About the book
Iain M. Banks's first novel is narrated by Frank Cauldhame, a sixteen-year-old who shares a remote Scottish island with his eccentric father and has no official record of his birth. His mother left years ago, and his older brother Eric is held in a psychiatric hospital. Frank fills his days with rituals of his own invention, patrols of the island and violence against small animals, including a device in the loft that gives the novel its title. Then news arrives that Eric has escaped and is heading home. Banks had written science fiction that publishers turned down, and the success of the book let him write full time.
TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington called it a creepy debut that is not really science fiction yet well worth reading, from a writer who went on to become a giant of the genre.
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This book has 1 recommendation
Michael Arrington (Founder/TechCrunch)
A creepy book narrated by the 16-year old protagonist Frank Cauldhame. It’s not really science fiction but it was Banks’ first novel and well worth the read, and he has become a giant of science fiction since. Make sure to read all of his Culture novels that may very well lay out the future of humanity. Humans and computers live together harmoniously in a vast galactic empire. Computers are vastly more intelligent than people and treat them with a sort of paternalistic compassion. Whole planets are created to allow larger populations, and people are genetically modified to look however they want. They also tend to live for as many centuries as they like until they get bored and off themselves. These books are very entertaining, and the scope of imagination needed to create this universe is staggering. I highly recommend reading the Wasp Factory and then jumping into the Culture novels. You won’t be unhappy you did so.
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