The Steep Approach to Garbadale - Softcover

Banks, Iain

3.7

5,550 ratings by Goodreads

9781596923034: The Steep Approach to Garbadale

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1596923032 ISBN 13: 9781596923034

Publisher: MacAdam/Cage, 2007

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Dark family secrets, a long-lost love affair and a multi-million pound gaming business lie at the heart of Iain Banks' fabulous new novel. The Wopuld family built its fortune on a board game called Empire! now a hugely successful computer game. So successful, the American Spraint Corp wants to buy the firm out. Young renegade Alban, who has been evading the family clutches for years, is run to ground and persuaded to attend the forthcoming family gathering - part birthday party, part Extraordinary General Meeting - convened by Win, Wopuld matriarch and most powerful member of the board, at Garbadale, the family's highland castle. Being drawn back into the bosom of the clan brings an inevitable and disconcerting confrontation with Alban's past. What drove his mother to take her own life? And is he yet ready to see Sophie, his beautiful, enchanting cousin and teenage love, at the EGM Grandmother Win's revelations will radically alter Alban's perspective for ever.

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About the Author:

Iain Banks sprang to widespread public notice with the publication of his first novel The Wasp Factory in 1984. Since then he has gained enormous and popular critical acclaim in his native UK with further works of fiction and science fiction. In 1993 he was acknowledge as on the Best British Young Writers. Both The Crow Road and Complicity have been adapted for television in the UK.

From Publishers Weekly:

The latest offering from Banks (The Wasp Factory) gives a scion's-eye view of an eccentric, splintering Scottish business family. Having secured immense wealth via the Empire! board game (invented by a relative in 1880) and its various offshoots, the Wopuld family must now decide whether to sell the company: the American Spraint Corporation wants Empire! as a jewel in its crown. As the family gathers to celebrate matriarch Grandma Win's 80th birthday and have a board meeting, Win dispatches grandson Fielding to find his cousin Alban, who has fled the family to become a forester, in order to solidify her vision of the family legacy. Banks flashes back through Alban's painful memories of his mother (who committed suicide) and his cousin Sophie (whom he loved) as he heads home. The book contains a plethora of family secrets, none of which fully drive the plot, but the gothic setting, big passions and light humor suffice. Bank's 23rd book isn't his best, but it carries one all the way up its craggy steeps. (Oct.)
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