An easy and enjoyable read, but I got the impression that it was something Iain Banks knocked off in his sleep.In some ways it's similar to his The Crow Road - the story of an eccentric family seen from the point of view of a family member who feels a bit of an outsider.
In this case the outsider is Alban, and the heart of the book is his love affair with his cousin over a 15 or 20 year period, starting when they were both 15, and his need to find out why his mother killed herself when he was a small boy.
The plot is all about the extended family having to get together in their Scottish castle to decide whether to sell the family games business - centred on a hugely successful board-game which becomes a computer game - to an American company. There's a lot of fun to be had with loads of eccentric aunts and with matriarch grandmother Win, from whom a terrible secret has to be prised...
There are some wonderful set-pieces. Best comic moment has one of Alban's cousins attempting to give a PowerPoint presentation to two octogenarian aunts who are more amazed by the computer and the projector than what he has to say. And there's a wonderful (not to mention gratuitous) diatribe against American foreign policy which Alban delivers to one of the would-be American purchasers.
As my school reports used to say: Good, but could do better.
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