Espedair Street

Title: Espedair Street
Author: Iain Banks
Published: 1987 for the first time, this edition in 1999
Genre: Biography
Pages: 249




There was a sale towards the end of last year at the local fantasy book/comic store: buy at least 4 books, and you get them for the price of one. This is how I ended up with five Iain Banks books at once, including this. Then I dragged a friend along for another round.

Daniel Weir is, at 31, a retired world-famous musician and songwriter, who is living as an unknown hermit under an alias after the band broke up, pretending to be the caretaker of a large church/townhouse he owns himself. Espedair Street follows him through his stumbling anonymity every other chapter and from a stuttering no-one to a star at the top of the world in every other... other chapter. Mr. Weird tells his story himself, and he's a very truthful and even cruel narrator. Still, there's plenty of humour and crazy rock-star antics all around.


"So I've done all that, and I got fed up with it. My dreams came true, and I discovered that once they did, they were no longer dreams, just new ways of living, with their own problems and difficulties. Maybe if I'd been working on new dreams while the old ones were coming true I could have kept going, heading for even greener hillsides, even newer pastures, but I guess I just ran out of material, or I used it all up in the songs."