what he's capable of.
- Canal Dreams: a load of introspective toss that I couldn't force myself to finish
- I have to include The Wasp Factory: Banks' first novel, a fascinating, horrible, horrifying novel that I managed to sneak onto my 'A'-level English Lit course by dint of its inclusion on the Booker shortlist. (I had been specifically forbidden to include any of my nasty trashy SF.) Uniquely unpleasant but a very interesting book and in some way an enjoyable read, if one or two of its nastiest images live with me still, 25+ years later, especially at 3am after rich meals.
The only one I rate at all is The Wasp Factory. The rest, I could have lived without, though The Bridge was at least interesting and moderately good fun.
Now, I have added Walking on Glass to that fairly short list.
Again, an interesting novel. I found the start unpromising but I was drawn in. The characters are all rather unsympathetic; after a while I wanted something horrible to befall all of them. I was, in some ways, thus satisfied or gratified. It has interesting writing; Banks has a knack for showing you the insides of even weird heads. I enjoyed it, somewhat. But again, I came away dissatisfied.
Banks is probably the biggest literary name in modern SF, and this seems largely because he also writes mainstream fiction. (And the wonderful, rollicking Raw Spirit, a birthday gift from Nadin, which is nonfiction and which I adored.)
And yet, his non-genre fiction leaves me cold, or at best, tepid. What do people see in this stuff?
His SF is wondrous. Vast imagination, epic scope, masterful storytelling, immaculate craftsmanship in use of language. It's great writing and it's great SF, and something that's not true of all great books, it's also really good, really fun. He loves doing it and it shows. The non-genre stuff seems to me to be a great writer showing off his pyrotechnic skill by doing something he doesn't really seriously care about and thus does not give his all to. The fact that mostly the non-genre novels are substantially shorter is another clue, I think.
Whit and Espedair Street are still on the to-be-read shelves, but I have to say, I'm not looking forward to them.
