I found this slice of life story very enjoyable and well written. The background to the story is that a wealthy (extended) family has been approached to sell their company, and provides a view from Alban's perspective of the family leading up to a gathering where it will be decided whether to sell out or not. The story flips back from the past to the present and explains Alban's journey through life, his family encounters, love interests, and his quest to find out about his mother's death and the controversy surrounding his birth. ( )

Meanders nicely; with a shock that dawns slowly. ( )

I blasted through this novel in a couple of days. It kept me reading and it kept me entertained. This is an Iain Banks novel without the M between his christian and surnames and so the reader is assured it is not one of his science fiction books. It is a family saga and the family Wopuld have made a fortune on a board game 'Empire'. It has been successfully re launched as a computer game and the family corporation are about to hold an extraordinary annual general meeting as a result of a takeover bid from an American company. Alban McGill a third generation member of the family has tried to extricate himself from the business, but is persuaded to attend the A G M by one of his cousins still working for the firm. Alban as a fifteen year old had disgraced himself by being caught 'in flagrante delicto' with his first cousin Sophie at a previous family get together. He had through his own endeavours been accepted back into the family fold, but for the last five years had been working as a lumberjack in the Scottish lowlands. He is still carrying a torch for Sophie and has never forgiven the family for forcibly separating them as teenagers.

Banks starts his story in a Glasgow tenement where Alban is living in typical squalor in a household of poor misfits. His cousin Fielding digs him out of the chaotic flat in order to get him to support his attempts to repulse the takeover bid from the American company. As the two men prepare for the big meeting Albans story is told in a series of flashbacks during a trip up to the family estate in the north of Scotland. Alban is still puzzled by some of the family history, not the least by his own birthright and through meetings with current family members he tries to piece together his story.

Alban's story takes the reader on a whirlwind tour of California, Singapore, Hong Kong, the Indonesian Tsunami and Scotland with plenty of sex, drugs and rock and roll. (It is an Iain Banks novel). Readers familiar with some of Banks earlier novel's: [Crow Road] or [Espedair street] will know how good a story teller Banks can be. There are plenty of witty asides and some thought provoking moments. There is also Bank's socialist agenda which comes in handy in this novel where he can let rip against the George W Bush loving republicans who are the senior representatives of the American takeover company. Banks even manages to parade his credentials as a climate change activist and this was back in 2007.

The downside to all this marvellous entertainment is that the character although not quite caricatures can come across as stock characters. The matriarchal head of the Wopuld family, the extended family members of the Glasgow tenement, almost all the American representatives and to some extent Alban McGill himself. The star-crossed lovers theme is a very old one and in this novel it holds the key to the story, and it is not difficult to guess the denouement way before the end. I enjoy Banks when he is writing in this vein and especially when he has a story to tell, even if some of the scenarios are set up purely for entertainment: 3.5 stars. ( )

This mainstream novel from Iain (no-'M') Banks rather divides opinion. A significant number of reviewers had a low opinion of the book; and indeed, looking at the (badly-written) blurb on my copy, I did wonder what I was getting myself into. Another Scottish family saga, with a business empire - in more ways than one - at stake, seen from the point of view of one of the black sheep of the family. For such a fervent socialist, Banks spent a lot of time writing about capitalists, and not (always) painting them in lurid tones, though the family matriarch, Win, is given an acid tongue; I kept hearing the voice of veteran British actor Stephanie Cole, and knowing Banks I suspect that this was deliberate. (It wouldn't be the first time this sort of thing has cropped up in Banks' books, and I correctly identified the actor Iain had in mind then, so I'll go with my hunch here, too.)

So I had low expectations when I started the book - which Banks proceeded to blow away. At the outset, we are treated to an excursion into 'Trainspotting' territory - that's Irvine Welsh, not Ian Allan - through the point of view being shared with two subsidiary characters, one a suited exec from the family firm, the other a small-time hustler who is only identified as 'Tango'. The suited exec is the central character's cousin; he plays a supporting role in the rest of the novel. Tango is another matter: he surfaces from time to time in the course of the novel, commenting on events from a total outsider's perspective. The central character, Alban McGill, is a drop-out from the family and has been in retreat from the business for a while, sofa-surfing and working as an itinerant forester with his first love, trees.

Well, not his first actual love; for that, we get flashbacks to his teenage years and his relationship with another of his cousins. That relationship has repercussions throughout the book, as McGill comes back to the family seat, the Gormenghastly Victorian pile of Garbadale, in the far north-west of Scotland, for a family reunion which will decide the future of the firm.

In between, we get to do a lot of globe-trotting. McGill travels a lot, both in his gap year and later, when he is working for the firm. This often involves far-flung family members, on whose hospitality he sometimes forces himself and on others he is sometimes forced, when running company errands. We begin to piece together McGill's own history, and to pick at one particular scab that has been concerning him for a long time. Eventually, all the strings come together; personal and corporate crises come to a head, and the air is cleared in many ways.

Throughout we have Banks' robust Scots wit, together with a eye for detail which is likely drawn from real life. (His account of a mathematicians' conference sounds very much like some of the science fiction conventions Banks attended - I know, 'coz I was there.) Some reviewers felt that McGill was not a convincing character; but he is a man in search of himself, driven by events in his teenage years that skewed his character and outlook right up until the end of the novel. I found him quite convincing; I suspect he, too, was drawn from life in many ways.

Others have complained about Banks' political diatribes. (Including one of the other characters.) Well, this is an Iain Banks novel. The politics is a part of the package, and if the message is a bit in yer face, well, there are plenty of other writers who ignore or acquiesce with the state of the world as they see it (if they see it at all). To take the politics out of an Iain Banks novel would be to stifle the voice of the man. Perhaps those who saw Alban McGill as one-dimensional have not spoken to enough Scots people.

As with other Banks novels, the sense of place is quite palpable. It is possible to take a good map of the north-west of Scotland and make a fair guess as to where Garbadale supposedly is. (There are a few geographical red herrings in the text, though.) The "steep approach" of the title does make an appearance, though there is metaphor here as well.

Perhaps i didn't have the moments of sheer delight I've had in other Banks novels. Nothing I read in here made me burst out loud with cries of "You naughty, naughty author!" (which has happened with other Banks novels); but this is far from the disaster some have painted it as. A solid four stars from me. ( )

Well, here's the thing: When a science fiction writer as accomplished as Banks knocks out a fairly ordinary contemporary novel, everybody is disappointed. I wasn't, in fact, I found it fascinating that Banks wanted to spend time writing a novel about an extended and complicated family. True, they have un-ordinary problems, such as how much money to ask for the family company -- 180 mil or perhaps more? from the American company (with a perfect Banksian name of Spraint) that wants to buy them out. But essentially, it's a book about family and relationships and places and love of Scotland. The deduction is for occasional lapses into bloviating about politics and ethics and global warming . . . I can't really recommend it to mad Banks fans, but I can say it is a perfectly good novel that readers of novels about family life would like. **** ( )