Complicity

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As for another Banks novel, Espedair Street, meanwhile,...could someone, somewhere, please consider this for movie or a mini series?

That intrusive element is both its strength and its weakness. It’s powerful because it places readers at the heart of the story, and yet we – the ‘you’ – know less than the narrator.Banks writes in a way I have never experienced: one minute he's spending long chapters describing a grey, dull-looking building. Then he shoots an image overladen by sex and drugs; the next is a discussion about Tory and Labour politics. And don't be surprised if you find a humorous touch inside a murder scene that is otherwise gory and unforgiving! I loved particularly the use of first and second person perspectives and the switching between them, used particularly deftly right at the end of the book. I also loved how well balanced the book was, as a reader you really have no idea what's going on, you know you have no idea what's going on but there's enough given to you that you don't feel lost or frustrated. I also loved how Banks introduced and wove into the story the protagonist's memories and real-time drug use.

For that reason, consider the purpose of this narrative style and the extent to which you employ it. It might be better constrained – limited to chapters inhabited by specific viewpoint characters.

I won't make this lengthier than it needs to be. It's blindingly obvious that Banks was extraordinarily talented. Here, he portrays a journalist with a complex and messy life, who inadvertently gets embroiled in some grisly murders of high-profile people. He gets stitched up for them, and has to try and figure out who is responsible. Still, this controlling aspect of second person can have an advantage. Whereas first-person narrators tell you what they thought and did, second-person narrators tell us what we thought and did. That can create a sense of immediacy, but almost amnesiac dislocation. We have to discover what we think, see, know and do. And if we don’t identify with the ‘you’ – if we feel implicated rather than attached – we can be pulled out of the story rather than brought deeper into it. iain banks' sci-fi is fabulously complex and his thrillers can feel almost ostentatiously stripped-down. this is one of the latter. rather good, although rather junior league joyce carol oates as well. specifically j.c. oates under her thriller pseudonym, rosamund smith... he shares the same interest in doubles and obsessions and two characters who reflect each other's passions and weaknesses. there are also some unsurprisingly sharp critiques of materialism and various other classic and modern evils... the victims are a veritable Who's Who of Assholes Deserving Slaughter... the killer, demented as he may be, is something of a robin hood, taken to the next level (down). my main issue with the novel, besides the rather rote use of doubling, is that the lead character becomes somewhat tedious, at least to this reader. still, the writing is solid and the narrative is often riveting. Novels. Doncha just love them! This one was Vincent-Price-in-Theatre-of-Blood (ha ha - you worm!) crossed with the collected Marxism Today editorials of the 1980s crossed with Carry On Camping. Just, in fact, like Jonathan Coe's What a Carve Up! which came out around the same time, like when Hollywood comes out with two suspiciously similar movies at once (A Bug's Life & Antz, Capote and Infamous).