If you like....

[Steven Grout]

If you're interested in a blend of the real and the surreal, Banks' early works are surely top-notch and without comparison (i.e. "Walking on Glass" & "The Bridge"). I found "Lanark" very interesting, but too exhausting (at least for me) and pretentious in places. Other 'Surreal pours into the real'-books I really enjoyed from beginning to end were "Kafka on the Shore" by H. Murakami (a nice blend of metaphysical contemplation, ghost story and Japanese road trip novel) and "The Music of Chance" by P. Auster (breathtaking and certainly Auster's best to date). I've recently read "Julius Winsome" by G. Donovan, an up-to-date book that reminded me - in terms of the protagonist's psychological introspection and pathological loss of reality - of Banks' first one, "The Wasp Factory". As I see it, Donovan's book is a comparably impressive (even though less shocking) teaching play of what isolation and loneliness can do to the human mind - moving, at times disturbing and very well written.

[Skyehammer]

I thought David Mitchell's ' The Bone Clocks ' came close to being an Iain Banks novel [ Transition ] .