The Steep Approach to Garbadale by Iain Banks (2007)

Iain Banks is one of those authors whom I've read much less often than I think I have: I feel as though I know his work quite well, but I don't -- not really, because I've read only three of the Iain M. Banks books, and just one Iain Banks novel -- well, make that two now.

The wealth of the Wopuld clan was built on a board game, but now the family firm is about to be taken over by an American software company -- depending, that is, on the outcome of the Emergency General Meeting to be held at Garbadale, the Wopuld family's estate in the Scottish Highlands. The novel revolves around Alban, who fell in love with his cousin Sophie when they were both teenagers, and still holds a torch for her; whose mother committed suicide when Alban was a child, for reasons he doesn't know; and who quit the family firm, but is now persuaded to come back for the EGM -- at which he will confront the issues of his past, and the Wopuld family's future.

I'm not sure about this book. It's quite entertaining, but... Of course, the Wopulds' wealth displaces them from much of reality; but, even accounting for that, The Steep Approach to Garbadale feels a bit too unreal, as though the Wopulds were created to suit the requirements of the novel, rather than as a  rich family that might exist in the real world (they probably were created that way, but it's the novelist's job to disguise things like that). Put another way, the Wopuld family would not be out of place in another book I read this year, Provender Gleed -- but that book was set in an alternate world, and was more engaging in some ways because of it.

Still, the plot of Garbadale grips well enough, though the climactic revelation is not particularly surprising. Not the best of Banks's that I've read, then, but no stinker either. Worth a look.