The Business - Softcover

Banks, Iain

3.51

6,946 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0349112452 ISBN 13: 9780349112459

Publisher: Time Warner Books Uk, 2000

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Kate Telman is a senior executive officer in The Business, a powerful and massively discreet transglobal organisation. Financially transparent, internally democratic and disavowing conventional familial inheritance, the character of The Business seems, even to Kate, to be vague to the point of invisibility. It possesses, allegedly, a book of Leonardo cartoons, several sets of Crown Jewels and wants to buy its own State in order to acquire a seat at the United Nations.

Kate's job is to keep abreast of current technological developments and her global reach encompasses Silicon Valley, a ranch in Nebraska, the firm's secretive Swiss headquarters, and a remote Himalayan principality. In the course of her journey Kate must peel away layers of emotional insulation and the assumptions of a lifetime. She must learn to keep her world at arm's length.

To take control, she has to do The Business.

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Review:

Iain Banks is a multi-generic, multi-task dream. On one hand, he's produced a series of science fiction novels (Feersum Endjinn, Inversions) that have achieved cult status in his native Britain. On the other hand, he has dipped into the world of contemporary fiction with a number of equally successful works (The Bridge, Complicity). Fans of both rely on Banks's acidic wit, elegantly clever prose, and sometimes befuddling but always fascinating plot twists.

The Business, a sly satire of corporate success, begins with every promise of fulfilling those standards. Kathryn Telman, "a senior executive officer, third level (counting from the top) in a commercial organization which has had many different names through the ages but which, these days, we usually just refer to as the Business," has been selected to negotiate the Business's purchase of the sovereign state of Thulahn (where "the royal palace is heated by yak dung" and the "national sport is emigration"). Corporate takeovers are small potatoes compared to the acquisition of an entire country, and Kathryn's politely scheming superiors have set their sights on a seat at the United Nations and the "unrestricted use of that perfect smuggling route called the diplomatic bag."

Kathryn's voice, at once polished and gritty, is the novel's strongest point. Her wry dissections of the Business, its motives and ambitions, its members, and the delightful irony of negotiating with Thulahn's crown prince (who is more interested in matrimony than marketeering) are sheer reading pleasure. And the notion of an ancient, omnipotent, secretive corporation is a great starting point for any number of stories. But The Business is, sadly, next to bankrupt on the level of plot. Of the two storylines that structure the novel (the takeover of Thulahn and Kathryn's growing suspicion of high-level fraud), neither amounts to much. Their development and resolution, such as they are, seem so haphazard that the reader might wonder whether Banks just lost interest in his own story.

For dedicated Banks fans, The Business may not be on a par with his other outings, but the pleasure of his prose is nonetheless satisfying. Newcomers to the Banks mystique, having no points of reference, may be well content with his arch humor and forceful characterization. --Kelly Flynn

About the Author:

Iain Banks came to widespread and controversial public notice with the publication of his first novel, THE WASP FACTORY, in 1984. He gained enormous popular and critical acclaim for both his mainstream and his science fiction novels. Iain Banks died in June 2013.

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