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| Iain Banks Pictured Alongside The Inspiration For His Novel, 'The Bridge'. |
I was saddened to hear of the death of author Iain Banks yesterday at
the alarmingly young age of 59. I’m sure
that, like me, a lot of people will remember the first time they read his
startling debut novel ‘The Wasp Factory’
but there was far more to his writing than mere shock value. Whilst I haven’t read any of his SF books, I
have had a lot of pleasure from his mainstream fiction over the years. In recent decades, there has been a
procession of authors from Scotland who’ve managed to be approachable in style,
but who remain unpredictable and artistically credible. I think Banks was amongst the best of them.
By all accounts, Iain Banks was a man with a real zest for life and a
great sense of humour. Certainly, having
gone public with news of his terminal cancer a few weeks ago, he demonstrated
how it’s possible to die both with dignity and a relish for the absurd securely in place
until the very end.
