A Song Of Stone

Just finished reading A Song Of Stone by Iain Banks, and I don't mind admitting it took me a while to get through it. On a very basic level, you can't just skim through the book, absorbing the main points of the story, because it's not that sort of book. It's a fiercely poetic novel, with extravagant monologues and descriptive passages that almost flow like free-form poetry or sonnets.

Banks really utilises the full extensity of the English language here - I had to pop to the dictionary four or five times during the reading for words I'd never heard before even! Anthropopathism (the assignation of human emotional characteristics to a non-human subject) and Solipsism (a metaphysical belief that the universe is entirely the creation of one's own min) were among the more exotic words used.

Quote from a reviewer on Amazon:

I imagine it as the literary equivalent to having been raped.

The story itself is the nihilistic, violent and depraved tale of a post-apocalyptic world, told via an elegant mixture of the first and second person perspectives. The central figures are a guerilla lieutenant, an ananchronic castle and our protagonist and narrator, the thoroughly odious nobleman, shunned by society for his depravity and completely detached from the common man by his philosophy. Banks' real masterpiece here is to conjure up sympathy for this man whilst constantly showing us his sick and twisted view of the world, through his thoughts and actions.

This story isn't light reading, in either sense of the phrase, but I do highly recommend it if you want something to really sink your brain into. I'll certainly be re-reading it in a year or so.