I was very excited at the prospect of this novel, because I'd really enjoyed the other three books I'd read by Banks: 'The Wasp Factory', 'The Crow Road' and 'The Steep Approach to Garbadale'.
'Dead Air' left me very disappointed.
If memory serves, the openings to the other three books I've read by Banks are fantastically gripping and inventive; 'The Crow Road', for example, begins, 'It was the day my grandmother exploded...'
'Dead Air' opens with the protagonist, Ken Nott, a militant left-wing radio DJ, taking drugs at a party in the East End, before throwing fruit off a roof, and encouraging others to do the same.
Rock 'n' roll.
Ken was one of the first problems I had with the book. I really disliked him. He is a know-it-all who goes off on rants at every opportunity. He regularly cheats on his partners, and even sleeps with his best friend's wife.
I'm sure this is intentional, however (not Ken sleeping with his best friend's wife - that would be very hard to do unintentionally); I mean that Banks intentionally makes Ken dislikeable.
I'm not exactly sure why Banks would do this - probably to toy with the reader's emotions as the plot develops.
What worries me about my disliking of Ken, is that a lot of what he says, what he rants about, is actually Banks' ranting, not Ken's.
Ken's left-wing political views are far too well-developed to be anything but Banks's own views.
'Dead Air' was published in 2002; two years later, Banks campaigned to have Tony Blair impeached, and cut up his passport and sent it to the then PM, in protest against the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
Obviously by doing this Banks would find it a tad harder to escape the country whose leader he so despised.
He told the Guardian, "I was so angry about the illegality and immorality of the war. And this was me - a comfortably off, white Caucasian atheist from a vaguely Protestant background.
"If I thought it was a disgusting, what would Muslims think about how their co-religionists were being treated?"
The trouble is, 'Dead Air' feels very much like it was written simply as a vehicle for Banks to air his political views.
Another problem I had with 'Dead Air' is the very Bad Sex in the novel.
I cringed and found it very hard to read; not because I'm a prude, but because of the knowledge that it was written by the bearded, middle-aged Banks, who looks out of the book's inside back cover, with a sly, knowing glint in his eye.
One Guardian review of 'Dead Air' wonders whether the loss of quality in Banks's mainstream novels is to the gain of his science fiction books, published under the moniker Iain M. Banks. I've yet to read one to find out.
Despite all of this, 'Dead Air' features Banks' usual wit; there are parts that will make you laugh, and there is a fantastic chapter, 'Extended Panic Functionality', towards the end of the novel, in which Banks ramps up such incredible tension, of almost Hitchcockian standards, that I had to continue reading until the end of the book, in the same sitting, to find out the conclusion.
I'm now reading Hemingway's 'For Whom the Bell Tolls'.
No comments:
Post a Comment