Keys for sale

How curious — those Coraline button keys, like the one I picked up in Harvard Square, are going for ~$80 on eBay. Part of me wishes I'd grabbed a handful and used them to finance my Christmas shopping; part of me recoils, wishing the keys had been left for people to find as happenstance dictated, misplaced artifacts from a slightly unreal world.

Review: The Steep Approach to Garbadale

Before Christmas, I picked up a previously unknown-to-me Iain Banks book for $1.00: The Steep Approach to Garbadale. It tells the story of the Wopuld family, which built a games empire around a Risk-like game called Empire! They are in the process of deciding whether to sell the business to an American company, as Alban, the chief viewpoint character, is trying to sort out his steep approach to his family, his lost love, and his mother's death.

Banks is deftest here when he's in the past, telling the aching, bruised, erotic, nostalgic story of Alban and his cousin Sophie, and Alban's years of flight from the family. But as the story winds discursively to its conclusion, the questions of the present — Will they sell or won't they? What's Grandma Win up to? What will happen when he meets Sophie again? — attain a keen urgency. I was glad to be on vacation, with plenty of time to be sucked away into steep-sided lochs and rain-beaten Scottish highlands.

Recommended (but then I say that about most Banks). Bonus points for gamer geekery, and for Scottish dancing: The Dashing White Sergeant, Strip the Willow, and a few others make an appearance.