Getting into: Iain Banks

So folks it has reached that time where I must discuss a burning obsession of mine. He is a writer who for some reason I find endlessly entertaining, who creates characters I care about and genuinely makes me laugh out loud in places despite some of his work being amongst the darkest in terms of subject matter I've ever read. The problem with this is that attempting to do an objective review of any of his works would probably be a pointless exercise for me. I wouldn't want to rate anything he's ever done low because there is something about the themes he chooses and the style he employs which just click with me and I couldn't promise anybody that they would necessarily feel the same way. So instead I'm writing a "Getting into" article, designed to give people looking to check out his work a route to take in order to get straight to the best stuff. 

Note: I am only covering his works as Iain Banks this time. I will almost certainly be doing his Sci-fi under Iain M. Banks in another post.

Dipping Your Toe: The Crow Road

This is probably one of the most accessible of Banks's novels in that it follows a more "normal" and realistic story about Prentice McHoan, a man returning to his ancestral home for a funeral. It includes a colourful array of characters, some hilarious scenes and a good amount of mystery as Prentice digs around into the family's past and uncovers a few uncomfortable truths. The style, the plot and the way it is all told are all fairly typical of Banks without exposing you to anything too weird or violent. Also it features this as an opening line: "It was the day my grandmother exploded." If that doesn't convince you to try it then nothing will.

Plunging in at the Deep End: The Wasp Factory

This one is fairly notorious for producing extreme reactions in people but if you want to really see Banks at his best then this is probably the place to start. Telling the tale of a young boy with some serious psychological issues this book is rammed with violence, sadism, dark comedy and a couple of very uncomfortable scenes but it is never done without a purpose. This is not the literary equivalent of a splatter movie where the gore is the central focus. Instead it is a precision strike aimed directly at certain contemporary values and has something very serious to say. The premise is genius, the first person narration convincing and the ending incredibly satisfying. Not for the squeamish!

Drifting a Little Deeper: Complicity

This is novel is a little tougher than most of Banks's work. The critical reaction wasn't quite as extreme as it was to The Wasp Factory but by then violence was expected of Banks. In many ways this is an even more uncomfortable read as it explores the complicity of its characters, and of society in general, by using second person narrative to describe a serious of particularly brutal murders. It's a clever trick which works very well but would still mean nothing if the rest of the novel wasn't so well constructed. A murder mystery with something more to it than simply working out who the bad guy is.

Into the Depths: The Bridge

This is probably Banks's most complex novel. It is about a man in a coma existing in a kind of strange mechanised fantasy world known only as The Bridge but this is not all. There are further levels to this fantasy world, dreams within a dream where he experiences life as a barbarian swordsman as well as experiencing vague memories of his pre-coma life. The book is multi-layered and saturated in symbolism, stylistic experimentation, oblique references and generic blending making for a potentially confusing read if you aren't paying attention but if you're willing to put in the time the depth involved makes it a very rewarding experience. I've read it twice already and will be returning to it again and again in the future I'm sure.

Ones to avoid:

I'm hesitant to class any of Banks's novels as bad but there are a few which don't serve as a very good introduction to his work. Walking on Glass is an experimental novel which Banks himself feels he didn't quite pull off so it's really more for established fans. Canal Dreams and The Business are also weaker efforts which don't quite live up to the rest of Banks's bibliography.