Frank no ordinary sixteenyearold lives with his father outsIde a remoteScottish village. Their life is to say the least unconventional. Franksmother abandoned t... » 

Frank no ordinary sixteenyearold lives with his father outsIde a remoteScottish village. Their life is to say the least unconventional. Franksmother abandoned them years ago his elder brother Eric is confined to apsychiatric hospital and his father measures out his eccentricities on animperial scale. Frank has turned to strange acts of violence to vent hisfrustrations. In the bizarre daily rituals there is some solace. But when newscomes of Erics escape from the hospital Frank has to prepare the ground forhis brothers inevitable return an event that explodes the mysteries of thepast and changes Frank utterly. Iain Banks celebrated first novel is a work ofextraordinary originality imagination and horrifying compulsion horrifyingbecause it enters a mind whose realities are not our own whose values of lifeand death are alien to our society and compulsive because the humour andcompassion of that mind reach out to us all. «