The Steep Approach to Garbadale

TLDR: This is a beautifully written novel with some content and character concerns. Read the blurb and know that the novel will contain details of the love between the protagonist and his cousin. All female characters are sexualised, there is subtle misogyny woven throughout the novel. Worth a read if you think you can handle these issues - quite beautifully written.

This book is very well written - it got me out of a major reading slump and overall just got me thinking a lot. There are some really insightful thoughts into life that resonated with me very deeply. This was my first Iain Banks' book and seeing other people call it a bad one of his, I'm excited to read more.

However, I did have some issues character and content wise. The blurb gives a pretty major content warning - do not ignore if first cousin relationships ick you out (as they should) but I knew that I could handle reading this. Towards the end, it felt very preachy (very anti-American, anti-capitalist, anti-climate change deniers) and it felt like these mini rants detracted from the plot and characterisations.

Maybe it's just how male authors sometimes end up portraying female characters but there was a lot of subtle misogyny and pretty much every single female character was sexualised (or assessed sexually - there was quite literally a paragraph from a male character's perspective evaluating his 50+ year old aunt sexually?). I hope men don't do this in real life...

Also, minor gripe but every single character is a walking stereotype, even the supposedly 'eccentric' ones fit very nearly into the eccentric stereotypes. It felt like I had already met these characters in multiple different books before but maybe that's just because this novel was published almost 20 years ago and I shouldn't evaluate it with current standards.

I think it's worth the read if you can tolerate these issues - like I mentioned, it did get me out of my reading slump and I am excited to read more lit fics! Also, I kinda sorta expected the direction of the twist so it's not a totally novel idea (pun intended)!

Maybe it's good that it's many years since I read [b:The Crow Road 12021 The Crow Road Iain Banks https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1330063373s/12021.jpg 950451]; even with all this delay I did notice some similarities. Didn't bother me too much, and I did enjoy this meandering family saga of corporate politics and well-kept family secrets. Not Iain Banks' best work, but quite delightful anyway.

The closest that he came to writing another family saga ala The Crow Road, but it isn't quite as good. The whole thing jumping back and forth through the lead characters life and the reults of his actions works really well, but the ;payoff in the final chapter feels a bit rushed and was reasonably obvious throughout the book anyway. I was actually hoping it would push the envelope a little further than it actually did. Still really enjoyed it, for books like this alone Banks will be sorely missed, let alone of the other stuff, especially the SF.