A Song of Stone by Iain Banks

[Sally Ann Melia]

The Song of Stone is Iain Banks 9th novel published in 1997, but he had already written another 8 Science Fiction novels under the name Iain M Banks, so a consistent output of almost two book a year at least over ten years.

As with most of the non-Science Fiction this book is fairly political in tone, and I read it the year of its publication in paperback. It was clear to all that this novel was speaking of the unimaginable brutality and horror which was the Bosnian war of 1992-1995. Due a split in the EU, the germans siding with their historic allies the Serbians and the rest of Europe wanting to help the Bosnian Muslims, this is the war Europe watched each night on its televisions, but did little to intervene except by its absence. The carnage and cruelty was unlike anything Europe had ever seen. Still nothing was done.

In A Song of Stone, Iain Banks reflects on the culpability of Europe by placing a similar conflict this time in his homeland which was the lowlands of Scotland. He puts the spotlight on a crumbling stately home and its useless over educated but under skilled aristocratic yet likeable owners, and then throws them in the way of pure cruelty.

I won't say much about the story, except that it is horrific in its slow paced incremental daily increase in needless violence. the kind of which only goes unchecked when all forms of states have evaporated, and in the end this small castle and its occupants come to represent the entire state of Bosnia, and their cruel needless suffering similarly.

It's hard to recommend this book, Iain Banks is, as always, creative, and the inventive horror stays with you long after you have closed the pages.

Still once you start its unput-downable. You have been warned.

 

[Vertigo]

Ah another that's on my shelves waiting it's turn. I'm aware of its reputation but still looking forward to it!

 

[The Judge]

I would go further than simply "It's hard to recommend" -- as far as I'm concerned it's a most definite Would-Never-Recommend-To-Anyone-Ever. I'd also disagree about the unput-downable. I found it very easy to put down, and had to force myself to finish it.

I'm surprised you found the aristocrats likeable. Granted they weren't actual sadists, like the militia that come to the castle, but they were certainly degenerates, intent on their own pleasure and heedless of everyone else, and stupid to boot.

My own review when I read it back in 2012:

It's a thin (280 pages) volume about a decadent aristocrat caught up in an unidentified war in a nameless country in possibly modern times – to say its background is vague is to understate the case. A first person, present tense narrative in which the aristocrat muses at length on past and present, on sex and death, on destruction and the horror of unironed handkerchiefs, and we're shown man's inhumanity to man (and woman) in prose which is dense, intricate, lyrical and downright bloody tedious. Nihilistic and horribly depressing.

By the way, I'd agree with you that the Bosnian War was horrific, but to say "The carnage and cruelty was unlike anything Europe had ever seen" about a continent that in the past 100 years had witnessed both the Somme and Auschwitz, is rather to overstate the case.

 

[Sally Ann Melia]

The thing about tjhe carnage in Bosnia, is that it was a civil war that pitted neighbiour aginst neighbour based on centuries old tribal loyalties or long neglected religion.

The Somme was professional soldiers, and yes of course The Holocaust, but Uk citizens did not watch either of those on their TVs each night. I remember the news footage at the time, and green and wooden hills and fields from where the pictures came. It could have the Lakes, it could have been scotland, it could have been.. anyhow...

 

[Vertigo]

Hmm I loved this book but I think my take on it was a little different:


How can such a dark story be written with such hauntingly beautiful poetic prose? This is a dark book, possibly the darkest I have read from Banks, possibly even darker than the Wasp Factory; it is pure tragedy from start to finish and yet it undoubtedly contains the most lyrically poetic writing I have read from him. Possibly it is that juxtaposition of brutality of action with beauty of writing that makes this book so striking.

Set in an unnamed country in an undescribed conflict, it could be any recent or near future European internecine war, though from the date of writing it was almost certainly inspired by the Bosnian conflict. Who is fighting who and why is never discussed and is never relevant. This is about the brutality people can, and do, inflict on one another when all the rules of war have been abandoned. At the same time it is a compelling censure of an aristocracy used to a world in which they are accustomed to living by different rules to ordinary people. Indeed that difference is treated as their birthright.

The story is written from a very unusual perspective; narrated in the first person by an aristocrat, Abel, whose family have lived in the castle at the centre of the story for several centuries and is addressed in the second person to his partner. Their past promiscuous, Bohemian lifestyle is described in multiple internal reminisces by Abel, becoming more shocking as the story progresses and is mirrored in the increasingly shocking brutality of the soldiers who have requisitioned Abel’s castle. In the end the final tragedy seems to be searching for some level of redemption but never really finds it.

I loved this book – though certainly didn’t enjoy it – and I think it might now be my new favourite of Banks’ non science fiction work. Highly recommended but not for the faint of heart and certainly not for the seeker of a happy ending.

 

[Toby Frost]

I have to admit that I'm with The Judge on this one. It seemed like a lot of miserable nothing. If someone told me that Banks had written it as a parody of literary fiction I wouldn't be surprised. Each to their own, I suppose, but I thought that it was downright bad.