December 29, 2021 – Thornbury
And now for something completely different. Curious if anyone else has read this? Recommended by @chizr, this is the first novel by Iain Banks. He writes as Iain M Banks when he's doing sci fi, including "Player of Games" which you may recognise as Grimes' latest song title. I admit I haven't read anything else of his.
This is just so impressive as a first novel. It is probably also the first horror fiction I've read, maybe except for American Psycho. I actually like horror films so I'm not surprised I liked this too.
The story follows a young boy with some serious toxic masculinity and brain worms who lives on a small island in Scotland with his father who finds his even more demented brother has escaped the asylum and is heading home via a trail of gory destruction.
It kind of meanders along through various awful images and a bunch of dark humour until quite a crescendo ending, where the wheels fly off the wagon and the big twist is revealed.
Can't imagine what it was like for Iain Banks to have had this story in his mind before he wrote it. It's grim, but it's a reprieve from the current grim reality nonetheless.