Product Description

Hisako Onoda, world famous cellist, refuses to fly. And so she travels to Europe as a passenger on a tanker bound through the Panama Canal. But Panama is a country whose politics are as volatile as the local freedom fighters. When Hisako's ship is captured, it is not long before the atmosphere is as flammable as an oxy-acetylene torch, and the tension as sharp as the spike on her cello. CANAL DREAMS is a novel of deceptive simplicity and dark, original power: stark psychological insights mesh with vividly realised scenarios in an ominous projection of global realpolitik. The result is yet another major landmark in the quite remarkable career of an outstanding modern novelist.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #55582 in Books
• Published on: 1991-01-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

Review
'Apocalyptic is the first word that springs to mind to describe this violent and powerful novel in which Banks once again demonstrates his extraordinary dark powers of imagination.impressive' - THE TIMES

About the Author
Iain Banks came to widespread and controversial public notice with the publication of his first novel, THE WASP FACTORY, in 1984. He has been a hugely popular writer of fiction ever since, and, as Iain M Banks, of science fiction.

Excerpted from Canal Dreams by Iain Banks. Copyright © 2001. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Fantasia del Mer
tic tic tic tic . . . Tiny noises of compression, sounding through her skull.
She'd been alarmed, the first time she'd heard them, over the noise of her breathing and the tinny wheezes of the scuba gear which sat on her back, wrapping its plastic limbs round her and jamming rubber and metal into her mouth. Now she just listened to the ticking noises, imagining they were the signature of some erratic internal metronome; the unsteady beats of a tiny, bony heart.
The noises were her skull's reaction to the increasing weight of water above her as she dived, descending from the unsteady mirror of the surface, through the warm waters of the lake, to the muddy floor and the stumps of the long-dead trees.
She had held a skull once, and seen the minute fissures marking its surface; tiny hairline cracks stretching from side to side and end to end, jagged valleys on an ivory planet. They were called sutures. Plates of bone grew and met while the baby was still in the womb. The bones jammed together and locked, but left one area free so that the infant's head could pass through its mother's pelvis, producing the spot on a baby's head which remained soft and vulnerable until the bones had clasped there too, and the brain was safe, locked in behind its wall.
When she'd first heard the noises in her head, she'd thought it was caused by those bone-plates in her skull pressing harder in against each other, and the noise travelling through those bones to her ears . . . but then Philippe had disillusioned her; it was the sinuses which produced the faint, irregular clicking sounds.
It came again, like some slow abacus. tic tic tic . . .
She pinched her nose and blew, equalising the pressure on either side of her eardrums.
Deeper; she followed Philippe down, keeping his slowly stroking flippers a couple of metres in front of her, conscious of her rhythm matching his, her legs moving through the water in time to Philippe's. His white legs looked like stocky, strangely graceful worms; she laughed into the mouthpiece. The mask pressed harder into her face as they continued down. tic tic . . .
Philippe began to level out. She could see the lake floor clearly now; a crumpled, grey landscape fading slowly away into the gloom. The old tree stumps poked up through the mud, flat eruptions of drowned life. Philippe looked round briefly at her, and she waved, then levelled out too, to follow him along the water-buried surface of the land, over the sliced trunks and the slow bursts of mud produced by his flippers. tic.
The pressures equalised, the column of water above her and the fluids and gases of her body achieving a temporary equilibrium. The warm water moved against her skin in silky folds, and her hair ruffled behind her in the slipstream of her body, stroking the nape of her neck.
Settled into the pace of swimming, balanced and lulled, flying slowly over the slow settlement of a near-century, following the just-tangible turbulence of the man's wake, she let her mind wander.
She felt - as she always did, down here - untied from the commonality of breath that was the air above. Here, however briefly, she was free. It was a freedom with its own many and precise rules - of times and depths, atmospheres and experience, maintained equipment and weights of air - and it was a freedom purchased through surrender to the technology that was strapped to her back (clicking and hissing and burbling) but it was freedom. The air in the mouthpiece tasted of it.
Under the waves, with the skull adjusted. Headlong through the warm waters, like an easy and continual birth. Swimming like flying; the one buoyant image of her fear she could accept.
This had been rainforest; the trees had grown in the wind and the sunlight, and trawled the air for clouds and mist. Now they were gone, long turned to planks and rafters and ribs and seats. Perhaps some of the great trees were pulped, and became paper; perhaps some were turned into sleepers for the railways that helped the canal be built; perhaps some formed the buildings in the Zone, and perhaps some became small ships; boats that had plied the lakes. Sunk, their waterlogged timbers would nestle in these shaded depths, rejoined.
Maybe some became musical instruments; a cello, even! She laughed to herself again.
She listened for more tics, but heard none.
She followed the man. In a few strokes and kicks, she knew, she could pass and out-distance him. She was stronger than he knew, perhaps she was even stronger than he was . . . but he was younger; he was a man, and proud. So she let him lead.
In a few minutes, hypnotically over the drowned forest, they came to what had once been a road. Philippe stopped briefly, treading water over the muddied track, raising clouds of soft grime beneath him while he studied the plastic-wrapped map. She drifted near by, watching his bubbles wobble their way to the surface. His breath.

Customer Reviews

Not quite up to Banks's best
It’s often easier to approach an Iain M. Banks novel than one without the middle initial. At least with the “M” present and correct you know what genre you’re going to be reading, whereas his so-called “mainstream” work seems to take place in every conceivable genre plus a few he has created for himself.

Unlike novels such as “The Bridge” or “Walking on Glass”, “Canal Dreams” is based completely in reality. Unlike “The Crow Road” or “Dead Air”, you’d be forgiven for forgetting this fact. The story concerns a famous Japanese cellist who becomes involved in a hostage situation on board a ship unable to escape from the Panama Canal. Essentially, this book is a thriller, but because it’s Iain Banks, you get the suspicion that there’s a lot more going on under the surface than you’re actually aware of. Which is often a good thing, but in this case I couldn’t really make head nor tail of it.

I suspect, though, that “Canal Dreams” was more a satirical take on politics at the time of its publication, making it – at least to a degree – a little irrelevant here and now. Of course, you can just read this as a thriller, but to get more from this book perhaps you need to be older than me. Well, that’s enough of my naysaying – “Canal Dreams” is a very clear, often shocking, illustration of the way life can treat you in very unexpected ways, and just how fragile our lives truly are. Banks keeps the events described realistic right up until the end… without giving away what happens, just bear in mind that the central character’s final actions are completely impossible.

There’s a great deal of tension felt when reading this book – Banks could (and does) do anything at any moment, which enhances the sense that life can and will throw anything your way whether you like it or not. High-octane is probably the best way to describe “Canal Dreams”, and in the end that’s probably all that can be fairly said of it. Simply put, this is an entertaining, well-written read, but intrinsically shallow compared to the more cerebral efforts usually on offer from Banks.

Worth a read, but don’t expect it to keep you thinking for long.

Dream a Little Dream
Iain Banks first novel, The Wasp Factory, was published in 1984. In the years since, he's won critical acclaim, topped best-seller lists and has even written Science Fiction books under the cunning nom-de-plume 'Iain M. Banks'. He's also seen this book, "The Crow Road", adapted for television by the BBC in 1996. "Canal Dreams" is his fifth non sci-fi book and was first published in 1989.

The book's central character is Hisako Onoda, a world-famous cellist. As the book opens, Hisako is en-route from Japan to Europe, where she's due to perform in a series of concerts. However, as she's terrified of flying, she's making the journey by boat. Having travelled to Honolulu on the Gassam Maru, she then boarded the Nakodo - which was due to take her to Rotterdam via the Panama Canal. Unfortunately, due to `civil unrest' in the region - armed conflict between guerrilla fighters and government forces - the canal has been closed. Fro the moment, the Nakodo and two other ships are essentially trapped on Gat�n Lake. Although they are hoping for the all-clear to continue their journey soon, the conflict I, unfortunately, coming closer.

There are elements of a thriller to "Canal Dreams", but the strength of the book lies in telling Hisako's story. She is a very well-developed character, though her past in only gradually given away - the book jumps backwards and forwards, looking at some of the key events of Hisako's life. It's a method that may take a little getting used to - especially if you haven't read anything by Banks before. However, for me, I felt it really added to the enjoyment of the book. Hisako's travelling companions aren't so well developed, and little is told of their lives, thoughts or motivations. However, as "Canal Dreams" doesn't set out to tell their stories this really isn't a problem - and I would absolutely recommend this book.

Awkward thriller
Canal Dreams concerns a cello player scared of flying, who during a trip through the Panama Canal unwittingly ends up caught between revolutionaries and American special forces operatives. The basic scenario of this thriller is a good one, and the plight of the hostages stranded in the Panama Canal should result in a tense novel, but for some reason Canal Dreams never really comes to life. Probably the main culprit is the heroine Hisako, whose status as both a concert cellist and a martial artist able to kill with one strike is a little unlikely. Banks seems keen to explore what happens to people under extreme pressure – do they go meekly to their deaths or fight? It’s a good angle for a novel, but unfortunately due to her background Hisako is a very cold unemotional character who never really connects with the reader, and for all the pyrotechnics the action scenes never really come to life. Canal Dreams isn’t a bad book – there are plenty of nice moments in Banks writing to keep the pages turning, but compared to his other novels this is a rather flat and unengaging work. For Banks completists only.