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Cuirrently about two-thirds through rereading Whit by Iain Banks, and still can't decide what I think of it. I'm enjoying it - at 450 pages, if I wasn't I'd probably have given up by now - but it suffers from something missing that I can't quite put my finger on.
Part of the problem, I think, is the same one that the Crow Road suffers from - that Banks is more interested in creating a world for us, and has hammered in a story as an after-thought, meaning that the story is overly linear, and doesn't (to use the acting parlance) fully inhabit the space for it. It is true that when I meet other Banks fans, it's rarely Whit that they get most excited about (it's most usually Complicity, I think, which probably says a lot about the people I meet).
Nonetheless, it is an enjoyable enough read, and the creation of the slightly loopy world of Luskentyrianism is very impressive. Isis herself is a good narrator, and we see enough of her personality through her eyes to make the character breathe. And, perhaps most importantly given its subject-matter, the book does make some interesting points on the subject of belief in general and organised religion in particular (an odd choice of words, in some ways, for its opposite certainly isn't "disorganised religion").
I've never not enjoyed a book by Banks (tough having said that, there are quite a few I haven't read, including his aown least favourite, Canal Dreams) - I have been left feeling disappoited by some (Dead Air, for instance, which seemed altogether too ordinary a novel for Banks) and baffled by others (Excession, I'm told, takes at least three readings to really grasp, and my knowledge of science isn't up to some of the concepts). Whit, I think, falls somewhere in the verdant but unspectacular middle-ground...
Still, provided I can get it finished before going away on Friday, that leaves Sunday free for reading one of my favourite tales, with a notebook and pencil in hand, ready to try and stitch together its sequel in the coming weeks.
Part of the problem, I think, is the same one that the Crow Road suffers from - that Banks is more interested in creating a world for us, and has hammered in a story as an after-thought, meaning that the story is overly linear, and doesn't (to use the acting parlance) fully inhabit the space for it. It is true that when I meet other Banks fans, it's rarely Whit that they get most excited about (it's most usually Complicity, I think, which probably says a lot about the people I meet).
Nonetheless, it is an enjoyable enough read, and the creation of the slightly loopy world of Luskentyrianism is very impressive. Isis herself is a good narrator, and we see enough of her personality through her eyes to make the character breathe. And, perhaps most importantly given its subject-matter, the book does make some interesting points on the subject of belief in general and organised religion in particular (an odd choice of words, in some ways, for its opposite certainly isn't "disorganised religion").
I've never not enjoyed a book by Banks (tough having said that, there are quite a few I haven't read, including his aown least favourite, Canal Dreams) - I have been left feeling disappoited by some (Dead Air, for instance, which seemed altogether too ordinary a novel for Banks) and baffled by others (Excession, I'm told, takes at least three readings to really grasp, and my knowledge of science isn't up to some of the concepts). Whit, I think, falls somewhere in the verdant but unspectacular middle-ground...
Still, provided I can get it finished before going away on Friday, that leaves Sunday free for reading one of my favourite tales, with a notebook and pencil in hand, ready to try and stitch together its sequel in the coming weeks.
