Espedair Street
OCLC 16089335 | |
Espedair Street is a novel by Scottish writer Iain Banks, published in 1987.
Plot introduction
The book tells the (fictional) story of the rise to fame of Dan Weir ('Weird'), a bass guitar player in a rock and roll band called Frozen Gold, and of his struggles to be happy now that he is rich and famous.
Plot summary
Two days ago I decided to kill myself. I would walk and hitch and sail away from this dark city to the bright spaces of the wet west coast, and there throw myself into the tall, glittering seas beyond Iona (with its cargo of mouldering kings) to let the gulls and seals and tides have their way with my remains, and in my dying moments look forward to an encounter with Staffa’s six-sided columns and Fingal's Cave; or I might head south to Corryvreckan, to be spun inside the whirlpool and listen with my waterlogged deaf ears to its mile-wide voice ringing over the wave-race; or be borne north, to where the white sands sing and coral hides, pink-fingered and hard-soft, beneath the ocean swell, and the rampart cliffs climb thousand-foot above the seething acres of milky foam, rainbow-buttressed.
Last night I changed my mind and decided to stay alive. Everything that follows is . . . just to try and explain.
Weird starts out in the Ferguslie Park area of
He reminisces about this from 1980s Glasgow, where he lives as a recluse in a Victorian folly (St Jutes), ever since the tragic events which led to the demise of the band. He is posing as his own caretaker, and his friends McCann and Wee Tommy know him as Jimmy Hay. After a memorable fight in a nightclub called 'Monty's', his real identity is revealed. He has grown uncomfortable with fame and wealth, and eventually visits his first girlfriend, Jean Webb, now living in Arisaig.
Literary significance & criticism
The band is loosely modelled on
As Banks' first novel to eschew 'special effects', not being
Espedair Street is also a real street in Charleston, Paisley, where some of the significant events in the book take place.
Bibliography
Espedair Street, Iain Banks, London: Macmillan, 1987,
Adaptation
A four-part BBC radio adaptation of the novel was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in January 1998.
References
- ^ Iain Banks & Fish, "How We Met", The Independent, 25 April 1999, retrieved 12 March 2012 [1]