With its parallel and overlapping narratives, and its concerns with modern Scotland, this novel’s debt to Gray’s masterpiece is inescapable
I mentioned last week that Iain Banks called The Bridge the intellectual of his family of novels – “the one that went away to university and got a first”. Now that I’ve read the book, I can’t help speculating on a few other things that the novel must have got up to while on campus. Clearly, it developed a liking for psychedelic rock, and – as described late on in the book – accompanying doses of a certain “chemical which alter[s] reality”. It seems to have huffed a lot of weed. It must have taken an interest in engineering. It read about socialism. It also, crucially, read Lanark by Alasdair Gray.
This latter bit of extra-curricular reading suits our Scotland month particularly well. During the selection process, Banks and Alasdair Gray were far and away the two most requested authors, so it seems fitting that the book that came out of the hat is a tribute to Gray by Banks. The Bridge, as Banks always made clear, wouldn’t have existed if Lanark hadn’t paved the way.
The parallels between the books become plain even from a plot summary. I was tempted to write “brief plot summary”, but another thing that both books have in common is that they defy easy description. So here I’ll set down summaries that leave out far more than they put in, but are still long and involved – and hopefully reveal something of the fascinating complexity of these two outstanding books:
More
This latter bit of extra-curricular reading suits our Scotland month particularly well. During the selection process, Banks and Alasdair Gray were far and away the two most requested authors, so it seems fitting that the book that came out of the hat is a tribute to Gray by Banks. The Bridge, as Banks always made clear, wouldn’t have existed if Lanark hadn’t paved the way.
The parallels between the books become plain even from a plot summary. I was tempted to write “brief plot summary”, but another thing that both books have in common is that they defy easy description. So here I’ll set down summaries that leave out far more than they put in, but are still long and involved – and hopefully reveal something of the fascinating complexity of these two outstanding books:
More
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