Canal Dreams
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| Author | Iain Banks |
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| Country | Scotland |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Novel |
| Publisher | Macmillan Publishers |
| Released | 1989 |
| Media Type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| Pages | 239 pp |
| ISBN | ISBN 0-333-51768-7 |
| Preceded by | The Player of Games |
| Followed by | Use of Weapons |
Canal Dreams is a novel by Scottish writer Iain Banks, published in 1989.
Contents |
[edit] Plot introduction
Famous Japanese cellist Hisako Onoda boards a supertanker en route to her concert in Rotterdam, as she is afraid to fly during an international crisis. The ship is trapped in the Panama Canal and anchors in Gatun Lake.
[edit] Plot summary
The plot is fairly simple and linear. In the first half, when the ship is stranded but unharmed, the mood is bucolic and philosophical, and the main challenge Hisako has is to pass the time in a tropical lake. She has an affair with one of the ship's officers and they go scuba diving together. She practises the cello.
She is worried about the future, and has violent nightmares and flashbacks to her early life in Japan.
She also spends time with the other passengers, among them a South African engineer and an erudite Egyptian.
In the much darker second half, the book becomes an almost James Bond-like thriller. Guerrillas (who turn out to be agents provocateur) take over the ship. The rebels kill Hisako's boyfriend and rape her. She avenges herself, killing the pirates. The violence of the rebel takeover and of Hisako's revenge is described very graphically.
[edit] Literary significance & criticism
Verging at times towards Banks' science fiction persona, but always just staying a surreal step away from mainstream reality, the dreamy first half of the book clashes admirably with the extremely violent latter part.
Banks took on his first female lead character in Canal Dreams, with some success. He would return to this in Whit and The Business. Hisako is certainly more than one-dimensional; she misses her father who she never met, as he died before she was born from radiation sickness caused by the Hiroshima bombing. In killing the pirates, she is aided by her memory of killing a policeman in a demonstration-turned-riot years before.
Banks himself does not rate the book very highly:
"I always worry, with all these things. Canal Dreams was my first attempt at a political thriller - an action book. As a political thriller it's not very good and a sign that it's not so good at what it's supposed to be doing is that it would be so easy to take the politics out and make a pro-CIA propaganda movie. If it's that easy to strip out, the political element, I haven't done my job properly.
When asked about possible film rights in an interview, Banks replied:
"Och yeah. At the moment there's some interest in Canal Dreams although I think I could only sell it to Oliver Stone, anybody else doesn't have the clout not to get shoved off the picture and they'd just make it and turn it into American CIA propaganda. ... Actually of all the books, Canal Dreams is the one I'm least pleased with. By the usual reckoning, the worst books make the best films, so going on that it might be quite a good film! Make a film like Die Hard and cut out most of the first half of the book."
[edit] Bibliography
- Canal Dreams, Iain Banks, London: Macmillan, 1989 ISBN 0-333-51768-7
[edit] External link
| Iain Banks books |
|---|
| The Wasp Factory • Walking on Glass • The Bridge • Espedair Street • Canal Dreams • The Crow Road • Complicity • Whit • A Song of Stone • The Business • Dead Air • Raw Spirit • The Steep Approach to Garbadale |
