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內容簡介: |
Frank, no ordinary sixteen-year-old, lives with his father
outsIde a remote Scottish village. Their life is, to say the least,
unconventional. Frank''s mother abandoned them years ago: his elder
brother Eric is confined to a psychiatric hospital; and his father
measures out his eccentricities on an imperial scale. Frank has
turned to strange acts of violence to vent his frustrations. In the
bizarre daily rituals there is some solace. But when news comes of
Eric''s escape from the hospital Frank has to prepare the ground for
his brother''s inevitable return - an event that explodes the
mysteries of the past and changes Frank utterly. Iain Banks''
celebrated first novel is a work of extraordinary originality,
imagination and horrifying compulsion: horrifying, because it
enters a mind whose realities are not our own, whose values of life
and death are alien to our society; and compulsive, because the
humour and compassion of that mind reach out to us all.
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