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AUTHOR : Iain Banks
PUBLICATION DATE : 2007
No. PAGES : 390
CATEGORY : Fiction
GEOGRAPHICAL SETTING : Scotland
TIME PERIOD : Contemporary
PLOT SUMMARY : The Wopuld family have built their fortune on a board game called EMPIRE which has also done well as a computer game and an American company, Spraint, want to buy them out. A big family gathering is called, coinciding with the birthday of the family matriarch, Win, at the family's Scottish estate, Garbadale.
Alban, who dropped out of the family business some years ago but who still has voting rights, thinks the American bid should be treated with suspicion and aims to see if he can persuade the family to his way of thinking. But returning to Garbadale has Alban thinking about other things too. What was it that drove his mother to take her own life? And has he ever really got over Sophie, the cousin he had a teenage love affair?
COMMENTS : Alban's story unfolds with flashbacks and revelations by dotty aunts and there is a wonderful twist at the end. Family secrets, divisions and machinations are deftly described with a wee dig at corporate America. There are a couple of puzzling chapters narrated in Scots (hooray!) by Alban's flatmate in Aberdeen but overall this was a good enough read to have me looking to read more by Iain Banks (who also writes SciFi as Iain M. Banks).
NAME OF REVIEWER : Alba
PUBLICATION DATE : 2007
No. PAGES : 390
CATEGORY : Fiction
GEOGRAPHICAL SETTING : Scotland
TIME PERIOD : Contemporary
PLOT SUMMARY : The Wopuld family have built their fortune on a board game called EMPIRE which has also done well as a computer game and an American company, Spraint, want to buy them out. A big family gathering is called, coinciding with the birthday of the family matriarch, Win, at the family's Scottish estate, Garbadale.
Alban, who dropped out of the family business some years ago but who still has voting rights, thinks the American bid should be treated with suspicion and aims to see if he can persuade the family to his way of thinking. But returning to Garbadale has Alban thinking about other things too. What was it that drove his mother to take her own life? And has he ever really got over Sophie, the cousin he had a teenage love affair?
COMMENTS : Alban's story unfolds with flashbacks and revelations by dotty aunts and there is a wonderful twist at the end. Family secrets, divisions and machinations are deftly described with a wee dig at corporate America. There are a couple of puzzling chapters narrated in Scots (hooray!) by Alban's flatmate in Aberdeen but overall this was a good enough read to have me looking to read more by Iain Banks (who also writes SciFi as Iain M. Banks).
NAME OF REVIEWER : Alba
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