Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #55922 in Books
• Published on: 2007-03-01
• Formats: Abridged, Audiobook
• Original language: English
• Binding: Audio CD
• 5 pages

Independent
'Still a master. Banks's evocation of the tortures and travails of
first love is moving and lyrical'

Scotland on Sunday
'Banks still has the ability to make the reader smile with
pleasure'

Observer
'Banks is at his best in moments of high drama with extremes of
human emotions'

Customer Reviews

Cousin
Pants.
The only thing I kept reading for was the well telegraphed "close familial relationship" between Alban & his cousin. Half way through I guessed they were half brother/sister. Mr Banks came up with a less shocking but similar relationship. Plastic characters throughout. Alban was the only one to (barely) make 3D.
Don't waste your time.

Middle of the Road on the Steep Approach...
Displays the range of Banks' skills - well-plotted, dialogue heavy, recurrent themes of familial taboo and the odd dose of authorial politics intruding on the fiction. Certainly held my attention and demanded to be finished (in a good way). But, ultimately, there is nothing breath-taking about The Steep Approach to Garbadale, and the analogies, metaphors and revelations all feel fairly shallow.

Its all right....
... but not one of his best, by a very long way.

Banksy has a particular style and this is evident in this book once again. A previous reviewer has compared this to "Crow Road" and I'm afraid this is correct; Crow Road was a particularly good read I thought, and The Steep Approach to Garbadale seemed to want to take broadly the same themes and produce similar outcomes. I felt like I'd already read it.

It has its moments though, and I liked it enough to finish it, but I couldn't hand-on-heart suggest it was anything other than filler.