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The Business [Paperback]

Iain Banks
2.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (88 customer reviews)
RRP: £9.99
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Book Description

8 Jun 2000

Kate Telman is a senior executive officer in The Business, a powerful and massively discreet transglobal organisation. Financially transparent, internally democratic and disavowing conventional familial inheritance, the character of The Business seems, even to Kate, to be vague to the point of invisibility. It possesses, allegedly, a book of Leonardo cartoons, several sets of Crown Jewels and wants to buy its own State in order to acquire a seat at the United Nations.

Kate's job is to keep abreast of current technological developments and her global reach encompasses Silicon Valley, a ranch in Nebraska, the firm's secretive Swiss headquarters, and a remote Himalayan principality. In the course of her journey Kate must peel away layers of emotional insulation and the assumptions of a lifetime. She must learn to keep her world at arm's length.

To take control, she has to do The Business.


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Product details

  • Paperback: 400 pages
  • Publisher: Abacus; New Ed edition (8 Jun 2000)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0349112452
  • ISBN-13: 978-0349112459
  • Product Dimensions: 12.6 x 19.8 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 2.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (88 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 75,871 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Amazon Review

After the shock impact of the excellent The Wasp Factory in 1984, Iain Banks' work has split along two lines. On the one hand, he has written a series of acclaimed science fiction novels (with a devoted following, their own fan magazine and inclusion of his middle initial); on the other hand, a number of diverse, and eclectic, forays into contemporary fiction (for example, the successful television adaptation of The Crow Road).

The Business is the 1990s success story run riot. The eponymous organisation is ancient, rich and invisible. All it lacks is a certain political clout, something the Business has avoided for centuries but with which it is now beginning to toy. A seat in the UN is at stake as Kate Telman, Level 3 executive, is drawn into the (rather polite) machinations of her superiors. Those expecting John Grisham may be disappointed. No bad thing, perhaps: Kate's personal-professional life-- there is, of course, no conflict here for the successful individual of the 1990s--is the main concern. Banks' interest is in the moral debates about the position of the Business in a world it finds easy to manipulate, drawing the reader into a discussion of the place of the multi-national in contemporary economic and cultural life. "A lot of successful people are less hard-hearted than they like to think": is one view put forward, and not the only romantic but equivocal sentiment hiding somewhere in The Business. --John Shire

Review

Consistently engaging....From its hilarious opening, a telephone conversation with a man who has lost his teeth, to the touching finale...it hardly misses a beat. SUNDAY TELEGRAPH ('Slick and streetwise. SUNDAY TIMES)

Bank s' ability to make you feel you're there remains as sharp as ever. TIME OUT ('…a slick, blend of thriller, dark comedy and offbeat love story, bursting with set pieces and sly wit. EMPIRE)

...Satisfyingly readable to the end (MAXIM)

THE BUSINESS is his tenth novel... and reveals no slackening in his imaginative energies (MAIL ON SUNDAY)

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My name is Kathryn Telman. Read the first page
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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews
13 of 16 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars Lost in the woods 25 Aug 2003
By mfl VINE™ VOICE
Format:Paperback
The Business is a fair fairy story, at least in concept. There’s a prince seeking a princess, a Queen resigned to her bed for 25 years with a broken heart, a palace of a thousand rooms, snow-capped mountains, pied piper children, an all powerful James Bond style baddie organisation. And like any good fairy tale it tries to have a moral, arising from one hot pretext set just outside of reality. Banks lays it on thick but really fails to bridge the gap between fairy and really.

That pretext is the Business itself, founded in times before modern civilization. The problem, unusually for Iain Banks, is that there is a lack of grasp of what this story is all about. Is it a licence to discredit the misty corporate world of international business? Is it about surviving on overhwhelming capitalist power through duplicity? Is it about human relationships, disrupted intimacy, and misplaced loyalty? Or is it just about a prince seeking a princess?

By the end, there aren’t any answers. You are left feeling a little cold in the Himalayas.

But it’s just such a great idea for a book. The shame is nothing of that mysterious corporate world is uncovered. The Business has worldwide influence and domination. It’s rich and powerful. It seeks a seat at the United Nations by buying up under nourished and unknown nations. Kate is the ambitious Level Three executive at its heart. Yet most of the 400 pages are devoted to her globe trotting and excruciating detail about her in-flight experiences; buying clothes; meeting whoever….

Banks introduces some thriller tension at the start; colleague has teeth taken out by dark adversaries, Kate uncovers a Business factory hiding some dark secret, the Board are either homely uncle / aunty characters or underworld nearly gangsters. Great, but we are then subjected to a long winded “travels with Kate” until we understand any link at the very end.

You have wonder what it’s all about. Don’t be prepared to be too disappointed as Iain Banks has the undoubted and undisputed skill in writing and there’s never a word out of place, but overall it doesn't gell. Hot plot lines are introduced, and then disappear to the sidelines. Some motives never get off the ground. With a bit more discipline, this could have really rocked.

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3 of 4 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent 23 Aug 1999
By A Customer
Format:Hardcover
Another excellent and very readable (too readable - I easily read it in an evening) Banks. The story is a grower - for most of the book I wasn't sure where it was heading but that just kept me reading. Quite a "light" take on the whole conspiracy theory thing - very gentlemanly behaviour from the protagonists in retrospect. However that is the nature of the business. I wonder if the business is the very seed of The Culture?

Interestingly the content is very contempary - it mentions pinochets detention in the uk for example. Its also odd reading about places that I know well - the buisness used to have offices in Blythswood square for example - just down the road from our offices...

There are two reasons that I have only given it four stars. The first is that although the attempt at a female protagonist is excellent there are one are two places where it didn't quite convince, and secondly it ended too early - although it would be interesting to have a follow up with a different character set against the events instigated by this book.

If you like Banks though rush out and buy this.

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2.0 out of 5 stars Meandering story 14 Feb 2013
Format:Paperback
I found the concept of a shady business shrouded in secrecy with far reaching global power appealing, and so started reading. Alas there's not as much made of all of this as there might be. You get only some glimpses of power struggles and politics at the higher end of this organization, so for me that appeal is not really satisfied. The main protagonist, Kate, is a failed concept. I'm completely indifferent to her, I don't like her, I don't dislike her, and don't really care what happens to her. This might be ok if her character was used as a window into lots of other more interesting concepts, but its not. Far too much of the book is dedicated to "shopping with Kate", "lunch with Kate", "Kate drives fast car", "Kate on airplane again", "Kate pines over unattainable lover". Blah blah blah. There's promise in this book, but it never delivers. It just limps over the finish line with you looking back and thinking that you really didn't engage with any of the characters, concepts, or events. There are far better books out there, I wouldn't recommend spending your time on this one.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
1.0 out of 5 stars Empty
I was still waiting for the story to start when I reached the end of this dull-as-ditchwater piece of rubbish.
Published 1 month ago by Greg Withnail
4.0 out of 5 stars More Than Plot
A female hero with integrity and depth Kathryn Telman stormed through this deceptively cliched plot. Yes it's good against evil, but it's so much more. Read more
Published 10 months ago by Mavis Moog
3.0 out of 5 stars All a little interesting, but doesn't synergize
Though having read sixteen other Banks novels (four of which have been without the "M."), I must say that The Business is the most linear plot thus far, almost bordering on vapid... Read more
Published 11 months ago by M-I-K-E 2theD
4.0 out of 5 stars Loved it!
When I first started reading this book I really didn't want to read it! and as I read the first chapter (in a grumpy cant be bothered sort of way)I became hooked and it became one... Read more
Published 22 months ago by A. Pick
2.0 out of 5 stars Unmemorable
Much as I adore the writing of Iain Banks, I think it tells you a lot that it was only upon reaching the end of this book that I realised that I had read it a decade ago.
Published on 1 Nov 2010 by Mrs. Nicola Clements
2.0 out of 5 stars Still treading water
Iain Banks, once the most powerful fiction writer of his generation and author of two of my all time top 20 novels (The Wasp Factory and The Bridge), has been treading and water... Read more
Published on 10 Aug 2010 by A. Warmington
2.0 out of 5 stars lukewarm
I had high hopes for this as I loved the blurb on the back cover, it did its job and hooked me, sadly the book itself was a let down. Read more
Published on 29 Jan 2010 by Orlando Larsson
4.0 out of 5 stars A different sort of book
I liked this book because it didn't really fit into a genre. It was almost a thriller but it wasn't pacy enough for that. It was completely interesting though. Read more
Published on 3 Aug 2009 by MimDee
1.0 out of 5 stars Cringeworthy Effort From Someone Who Can Do Better
This is a stinker! I've read a few Iaiaiain Banks novels before and have only picked this up recently, but it was awful. Read more
Published on 7 July 2009 by Mr. P. Bevan
2.0 out of 5 stars A Bad Business
Sometimes books have a slow start, but eventually they get going, `The Business' did not even do this. Read more
Published on 1 April 2009 by Sam
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